Search

Editorial. Focuses on the rise in the number of manuscripts received in 1966 for consideration for publication in the periodical 'Child Development.' Number of papers accepted for publication in the periodical in 1966; Rejection rate of manuscripts; Subjects of research papers.

The many adverse effects of child maltreatment make the scientific investigation of this phenomenon a matter of vital importance. Although the relationship between maltreatment and problematic emotion reactivity and regulation has been studied, the strength and specificity of these associations are not yet clear. We examine the magnitude of the maltreatment-child-emotion reactivity/regulation link. Studies with substantiated maltreatment involving children aged up to 18 were included, along with a smaller number of longitudinal studies (58 papers reviewed, encompassing more than 11,900 children). In comparison to nonmaltreated children, maltreated children experience more negative emotions, behave in a manner indicative of more negative emotion, and display emotion dysregulation. We outline several theoretical implications of our results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on the publication of a special issue on minority children. Importance of studying minority children; Details of a call for papers focusing on development in minority children; Approach used in the collection of articles in the issue; How to ensure a continuation of the research activity reflected in the issue.

Children of affluence are generally presumed to be at low risk. However, recent studies have suggested problems in several domains--notably, substance use, anxiety, and depression--and 2 sets of potential causes: pressures to achieve and isolation from parents. Recognizing the limited awareness of these issues, the objectives in this paper are to collate evidence on the nature of problems among the wealthy and their likely causes. The first half of the paper is focused on disturbances among affluent children and the second half is focused on characteristics of their families and neighborhoods. Widespread negative sentiments toward the rich are then discussed, and the paper concludes with suggestions for future work with families at the upper end of the socioeconomic spectrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Barker, Dembo and Lewin (BDL) classic study of frustration and regression has been widely discussed in psychological literature. Researchers have reinterpreted the experiment and have come to conclusions which differ from that of the original authors. In the present paper further analysis of the data will be presented in an attempt to evaluate the two interpretations. BDL feel that psychological development can be characterized by structural changes in the life space such that there is increased differentiation of the person into subsystems and a change of organization of the person.

The characteristics of one's moral code determine how often and in what life situations inner conflict is aroused, influence the ways such conflict is experienced, and set limits on the techniques that can be used to resolve it. The goal of this paper is to convey the theoretical richness of the topic and to clarify some of the research implications. Therefore, only a brief outline of empirical work on the acquisition of moral needs is explained here. Details of the latter are presented elsewhere. Instead, the article describes a number of the problems that have been encountered in the development of the investigations. The paper closes with a discussion of some hypothetical interrelationships between moral standards and other facets of personality.

Introduces a series of research papers on parent-child relations featured in the December 1960 issue of the periodical "Child Development."

The article discusses research on child development, the promotion of positive developmental aspects, and the control or minimization of problematic outcomes. Connections among normative development, atypical development, and intervention are discussed. The early childhood movement, project Head Start, and school readiness initiatives are mentioned as example child development programs. The evolving area of translational research in child development is discussed. A call for papers on translational research and the compilation of papers for a special issue is discussed.

This paper examines complex models of the associations between family income, material hardship, parenting, and school readiness among White, Black, and Hispanic 6-year-olds, using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K). It is critical to test the universality of such complex models, particularly given their implications for intervention, prevention, and public policy. Therefore this study asks: Do measures and models of low income and early school readiness indicators fit differently or similarly for White, Black, and Hispanic children? Measurement equivalence of material hardship, parent stress, parenting behaviors, child cognitive skills, and child social competence is first tested. Model equivalence is then tested by examining whether category membership in a race/ethnic group moderates associations between predictors and young children's school readiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports evidence from a longitudinal study in which children's attention to shape in a laboratory task of artificial noun learning was correlated with a rate shift in noun acquisitions. Eight children were tested in the laboratory at 3-week intervals beginning when they had less than 25 nouns in their productive vocabulary (M age=17 months). Children were presented with a novel word generalization task at each session. Additionally, the study examined the kinds of words the children learned early, based on parent reports, and the statistical regularities inherent in those vocabularies. The results indicate that as children learned nouns, they also learned to attend to shape in the novel word task. At the same time, children showed an acceleration in new noun production outside of the laboratory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Editorial. Focuses on the number of research manuscripts submitted for consideration for publication in the periodical 'Child Development,' as of December 1966. Ways to reduce the publication lag; Number of manuscripts published per year; Review process.

