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Whereas previous research has examined the role that parenting and home environments play in explaining the relation between family socioeconomic status and children's language development in the United States, relatively little is known about the associations between these constructs in other cultures. This study tested an integrated model of language development within a longitudinal data set of 1,894 socioeconomically diverse Korean children (48.35% girls;99% native-born Korean citizens) from the first year of life (age 3-8 months) to ages 3 and 6 years. A model integrating parent and environmental characteristics from the family stress model and the family investment model that also included maternal self-efficacy and knowledge of child development was shown to adequately explain the associations between family socioeconomic status and children's language development. Implications for applying similar integrated models in international contexts are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The rise of multi-site, field-based trials in early childhood research coupled with advances in statistics offer an unprecedented opportunity to understand how context affects children's wellbeing. In the current study, we chart our journey in exploring heterogeneity in the treatment effects of an existing large-scale evaluation to provide guidance for early childhood researchers interested in studying treatment impact variation. To do so, we employ data from a professional development intervention implemented in early childhood education programs across 9 U.S. cities. We generate three broad lessons on the challenges and opportunities in examining treatment impacts across sites. First, we find that using the right statistical approach – namely fixed intercepts, random coefficient (FIRC) modeling – is critical for generating accurate estimates of cross-site variation. Second, we find that measures that traditionally have been associated with average treatment effects (e.g., program dosage) can be used to predict treatment impact. Third, we acknowledge trade-offs in statistical power for detecting average treatment effects versus treatment impact variation and discuss the implications of these trade-offs for the future design of early childhood evaluations. Findings are discussed in terms of how treatment impact variation has the potential to advance early childhood research.

ImportanceApproximately 1 in 4 women experience intimate partner violence (IPV) or nonpartner sexual violence during their lifetime. Mothers exposed to IPV are more likely to experience depressive symptoms and to discipline their children harshly, which may affect their children’s socioemotional development; however, there is limited evidence on these outcomes.ObjectiveTo examine the association between IPV, maternal depressive symptoms, harsh child discipline, and child stimulation with child socioemotional development.Design, Setting, and ParticipantsThis study used cross-sectional follow-up data collected from February 19 to October 10, 2014, from a birth cohort of children aged 18 to 36 months who were enrolled in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of neonatal vitamin A supplementation in the Morogoro region of Tanzania. Data analysis occurred between September 10, 2019, and January 20, 2020.ExposuresLifetime experience of IPV was assessed using an abbreviated module of the Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey, maternal depressive symptoms were assessed with the Patient Health Questionnaire, and data on harsh child discipline and maternal stimulation of their children were collected using modules of the United Nations Children's Fund Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey.Main Outcomes and MeasuresChild socioemotional development was measured by the Caregiver-Reported Early Childhood Development Instruments.ResultsA total of 981 mother-child dyads were included in the analytic sample; 388 children (39.6%) were between ages 18 and 24 (mean [SD] age, 27.06 [6.08]) months, and 515 (52.5%) were male children. A negative association was observed between maternal report of physical IPV only (mean difference, −0.022; 95% CI, −0.045 to −0.006) and physical and sexual IPV (mean difference, −0.045; 95% CI, −0.077 to −0.013) with child socioemotional scores, but neither was statistically significant after including depressive symptoms in the model, which is consistent with mediation. Furthermore, a negative association was observed between maternal mild to severe depressive symptoms and child socioemotional development, including adjustment for IPV (mean difference, −0.073; 95% CI, −0.103 to −0.043). Harsh disciplinary practices and stimulation were not associated with child socioemotional development after adjusting for IPV, maternal depressive symptoms, and other factors.Conclusions and RelevanceThe findings of this study suggest that maternal depressive symptoms may explain the negative association between IPV and child socioemotional development.

Observational data collected prior to the pandemic (between 2004 and 2019) were used to simulate the potential consequences of early childhood care and education (ECCE) service closures on the estimated 167 million preprimary‐age children in 196 countries who lost ECCE access between March 2020 and February 2021. COVID‐19‐related ECCE disruptions were estimated to result in 19.01 billion person‐days of ECCE instruction lost, 10.75 million additional children falling “off track” in their early development, 14.18 million grades of learning lost by adolescence, and a present discounted value of USD 308.02 billion of earnings lost in adulthood. Further burdens associated with ongoing closures were also forecasted. Projected developmental and learning losses were concentrated in low‐ and lower middle‐income countries, likely exacerbating long‐standing global inequities.

