British Journal of Developmental Psychology最新文献

There is evidence of weak self-processing in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), including diminished self-reference effects (SREs) in memory. Because smaller SREs in older ASD children and adults are sometimes associated with worse social functioning, we examined this relation for the first time in ASD preschoolers (n = 21). Following a self-performed task, children completed tests of self/other source memory, verbal ability, imitation and mentalizing. Although the ASD children were outperformed on the socio-cognitive measures by non-autistic preschoolers (n = 20), they still showed a significant SRE. Moreover, the SRE, but not the socio-cognitive variables, was a significant predictor of children's social functioning as rated by parents. Larger SREs were linked with better social functioning, while children with stronger autism traits showed no memory advantage for information encoded self-referentially. These findings support previous research showing that self-processing impairments in ASD are mainly apparent for individuals with greater social difficulties.

Family history (FH) of autism and ADHD is not often considered during the recruitment process of developmental studies, despite high recurrence rates. We looked at the rate of autism or ADHD amongst family members of young children (9 to 46 months) in three UK-based samples (N = 1055) recruited using different methods. The rate of FH-autism or FH-ADHD was 3%–9% for diagnosed cases. The rate was highest in the sample recruited through an online participant pool, which also consisted of the most socio-economically diverse families. Lower parental education and family income were associated with higher rates of FH-ADHD and lower parental education with increased FH-autism. Thus, recruitment strategies have a meaningful impact on neurodiversity and the conclusions and generalizations that can be drawn. Specifically, recruitment using crowdsourcing websites could create a sample that is more representative of the wider population, compared to those recruited through university-related volunteer databases and social media.

Competition usually exists in groups in everyday interactions, but how children allocate according to competition outcomes (e.g., merit-based allocation) after intergroup competition and the difference in children's allocations of rewards between interpersonal and intergroup competition remain unclear. Children aged 3–8 years were asked to complete interpersonal or intergroup competitive games and were further asked to allocate rewards between themselves and their partners (Study 1) or between their group and the other group (Studies 2 and 3) and to reason about their decisions. We found that after interpersonal competition, children tended to conduct merit-based allocations when they won but were more inclined to conduct equal allocations when they lost; after intergroup competition, children were more inclined to make equal allocations regardless of whether they won or lost, only less than half of children followed meritorious principles. However, children conducted more merit-based allocations with age after both interpersonal and intergroup competitions. In addition, children showed less bias towards their own side after intergroup competition than after interpersonal competition. Finally, they demonstrated an earlier proclivity towards being influenced by winning outcomes than by losing outcomes after interpersonal competition, whereas a converse tendency was found after intergroup competition.

Children's moral self-concept (MSC) has been proposed to relate to prosocial behaviour. However, systematic assessments of their interrelations are scarce. The current study examines the early development, structure, stability and interrelation of three key prosocial behaviours and the corresponding dimensions of the moral self-concept. To this end, we use a longitudinal approach with three measurement points during the preschool years at ages 4, 5 and 6 years. We assess three prosocial dimensions of children's MSC through a puppet-interview. In addition, behavioural measures of children's helping, sharing and comforting were administered in a laboratory setting. By examining the longitudinal associations between MSC and prosocial behaviours, this study will provide valuable insights into the complex nature of prosocial development in early childhood.

The goals of this study were to examine maternal beliefs about the primary benefits and costs of their children's time spent with friends, and to explore child age and gender differences in these beliefs. Participants were N = 512 mothers (M_childage = 10.18 years; 11% ethnic minority). Open-ended responses to questions about the benefits and costs were coded and analysed, with results indicating that mothers consider opportunities for social skills and social-cognitive development a primary benefit of spending time with friends. Negative friend influence was the most commonly cited cost of friendship. Child age was associated with a number of maternal beliefs (e.g., mothers of adolescents were more likely than mothers of young children to report intimacy as a benefit), but child gender was not. Findings highlight the importance of considering child age in studies of maternal beliefs about friendship and set the stage for future research in this area.

The nature of the home mathematics environment (which includes numerical and spatial activities at home) is related to children's spatial and mathematics performance. The current study investigated concrete and digital construction play frequency and relations with spatial and mathematical skills. Participants aged 7–9 years (N = 634) reported their frequency of construction play (concrete and digital) and completed direct measures of spatial ability and mathematics performance. Correlations between measures revealed no association between construction play frequency and outcome measures. This suggests that quantity of construction play is not pertinent for spatial and mathematics skills, however future research should explore whether quality of play is an important factor.

Children have a proclivity to learn through faithful imitation, but the extent to which this applies under significant cost remains unclear. To address this, we investigated whether 4- to 6-year-old children (N = 97) would stop imitating to forego a desirable food reward. We presented participants with a task involving arranging marshmallows and craft sticks, with the goal being either to collect marshmallows or build a tower. Children replicated the demonstrated actions with high fidelity regardless of the goal, but retrieved rewards differently. Children either copied the specific actions needed to build a tower, prioritizing tower completion over reward; or adopted a novel convention of stacking materials before collecting marshmallows, and developed their own method to achieve better outcomes. These results suggest children's social learning decisions are flexible and context-dependent, yet that when framed by an ostensive goal, children imitated in adherence to the goal despite incurring significant material costs.

This study examined whether the contact emerging adults have with same-gender and other-gender friends, and other-gender romantic partners is associated with their sexist and gender-inequality beliefs, and whether these associations are moderated by their gender or gender contentedness (feeling content with one's gender). Dutch emerging adults (N = 381, 18–25 years old, 51% female) completed an online survey. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that more other-gender contact was associated with less gender-inequality beliefs and with less hostile sexism in people who felt less content with their gender, but with more hostile sexism in people who feel highly content with their gender. More same-gender contact was associated with more benevolent sexism and gender-inequality beliefs, as well as with men's hostile sexism. Contact with romantic partners was not associated with gender-prejudice beliefs. Thus, same-gender contact and other-gender contact with friends each are associated with gender prejudice, depending on gender and gender contentedness.

Previous research in adults has showed that physical performance (i.e., enactment) of instructions at recall leads to better memory compared to verbal recall and that this effect does not rely solely on Working Memory resources. The current study aimed to replicate this finding in children. A group of 32 children encoded simple instructions verbally while engaging in a series of distractor tasks (articulatory suppression, backwards counting and a motor suppression task). Participants recalled information verbally or physically through enactment. The findings showed that although distractors impaired performance compared to a control condition (no distractor task), the enactment advantage remained intact in all conditions. These findings show that children's memory is superior when they perform, rather than when they verbally repeat instructions and crucially it is suggested that this effect does not rely solely on Working Memory resources.

The proliferation of artificial intelligence may pose new challenges to people's moral judgements. We examined moral judgements towards different social actors and their influencing factors in children, adolescents and adults. Moral judgements were measured with ship problems which will ask participants whether they would choose to save humans, dogs, humanoid robots or animaloid robots. Results showed that (1) both adolescents and adults considered humans morally most important, followed by dogs, humanoid robots and animaloid robots. Children have not yet developed the tendency to morally prioritize humanoid robots over animaloid robots; (2) Individuals' moral judgements are influenced by their age, anthropomorphism and animacy of social actors; (3) With the development of individuals, animacy of social actors always have a greater impact on individuals' moral judgements than anthropomorphism of social actors. Findings indicated that the concept of moral judgement is more complex in the era of artificial intelligence and requires more attention from developmental psychology researchers.