Editorial. Focuses on scientific writing and edification. Research reporting in psychology; Factors that are responsible for discontentment for the editor in research reporting; Presentation of statistical data and presentation according to the editor.

In an earlier study it was shown that the effects of father absence on children's cognitive performances varies with family size and sibling composi- tion. The present paper examined the effects of father night-shift work on the quantitative performances of 100 females. The results showed that children under the age of 9 were deleteriously affected. It followed that night-shift work can be considered as point on a father presence-absence continuum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on studies conducted in the United States exploring parent conformity versus peer conformity in adolescent girls in relation to age and sex of siblings. Assessment of dispositions with respect to conformity through responses to verbally described conflict situations; Use of highly structured paper-and-pencil instrument to measure dispositions toward parent conformity versus peer conformity.

Vulnerability to deprivation has often been regarded as a function, of constitutional factors, and in this paper an attempt is made to isolate one of these, namely, activity level, and to show its relation to individual differences in the reactions of infants to a deprivation experience. The hypothesis that inactive infants are more likely to be adversely affected than active infants is investigated in the context of a project in which measures for both activity level and vulnerability to deprivation were obtained. The findings indicate a significant relation in support of the hypothesis, and the suggestion is made that, at this period of life, organismic factors may be of greater consequence in determining outcome than such parameters as age or length of deprivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This three-armed randomized controlled trial examined how moral disengagement and social norms account for change in bullying behavior and their potential as targets of anti-bullying components within separate interventions among 1200 French-speaking Belgian elementary students (48% boys, 9-12 year-olds, 57 classes, nine schools) during 2018-2019 (no ethnicity data available). Mediation analysis revealed that students' moral disengagement successfully decreased (β = -.46), which, in turn, reduced both bullying (β = .33) and outsider behaviors (β = .20), and increased defending (β = -.10). Intervening on social norms decreased bullying (β = -.18), but not through the perceived injunctive class norm as intended. Guidelines to open the "black box" of anti-bullying programs and determine the cost-effectiveness ratio of their components are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children of color are more likely to have poor sleep health than White children, placing them at risk for behavioral problems in the classroom and lower academic performance. Few studies, however, have utilized standardized measures of both classroom behavior and achievement. This study examined whether children's sleep (parent and teacher report) in first grade concurrently related to independent observations of classroom behavior and longitudinally predicted achievement test scores in second grade in a sample of primarily Black (86%) children (n = 572; age = 6.8) living in historically disinvested neighborhoods. Higher teacher-reported child sleepiness was associated with lower adaptive behaviors and higher problem behaviors in the classroom, and predicted lower achievement. Parent-reported bedtime resistance and disordered breathing also predicted lower achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This reflection on the essay by Rothbaum, Pott, Azuma, Miyake, and Weisz focuses on how knowledge about Japanese psychological development and culture can serve as a corrective to the ethnocentrism of Western theory. Particular attention is given to the Japanese cultural concepts of amae and kejime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four experiments examined Canadian 2- to 3-year-old children's (N = 224; 104 girls, 120 boys) thoughts about shared preferences. Children saw sets of items, and identified theirs and another person's preferences. Children expected that food preferences would be more likely to be shared than color preferences, regardless of whether the items were similar or different in appeal (Experiments 1-3). A final study replicated these findings while also exploring children's expectations about activity and animal preferences. Across all studies, children expected shared preferences at surprisingly low rates (never higher than chance). Overall, these findings suggest that young children understand that some preferences are more subjective than others, and that these expectations are driven by beliefs about domains of preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developmental behavioral genetics is the study of genetic and environmental influences on individual differences in behavioral development. The interdiscipline offers exciting possibilities for research in both child development and behavioral genetics. In this prelude to a special section on developmental behavioral genetics, the potentialities of the interdiscipline are discussed and an overview of the articles that follow is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asserts that in almost all cases the experimenter conceptualizes a study as providing the basis for generalization to a larger population of models. Need for models to be analyzed as a random factor or a positive bias; Concept of a random factor; Application of a random factor to modeling research; Examples and practical solution proposed for the problem.

