British Journal of Developmental Psychology最新文献

Individuals often use external aids to assist with information storage, a process known as cognitive offloading. Prior research has indicated that adults sometimes fail to utilize internal and external cognitive resources judiciously, resulting in cognitive offloading bias, which is often linked to metacognition. However, it remains experimentally unverified whether primary and secondary school students exhibit cognitive offloading bias and how this relates to metacognition. This study aimed to address these gaps. In Experiment 1, we examined cognitive offloading bias in primary and secondary school students (aged 7–15 years) using a word-pair memory task. The results revealed that primary school students tended to rely excessively on internal memory in comparison to the optimal strategy, while secondary school students leaned towards an overreliance on external reminders. In Experiment 2, we incorporated metacognitive judgements to explore the relationship between metacognition and cognitive offloading bias. Results indicated that the cognitive offloading bias observed in primary school students was linked to the accuracy of their metacognitive monitoring.

The popularity of social networking sites increases opportunities for upward social comparison, potentially affecting individuals' subjective well-being. However, research on how this comparison impacts well-being's sub-components (i.e., positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction) is scarce. This study, based on social comparison theory and the full theoretical construct of subjective well-being, explores these relationships and their mechanisms. A total of 970 Chinese youth participants (M _age = 19.42 years, SD = 2.01) completed self-report measures. The results showed that the independent mediating effect of envy and the chain mediating effect of self-concept clarity and envy contributed to all three models. In addition, the independent mediating effect of self-concept clarity only contributed to the model for negative affect. This study emphasizes that the construct of envy mediates the effect of upward social comparison on the sub-components of subjective well-being and further demonstrates a strong impact of upward social comparison on negative affect.

To explore the potential categories of problem behaviours among high school students and their relationships with parental support and optimism–pessimism, a cluster sampling method was utilized to survey 682 first- and second-year high school students. The results of the latent profile analysis indicated: (1) There were differences between male and female students across various dimensions of problem behaviours, with males scoring significantly higher in aggressive behaviour and delinquency, whereas females scored significantly higher in withdrawal behaviour, neuroticism and exam anxiety. (2) The study identified three latent categories of high school students based on their problem behaviours: the low-risk group, the moderate-risk group and the high-risk group. The majority of students with problem behaviours belong to the low and moderate-risk groups, suggesting that most high school students exhibit problem behaviours at a moderate or low level. (3) As environmental and individual factors, respectively, parental support and optimism–pessimism have a correlation with problem behaviours among high school students. The above research findings can assist educators in developing more targeted prevention and intervention strategies for different categories of high school students based on their levels of problem behaviours.

This pre-registered secondary analysis aimed to examine distinct longitudinal loneliness trajectories in youth and whether these trajectories were associated with psychological distress at final follow-up in the UK Household Longitudinal Study. Participants (N = 827, 55.1% female, Time 1: M ± SD = 16.50 ± 0.50 years) provided data during Waves 9, 10 and 11. K-means longitudinal clustering analysis was used to identify clusters of participants with distinct loneliness trajectories across measurement waves. We identified four clusters demonstrating distinct trajectories of loneliness: stable low (40.7%), stable high (20.6%), moderate decreasing (19.6%) and low increasing (19.1%). Compared to ‘stable low loneliness’, ‘stable high’ and ‘low increasing’ loneliness clusters were significantly associated with psychological distress at Wave 11 following adjustment for sex, ethnicity, parent's highest educational achievement and Wave 9 psychological distress. The current study offers an important contribution to the literature on patterns of youth loneliness and mental health consequences.

Help-seeking is a strategy by which children signal their need for social learning. In three experiments, we examined when and from whom 2-year-old (N = 146 children; mean age = 31.4 months) US children from diverse ethnoracial and economic backgrounds (62% White; 9% Latine; 24% low-income) seek help in problem-solving contexts. In Experiment 1, children sought more help when unfamiliar (and thus unable to solve) than when familiar with a problem. In Experiment 2, children selectively sought help from knowledgeable as opposed to ignorant helpers. Against our prediction, children in neither experiment preferred mature (adult) over immature (infant or peer) helpers. In Experiment 3, children again did not prefer mature over immature helpers when helpers were depicted with realistic photos instead of line drawings (as in Experiments 1 and 2). We discuss the findings in relation to children's knowledge of their status as social learners.

