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The Language ENvironment Analysis system (LENA) records children’s language environment and provides an automatic estimate of adult–child conversational turn count (CTC). The present study compares LENA’s CTC estimate to manually coded CTC on a sample of 70 English‐speaking infants recorded longitudinally at 6, 10, 14, 18, and 24 months of age. At each age, LENA’s CTC was significantly higher than manually coded CTC (all ps

Helping has many positive consequences for both helpers and recipients. However, in the present research, we considered a possible downside to receiving help: that it signals a deficiency. We investigated whether young children make inferences about intelligence from observing some groups of people receive help and other groups not. In a novel group paradigm, we show that children (4-6 years) think groups that receive help are less smart (n = 44) but not less nice (n = 45). Children also generalized their inferences about relative intelligence to new group members (n = 55; forced-choice-method). These results have implications for understanding how children develop stereotypes about intelligence as well as for educational practices that group children according to their ability.

The emergence of visual cortex specialization for culturally acquired characters like letters and digits, both arbitrary shapes related to specific cognitive domains, is yet unclear. Here, 20 young children (6.12 years old) were tested with a frequency-tagging paradigm coupled with electroencephalogram recordings to assess discrimination responses of letters from digits and vice-versa. One category of stimuli (e.g., letters) was periodically inserted (1/5) in streams of the other category (e.g., digits) presented at a fast rate (6 Hz). Results show clear right-lateralized discrimination responses at 6 Hz/5 for digits within letters, and a trend for left-lateralization for letters. These results support an early developmental emergence of ventral occipito-temporal cortex specialization for visual recognition of digits and letters, potentially in relation with relevant coactivated brain networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compared the extent to which the long‐term influence of family socioeconomic status (SES) on children's school performance from age 7 through 16 years was mediated by their preschool verbal and nonverbal ability. In 661 British children, who completed 17 researcher‐administered ability tests at age 4.5 years, SES correlated more strongly with verbal than nonverbal ability (.39 vs. .26). Verbal ability mediated about half of the association between SES and school performance at age 7, while nonverbal ability accounted for a third of the link. Only SES, but not verbal or nonverbal ability, was associated with changes in school performance from age 7 to 16. We found that SES‐related differences in school performance are only partly transmitted through children's preschool verbal abilities.

Deficits in reciprocal social behavior are a characterizing feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Autism-related variation in reciprocal social behavior (AVR) in the general population is continuously distributed and highly heritable-a function of additive genetic influences that overlap substantially with those which engender clinical autistic syndromes. This is the first long-term prospective study of the stability of AVR from childhood through early adulthood, conducted via serial ratings using the Social Responsiveness Scale, in a cohort-sequential study involving children with ASD, other psychiatric conditions, and their siblings (N = 602, ages = 2.5-29). AVR exhibits marked stability throughout childhood in individuals with and without ASD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impacts of war and displacement on executive function (EF)-what we might call the cognitive signatures of minds under siege-are little known. We surveyed a gender-balanced sample of 12- to 18-year-old Syrian refugees (n = 240) and Jordanian non-refugees (n = 210) living in Jordan. We examined the relative contributions of poverty, trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress, and insecurity to variance in inhibitory control and working memory. We observed associations between poverty and WM, suggesting that, even in populations exposed to substantial violence and fear, poverty is a specific pathway to WM deficit. We did not, however, find associations between EFs and exposures to trauma. Careful distinction between childhood adversities may illuminate which neurocognitive pathways matter for measures of cognitive function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated associations among third-grade teachers' (N = 27) symptoms of depression, quality of the classroom-learning environment (CLE), and students' (N = 523, Mage = 8.6 years) math and literacy performance. teachers' depressive symptoms in the winter negatively predicted students' spring mathematics achievement. This depended on students' fall mathematics scores; students who began the year with weaker math skills and were in classrooms where teachers reported more depressive symptoms achieved smaller gains than did peers whose teachers reported fewer symptoms. teachers' depressive symptoms were negatively associated with quality of CLE, and quality of CLE mediated the association between depressive symptoms and student achievement. The findings point to the importance of teachers' mental health, with implications for policy and practice.

Children exposed to extreme stress are at heightened risk for developing mental and physical disorders. However, little is known about mechanisms underlying these associations in humans. An emerging insight is that children's social environments change gene expression, which contributes to biological vulnerabilities for behavioral problems. Epigenetic changes in the glucocorticoid receptor gene, a critical component of stress regulation, were examined in whole blood from 56 children aged 11–14 years. Children exposed to physical maltreatment had greater methylation within exon 1F in the NR3C1 promoter region of the gene compared to nonmaltreated children, including the putative NGFI-A (nerve growth factor) binding site. These results highlight molecular mechanisms linking childhood stress with biological changes that may lead to mental and physical disorders.

Newborn infants orient preferentially toward face-like or "protoface" stimuli and recent studies suggest similar reflexive orienting responses in adults. Little is known, however, about the operation of this mechanism in childhood. An attentional-cueing procedure was therefore developed to investigate protoface orienting in early childhood. Consistent with the extant literature, 5- to 6-year-old children (n = 25) exhibited orienting toward face-like stimuli; they responded faster when target location was cued by the appearance of a protoface stimulus than when location was cued by matched control patterns. The potential of this procedure to investigate the development of typical and atypical social perception is discussed.

This study investigated maternal prenatal docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) intake and infant cognitive development at 22 months. Estimates for second- and third-trimester maternal DHA intake levels were obtained using a comprehensive Food Frequency Questionnaire. Infants (n = 67) were assessed at 22 months on a novel object search task. Mothers' DHA intake levels were divided into high or low groups, with analyses revealing a significant positive effect of third-trimester DHA on object search task performance. The third trimester appears to be a critical time for ensuring adequate maternal DHA levels to facilitate optimum cognitive development in late infancy.