2 lines of research on the development of Piagetian concepts were examined in terms of the effects of their methodological procedures on the substantive results of the research. Specifically, Brainerd's discussions of the criteria for judging performance on a cognitive task. and the general strategy of simplifying the task to facilitate performance were discussed in terms of the general desire to quantify the processes of cognitive development. It was concluded that these approaches have not shown themselves to be clearly better than the Genevan methodology they are reacting to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A short-term memory task was used to explore the effects of color cues and of a condition that permitted rehearsal as compared with one that did not. 80 Ss per grade at grades 3, 5, and 7 were tested. A stimulus array consisted of 5 cards, each of which contained pictures that could be designated as central or incidental. The stimulus cards were presented for 20 trials. Recognition for central stimuli improved when color cues differentiated them from incidental stimuli, but there was no differential effect with age. Permitting rehearsal resulted in improved recall and recognition performance. At the older age levels, in the rehearsal condition, recognition of central stimuli was hindered less by the incidental stimuli than in tile condition which interfered with rehearsal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

80 children of welfare mothers were administered a measure of self concept. The children were equally divided as to sex, race (Negro or white), and grade (first or fifth). The overall results show that girls are more negative in self concept than boys and fifth graders are more negative than first graders. No overall race difference was found. The results suggest that Negro children do not become increasingly more negative in their self concepts from first to fifth grade than do white children of equivalent social status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Piaget has recently reported results indicating that children's memories of a patterned array of sticks improve over a 6-month period. Results reported here first of all confirm this finding, though not to the full extent Piaget found. Second, the improvement is apparently not due to a particular feature of the experimental procedure: E's focusing attention upon the size of the sticks during an intermediary session. Third, the improvement seems linked to the fact that the array is ordered and patterned. Several possible explanations of the phenomenon are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A research program is outlined for investigating the laws characterizing emotional dependence in childhood. In particular, emphasis is placed upon the identification of the dimensions operating in behaviors which appear to be employed to gain certain social responses from other persons (like those apparently employed for attention, approval, affection, reassurance, and the like); and the conditions under which they develop. The program proceeds both from simple learning and performance concepts and from such theories as are available for tracing the early development of emotional dependence. Initially, a two-pronged research program is proposed: the dimensional program would catalogue instrumental behaviors, reinforcers and object persons which characterize the dependence process, and such interrelationships as may be discovered among them, stated as a function of age; and the developmental program would employ the catalogue to focus upon the etiologies of different emotional dependence patterns. In particular, these researches propose to focus systematically upon selected aspects of the human caretaking situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study utilized data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (N = 14,860) to examine whether early-life family income (age 0-5) predicted long-term academic achievement (age 16-18) and to investigate the role of executive function (EF) assessed multiple times across age 7-11 in explaining this association. Task-based EF was a significant mediator between early-life family income and later academic achievement in every model. This mediating pathway persisted when adjusting for a comprehensive panel of covariates including verbal IQ, sex, family income at ages 8 and 18, and early-life temperament. Additionally, teacher-rated and parent-rated EF mediated in some models. Overall, these findings suggest that childhood EF may play an important role in perpetuating income-based educational disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about how children's value priorities develop over time. This study identifies children's value priority profiles and follows their development during middle childhood. Australian children (N = 609; ages 5-12 at Time 1) reported their values over 2 years. Latent Transition Analysis indicated four profiles: Social-Focus, Self-Focus, Growth-Focus and Undifferentiated. Within person development was characterized by profile stability or transfer to the Social-Focus profile. Younger children were more likely to have an Undifferentiated profile (or Self-Focus among boys) than older ones. Girls were more likely to have a Social-Focus profile or transfer to it, and less likely to have a Self- or Growth-Focus profile than boys. Social-Focus profile membership over time predicted more prosocial and less aggressive behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the longitudinal associations between children's early mathematics and their home numeracy environment (HNE). Chilean children from families who varied widely in socioeconomic status were assessed at the beginning and end of prekindergarten in 2016 (N = 419, Mage  = 4:7 [years:months]), and at the end of kindergarten in 2017 (N = 368, Mage  = 5:10). Children whose parents provided frequent operational numeracy activities (e.g., learning simple sums) at prekindergarten showed better arithmetic performance and growth in nonsymbolic and symbolic number comparison at the end of kindergarten. Parents' knowledge of number-related