Gender nonconforming (GNC) boys often elicit negative reactions from peers and adults. However, it is unclear which aspects of nonconformity evoke negative social consequences. Are appearance characteristics, activity interests, or traits most impactful for peers' evaluations? Sixty-seven 6- to 11-year-old children and their parents interacted with a magnetic paper doll of a GNC boy who was displayed with feminine appearance characteristics, activity interests, and traits. Participants were allowed to physically remove feminine attributes and/or add masculine and neutral attributes to help the GNC boy make friends with boys. Participants were (1) more likely to change appearance and activities and less likely to change traits and (2) more likely to remove feminine attributes than add masculine and neutral attributes. Interactions between attribute type and gender differed across parents and children. Results suggest that interventions to reduce discrimination towards GNC boys should focus on reducing prejudice towards appearance- and activity-based nonconformity.

This study aimed to assess the relationship between menstruation-related attributes and mental distress in adolescent girls. A cross-sectional study was conducted in Rangeli Municipality, Nepal, among 270 adolescent girls. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire. Unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios (aOR) were calculated at a 5% level of significance to identify factors associated with depression, anxiety and stress. Of 270 adolescent girls, 28.9% (95% CI: 23.5%–35.2%) experienced anxiety, 14.4% (95% CI: 10.0%–18.5%) experienced stress and 32.2% (95% CI: 26.6%–37.4%) experienced depression. Low perceived family support during menstruation (aOR: 2.87, 95% CI: 1.03–7.97), low perceived support from friends during menstruation (aOR: 4.09, 95% CI: 1.66–10.07) and experiencing moderate/severe dysmenorrhea (aOR: 2.31, 95% CI: 1.105–5.08) were associated with anxiety. Those with moderate/severe dysmenorrhoea had higher odds (aOR: 5.60, 95% CI: 1.56–20.05) of experiencing stress. Low perceived family support (aOR: 3.07, 95% CI: 1.08–8.67), low perceived support from friends (aOR: 2.77, 95% CI: 1.11–6.89) and experiencing moderate to severe dysmenorrhoea (aOR: 3.56, 95% CI: 1.63–7.79) were associated with depression. The findings underscore the importance of proper management of dysmenorrhoea and need for social support from both family and friends during menstruation as these factors are associated with psychological distress among adolescent girls.

The present study aimed to develop two visual tasks to assess the emotion understanding of institutionalized preschool children in India. To enhance the psychometric qualities of both tasks, content validity and inter-rater reliability assessments, translation-back translation and a rigorous peer review process were undertaken. In addition, the tool's components were mapped with institutionalized children's everyday experiences to help them better relate to the task. The tool development phase was followed by the assessment phase. Eighteen participants (nine males, nine females) aged 3–6 years were purposefully selected from three childcare institutions. The emotion identification task required children to identify the correct emotions from the cartoon characters' facial expressions and gestures, whereas, in the emotion situation task, children were asked to infer others' emotions from a vignette depicted by a picture card. Children's responses were videotaped, analysed and coded for both tasks. The study's key findings revealed that institutionalized children responded more accurately to emotion situation tasks yet struggled to identify sadness, anger and fear emotions compared to happiness. Furthermore, qualitative insights provided a comprehensive understanding and interpretation of the findings.

Infant research often struggles with selective samples, especially when focusing on behavioural measures, such as those drawn from habituation tasks. However, selectivity may threaten the generalizability and interpretation of results, which is why the current study investigates attrition in a habituation task administered in a household setting in 7-month-old infants. We used a large-scale German dataset, focusing on the children's socioeconomic background, and investigated two aspects of attrition, namely, participation and task completion. The findings suggest significant effects of the children's socioeconomic background on attrition: Maternal education, parental occupation, household income and household language (German vs. other) were positively related to participation and task completion. The analyses indicate that multiple barriers may prevent parents from lower socioeconomic backgrounds from letting their children participate. The study concludes with a critical discussion of possible mechanisms of selectivity in behavioural measures as well as the household setting, in which the data were collected.