British Journal of Developmental Psychology最新文献

Given that children do not always trust gossip, do they spontaneously check what they are told? We provided 5- (N = 32) and 6-year olds (N = 32) with gossip concerning characters in a cartoon they were watching, and examined whether they verified the gossip by actively re-watching the relevant episodes. Six-year olds were more likely to verify gossip than 5-year olds. When gossip targeted their favourite characters, children were more likely to verify negative when compared with positive gossip. However, when gossip targeted children's disliked characters, they showed no such valence bias. These results indicate that children's verification of gossip increases with age, and they evaluate claims selectively.

The digital media landscape is rapidly shifting, and some children begin using digital media in infancy. As with book reading, young children need adult guidance to learn from digital media. Joint media engagement (JME) occurs when preschool children and their parents actively use digital media together. JME during early childhood is associated with increased learning from media. However, there are no validated scales of JME. In the present study, parents of 353 1-to-5-year olds answered a series of questions about their media use and behaviours. Exploratory factor analysis yielded two scales, one for viewing video content together and one for playing digital games together. Convergent validity was established by comparison to the widely used Television Mediation Scale. Together, these findings establish the JME instrument as a valid and reliable tool for measuring joint media engagement during early childhood.

An individual's social adaptation, which is influenced by both internalizing and externalizing factors, depends on social anxiety. We proposed that the connection between parental psychological control and social anxiety among middle school students was mediated by negative emotion response-focused strategies and moderated by socioeconomic status (SES). We collected data from 1343 Chinese students from 12 to 16 years old (M = 13.3, SD = 0.96) by applying the questionnaire of parental psychological control scale, social anxiety scale and negative emotion response-focused strategies scale. The findings demonstrated that parental psychological control, including father and mother psychological control, was positively associated with social anxiety and that the relationship between parental psychological control and children's social anxiety was mediated by negative emotion response-focused strategies. Meanwhile, SES played a moderating role in the relationship between children's negative emotion response-focused strategies and social anxiety. The findings also suggest that we should pay more attention to the psychological status and social interaction of children with lower SES.

Understanding transgender youth coping mechanisms may help create strategies that reduce the influence of stress on quality of life. Our study aims to measure the quality of life of Brazilian transgender youth and analyse the association with their coping strategies used for dealing with general and gender-related stress. The sample consisted of 185 participants (μ = 18.49 years; SD 2.42); of which 95 (46.34%) transgender boys, 45 (21.95%) transgender girls, 65 (31.71%) non-binary. Better quality of life was related to social support, whereas lower quality of life was related to the use of avoidance coping style in the context of general stress. The study found no association between coping strategies for gender-related stress and quality of life. Thus, the increase in quality of life in the context of gender distress among transgender youth should involve other mechanisms than promoting coping skills.

Source monitoring (SM) refers to attributing sources of information. There are various methods for measuring SM in children. We searched the PubMed, PsycINFO, Embase, Web of Science and Cochrane Library databases from their inception to February 24, 2023, to summarize the methods and measures of SM in children, identifying 141 studies. The procedure for the SM tasks encompassed encoding, interval and testing. The encoding tasks were classified into ground-based activities (n = 67), computer-based experiments (n = 42) and mixed methods (n = 34). The testing approaches were categorized into old/new recognition and source discrimination, n-alternative forced-choice, yes/no questions and recall/direct questions. Among 10 commonly used indicators, source-correct, source-incorrect, discrimination score and source accuracy were recommended to present the SM function. We also discussed the advantages and disadvantages of different SM methods in children, providing a reference for researchers to design and select SM measurements that meet their research objectives.

This paper examined British children's (8- to 10-year-olds) and adolescents' (13- to 15-year-olds, N = 340; Female N = 171, 50.3%) expectations, evaluations and reasoning about a bystander peer who challenges the social exclusion of an immigrant or non-immigrant peer by a peer group of non-immigrant students. Participants read a hypothetical scenario in which a peer was excluded from an afterschool club by the peer group. The scenarios were either intergroup or intragroup contexts. Participants' expectations of a peer bystander challenging the social exclusion by the peer group, their perception of how the peer group would evaluate the challenger, and their reasoning around their expectations were measured. Adolescents were less likely to expect a peer bystander to challenge exclusion compared to children. Participants' perceptions of how the group would evaluate the challenger were significantly lower in intergroup compared to intragroup contexts. In intergroup contexts, adolescents with low expectations of challenging favoured group dynamics and group repercussions reasoning over moral reasoning, while children did not use group repercussions reasoning.

Examining mechanisms underlying sex differences in children's play styles, we studied girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) who provide a test of the relative effects of prenatal androgens versus rearing, and of behavioural similarity versus gender identity and cognitions. In this exploratory study, 40 focal children (girls and boys with and without CAH), aged 3–8 years, played for 14 min with a same-sex peer in a task designed to elicit rough-and-tumble play. Time-indexed ratings of positive affect and vigour of activity were evaluated via network mapping for sex-related differences in both levels and play dynamics (temporal relations among behaviours). Results suggest influences of both gender identity-aligned social cognitions and prenatal androgens: there was greater dyadic synchrony between positive affect for girls (regardless of CAH status) than boys, but girls with CAH displayed positive affect levels and directed vigorous peer play dynamics similar to boys.

This research examined how 3–6-year-olds judge appropriate levels of counting games based on a person's ability, desire for learning and degree of difficulty. Study 1 found that 3-year-olds did not consider a character's ability or desire, whereas older children gave high ability characters large number games and low ability characters small number games when the characters wanted to play a manageable game. However, older children gave large number games to characters who wanted to learn counting, regardless of their ability. In Study 2, in addition to a similar developmental change of jointly considering a character's ability and desire, it was found that 5-and 6-year-olds were more sensitive to the degree of difficulty. They were more careful than younger children to choose exceedingly large number games given the character's ability and desire. Implications for children's understanding of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and goal orientation are discussed.

This study investigated whether cognitive function better predicted maths test performance than a clinical diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Forty-four drug naïve children (M_age = 101.34 months, SD = 19.39; 30% girls) were recruited from clinical ADHD referral waiting lists. Children underwent assessment of Executive Functions (EF), lower-level cognitive processes, and maths performance. Children were grouped using a categorical approach comprising (1) children with a clinical ADHD diagnosis and (2) children without a diagnosis (i.e., subthreshold ADHD). Secondly, hierarchical cluster analysis generated subgroups of children using EF scores. Children were compared on cognition, maths, and parent-rated symptoms of ADHD and co-occurring difficulties. Children's diagnostic outcomes did not differentiate maths performance. By contrast, EF subgroups generated meaningful cognitive clusters which differentiated maths test scores. This suggests that cognitive patterns of performance, rather than children's diagnostic outcomes, are more informative for identifying meaningful groups with variable maths performance which has implications for remedial support.