games predicted children's arithmetic skills and growth in nonsymbolic number comparison. These findings underscore the persistent relations between the HNE and the development of children's mathematical skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assessed changes in the association between single motherhood and children's verbal cognitive ability at age-11 using data from three cohorts of British children, born in 1958 (n = 10,675), 1970 (n = 8,933) and 2000 (n = 9,989), and mediation analysis. Consistent with previous studies, direct effects were small and insignificant. For those born in 1958 and 1970 indirect effects, operating through reduced economic and parental resources, were associated with -.107-SD to -.156-SD lower attainment. Differences between the two cohorts, and by children's age when parents separated, were insignificant. For the 2000 cohort, effect sizes for children born to single mothers did not change significantly (-.112-SD) but attenuated for children whose parents separated in early childhood (-.076-SD) or while of school age (-.054-SD). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study leverages naturally occurring lotteries for oversubscribed Boston Public Schools prekindergarten program sites between 2007 and 2011, for 3,182 children (M = 4.5 years old) to estimate the impacts of winning a first choice lottery and enrolling in Boston prekindergarten versus losing a first choice lottery and not enrolling on children's enrollment and persistence in district schools, grade retention, special education placement, and third-grade test scores. There are large effects on enrollment and persistence, but no effects on other examined outcomes for this subsample. Importantly, children who competed for oversubscribed seats were not representative of all appliers and almost all control-group children attended center-based preschool. Findings contribute to the larger evidence base and raise important considerations for future prekindergarten lottery-based studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although teacher-student relationships are assumed to in part reflect early caregiving quality, their social provisions also undergo notable normative change over the course of primary school, shifting from a secure base for social exploration to an instrumental relationship centered on achieving academic goals. This report leveraged prospective, longitudinal data from the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 1,306, 52% male, 77% White/non-Hispanic) to investigate whether the association between early caregiving and subsequent teacher-student relationship quality remains stable or diminishes in magnitude over time. Associations between early maternal sensitivity and teacher-student closeness faded from Kindergarten to Grade 6. In contrast, associations between early caregiving and teacher-student conflict endured and were partially accounted for by child externalizing problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined how colored educational tools improve children's numerosity ("number sense") and/or mathematics. We tested children 6-10 years (n = 3,236) who had been exposed to colored numbers from the educational tools Numicon (Oxford University Press, 2018) or Numberjacks (Ellis, 2006), which map colors to magnitudes or Arabic numerals, respectively. In a free association task pairing numbers with colors, a subset of children spontaneously provided colors matching one of these schemas. These children, who had internalized Numicon (colored magnitude), showed significantly better numerosity but not mathematics compared to peers. There was no similar benefit from internalizing Numberjacks (colored numerals). These data support a model in which colored number tools provide benefits at different levels of numerical cognition, according to their different levels of cross-modal mappings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many political movements across the world today define citizenship in exclusionary ethnic or religious terms. This study extends research on ethnic-national associations in adults to children, adding to the relatively sparse literature on the development of national associations in children and in nonwestern contexts. Explicit and implicit religious-national associations were examined in a sample of 160 nine- to sixteen-year-olds (79 Hindu; 81 Muslim) in Gujarat, India. Results suggest that while Hindu children show a strong Indian = Hindu association by age 9, Muslim children appear to be buffered from this association. Furthermore, this association uniquely predicts variance in children's attitudes about social policy and their concept of nationality, above and beyond their age, religion, and intergroup attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previously, research on wishful thinking has found that desires bias older children's and adults' predictions during probabilistic reasoning tasks. In this article, we explore wishful thinking in children aged 3- to 10-years-old. Do young children learn to be wishful thinkers? Or do they begin with a wishful thinking bias that is gradually overturned during development? Across five experiments, we compare low- and middle-income United States and Peruvian 3- to 10-year-old children (N = 682). Children were asked to make predictions during games of chance. Across experiments, preschool-aged children from all backgrounds consistently displayed a strong wishful thinking bias. However, the bias declined with age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the relations of multiple categorization and social dominance orientation with adolescents' prejudice against migrants and identification with the human group over time. Participants were 304 Northern-Italian late adolescents (61.84% female, Mage  = 17.49) involved in a three-wave longitudinal study (with 3 months interval between waves). Results showed that multiple categorization was negatively linked to prejudice at a later time, whereas social dominance orientation was positively associated with it; prejudice also negatively affected multiple categorization and positively affected social dominance orientation at a later time. Moreover, prejudice mediated the effects of multiple categorization and social dominance orientation on human identification. These findings have important implications suggesting the construens effect of multiple categorization for enhancing social inclusiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are core-specific and noncore-specific domains of knowledge, but only the core-specific domains benefit from innate skeletal structures. Core skeletal domains are universally shared, even though their particular foci may vary; individuals vary extensively in terms of the noncore domains they acquire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies suggest an association between language and executive function (EF), but evidence of a developmental relationship remains inconclusive. Data were collected from 75 deaf/hard-of-hearing (DHH) children and 82 hearing age-matched controls. Children were 6-11 years old at first time of testing and completed a battery of nonverbal EF tasks and a test of expressive vocabulary. These tasks were completed again 2 years later. Both groups improved their scores on all tasks over this period. DHH children performed significantly less well than hearing peers on some EF tasks and the vocabulary test at both time points. Cross-lagged panel models showed that vocabulary at Time 1 predicted change in EF scores for both DHH and hearing children but not the reverse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This daily diary study examined how adolescents' institutional and teacher-specific trust predicted classroom behavioral engagement the day after being disciplined by that teacher. Within mathematics classrooms, adolescents (N = 190; Mage  = 14 years) reported institutional and teacher-specific trust and then completed a 15-day diary assessing teacher discipline and behavioral engagement. The results indicated that, among adolescents with low teacher trust, discipline was unrelated to next-day behavior. Contrastingly, adolescents with high teacher but low institutional trust became less engaged following discipline, whereas those with high teacher and institutional trust became more engaged. These findings suggest that adolescents interpret discipline within the social context of trust, and adolescents' trust in the institution and teacher are important for discipline to improve behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Value-based decisions often involve comparisons between benefits and costs that must be retrieved from memory. To investigate the development of value-based decisions, 9- to 10-year olds (N = 30), 11- to 12-year olds (N = 30), and young adults (N = 30) first learned to associate gain and loss magnitudes with symbols. In a subsequent decision task, participants rapidly evaluated objects that consisted of combinations of these symbols. All age groups achieved high decision performance and were sensitive to gain-loss magnitudes, suggesting that required core cognitive abilities are developed early. A cognitive-modeling analysis of performance revealed that children were less efficient in object evaluation (drift rate) and had longer nondecision times than adults. Developmental differences, which emerged particularly for objects of high positive net value, were linked to mnemonic and numerical abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reading skills are foundational for daily lives, academic achievement, and careers. In this study, we systematically reviewed literacy interventions in low- and middle-income countries, and estimated their effects on children's reading skills using a meta-analytic approach. A total of 67 studies (N = 213,464) from 32 countries found in various databases (e.g., PsycINFO, ERIC) and sources (e.g., United States Agency for International Development) met our inclusion criteria. The results revealed an overall effect of .30 across various literacy outcomes. Effects varied for different outcomes, such that largest effects were found in emergent literacy skills (e.g., .40) and the smallest effects in reading comprehension (.25) and oral language skills (.20). Effects also varied as a function of other features such as teacher training support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trajectories of stability and change in bullying roles were examined through a longitudinal prospective study of 916 school students followed up biannually from age 11 to 17. Perpetrators and victims had relatively stable trajectories with most of the children remaining in the same role over time or becoming uninvolved. Bully/victim was the most unstable role with frequent transitions to perpetrators or victims. Developmental change in bullying roles was found with a decrease in physical forms over time in bullies and victims but with persistently high perpetration and victimization in bully/victims. These findings open new horizons in research and practice related to bullying and can be useful for its early detection or design of targeted interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic hardship can affect children's development through child-caregiver interactions, which may mediate cascading effects of other family stress processes. This study examined, simultaneously, the relations of financial strain, caregiver general stress, and child-caregiver conflict-each measured at two time points-with child self-regulatory outcomes in a high-poverty sample (age 5-7 years; n = 343). Increase in child-caregiver conflict mediated negative relations between other processes and development of executive function. In contrast, only increase in financial strain had direct, negative association with development of delay of gratification and did not significantly mediate relations between any other process and children's outcomes. Results have implications for understanding effects of family stress on self-regulatory outcomes and for interventions with low-income families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated children's ability to distinguish between resource inequalities with individual versus structural origins. Children (3- to 8-years-old; N = 93) were presented with resource inequalities based on either recipients' merit (individual factor) or gender (structural factor). Children were assessed on their expectations for others' allocations, own allocations, reasoning, and evaluations of others' allocations. Children perpetuated merit-based inequalities and either rectified or allocated equally in response to gender-based inequalities. Older, but not younger, children expected others to perpetuate both types of inequalities and differed in their evaluations and reasoning. Links between children's allocations and judgments were also found. Results reveal novel insights into children's developing consideration of the structural and individual factors leading to resource inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study examined how discrimination relates to adjustment outcomes in a sample of internationally, transracially adopted Korean Americans from the Minnesota Sibling Interaction and Behavior Study (N = 456 adoptees; Mage at T1 = 14.9, Mage at T2 = 18.3, Mage at T3 = 22.3). The moderating roles of ethnic socialization and preparation for bias by parents (i.e., ethnic-racial socialization) were also examined. Results indicated that discrimination predicted higher levels of depressive and externalizing symptoms in youth who reported less preparation for bias. In those experiencing more preparation for bias, associations were not significantly different from zero. Ethnic socialization did not moderate these associations. Such findings provide important information for adoptive parents regarding how to prepare their children to cope with discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When and how do infants learn color words? It is generally supposed that color words are learned late and with a great deal of difficulty. By examining infant language surveys in British English and 11 other languages, this study shows that color word learning occurs earlier than has been previously suggested and that the order of acquisition of color words is similar in related languages. This study also demonstrates that frequency and syllabic complexity can be used to predict variability in infant color word learning across languages. In light of recent evidence indicating that color categories have universal biological foundations, these findings suggest that infants' experience and linguistic exposure drive their shift to culturally and linguistically mediated adult-like understandings of color words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children display an "essentialist" bias in their everyday thinking about social categories. However, the degree and form of this bias varies with age and with the nature of the categories, as well as across cultures. This project investigated the development of the essentialist bias across five social categories (i.e., gender, nationality, religious affiliation, socioeconomic status (rich/poor), and sports-team supporter) in two countries. Children between 5 and 10 years of age in Turkey (Study 1, N = 74) and the United States (Study 2, N = 73), as well as adults in both countries (Study 3, N = 223), participated. Results indicate surprising cross-cultural parallels with respect to both the rank ordering of essentialist thinking across these five categories and increasing differentiation among them over development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the association between perceived material deprivation, children's behavior problems, and parents' disciplinary practices. The sample included 1,418 8- to 12-year-old children and their parents in China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States. Multilevel mixed- and fixed-effects regression models found that, even when income remained stable, perceived material deprivation was associated with children's externalizing behavior problems and parents' psychological aggression. Parents' disciplinary practices mediated a small share of the association between perceived material deprivation and children's behavior problems. There were no differences in these associations between mothers and fathers or between high- and low- and middle-income countries. These results suggest that material deprivation likely influences children's outcomes at any income level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literacy success lays the foundation for children's later educational, health, and well-being outcomes. Thus, early identification of literacy need is vital. Using data from New Zealand's national preschool health screening program for fiscal years 2010/2011-2014/2015, demographic and health variables from 255,090 children aged 4 years were related to whether they received a literacy intervention in early primary school. Overall, 20,652 (8.1%) children received an intervention. Time-to-event analysis revealed that all considered variables were significantly related to literacy intervention (all p < .01), but the full model lacked reasonable predictive power for population screening purposes (Harrell's c-statistic = .624; 95% CI [.618, .629]). Including more direct literacy measures in the national screening program is likely needed for improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effects associated with early child care and out-of-school time (OST) during middle childhood were examined in a large sample of U.S. adolescents (N = 958). Both higher quality early child care AND more epochs of organized activities (afterschool programs and extracurricular activities) during middle childhood were linked to higher academic achievement at age 15. Differential associations were found in the behavioral domain. Higher quality early child care was associated with fewer externalizing problems, whereas more hours of early child care was linked to greater impulsivity. More epochs of organized activities was associated with greater social confidence. Relations between early child care and adolescent outcomes were not mediated or moderated by OST arrangements in middle childhood, consistent with independent, additive relations of these nonfamilial settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]