Despite global demand, the large-scale effects of social-emotional learning (SEL) programming in developing countries remain underexplored. Using a randomized control trial, this study examined the effectiveness of a school-wide SEL intervention-Programa Compasso (PC)-among 3,018 sociodemographically diverse, Portuguese-speaking children (Mage = 9.85 years) attending 90 public primary schools across Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2017. Average impacts of PC on children's executive function, emotion knowledge, and behavior problems after one school year were null. Moderation analyses did, however, reveal evidence for positive impacts of PC on children's labeling of emotional expressions and inhibitory control within low-homicide communities (d = 0.15 SDs), and null effects on these same outcomes in high-violence areas. Implementation and cultural considerations are discussed.

The Caregiver Reported Early Development Instruments (CREDI) are assessments tools for measuring the development of children under age three in global contexts. The present study describes the construction and psychometric properties of the motor, cognitive, language, and socio-emotional subscales from the CREDI’s long form. Multidimensional item factor analysis was employed, allowing indicators of child development to simultaneously load onto multiple factors representing distinct developmental domains. A total of 14,113 caregiver reports representing 17 low-, middle-, and high-income countries were analyzed. Criterion-related validity of the constructed subscales was tested in a subset of participants using data from previously established instruments, anthropometric data, and a measure of child stimulation. We also report internal-consistency reliability and test–retest reliability statistics. Results from our analysis suggest that the CREDI subscales display adequate reliability for population-level measurement, as well as evidence of validity.

Reflecting a burgeoning political interest in supporting young children around the world, global demand for reliable, valid, and scalable assessments of early childhood development (ECD) is on the rise. One of the more popular sets of tools for measuring the ECD of children under age 3 is the Caregiver Reported Early Development Instruments (CREDI), which includes both a long form for research and evaluation and a short form for population-level monitoring. In this commentary, we describe the goals and limitations of the CREDI, research to support its use as a population-level ECD instrument, as well as the major gaps in its evidence base. We also discuss how the work of Alderman and colleagues (in this issue) addresses some of these outstanding gaps, highlighting several critical areas for future research.

Mediation has played a critical role in developmental theory and research. Yet, developmentalists rarely discuss the methodological challenges of establishing causality in mediation analysis or potential strategies to improve the identification of causal mediation effects. In this article, we discuss the potential outcomes framework from statistics as a means for highlighting several fundamental challenges of establishing causality in mediation analysis, including the difficulty of meeting the key assumption of sequential ignorability, even in experimental studies. We argue that this framework—which, although commonplace in other fields, has not yet been taken up in developmental science—can inform solutions to these challenges. Based on the framework, we offer a series of recommendations for improving causal inference in mediation analysis, including an overview of best practices in both study design and analysis, as well as resources for conducting analysis. In doing so, our overall objective in this article is to support the use of rigorous methods for understanding questions of mechanism in developmental science.

This study estimates the effect of physical punishment on the cognitive development of 1,167 low-income Colombian children (Mage = 17.8 months old) using 3 analytic strategies: lagged-dependent variables, a difference-in-differences-like approach (DD), and a novel strategy combining matching with a DD-like approach. Across approaches, physical punishment at ages 9-26 months predicted reductions in children's cognitive development of 0.08-0.21 SD at ages 27-46 months. These results, plus null results of falsification tests, strengthen the argument that physical punishment leads to slower cognitive growth and illustrate the utility of alternative statistical methods to reduce problems of selection bias in developmental research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Theoretical models assume that parental knowledge about child development and caregiving motivates parental stimulation, shaping child development. Evidence supporting these models is scarce in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This study tests the relations between maternal knowledge, stimulation, and child development in a Colombian sample of 1,277 low-income mothers and their children under the age of five. Mothers showed diverse knowledge about child development and caregiving. Moreover, maternal knowledge when children were 9-26 months old indirectly predicted growth in children's cognitive, receptive language, and gross motor skills at ages 27-46 months, partially through maternal engagement in stimulating activities with the child.

Prior work has conceptualized children's executive function and self-regulation skills as relatively stable across short periods of time. Grounded in long-standing contextual theories of human development, this study introduces a new observational tool for measuring children's regulatory skills across different naturally occurring situations within early childhood classrooms. Using 460 observations of 91 children (M age = 5.54 years) in 16 socio-demographically diverse Prekindergarten and Kindergarten classrooms, we found that this tool-the Regulation-Related Skills Measure (RRSM)-reliably captured observed dimensions of young children's attention control and inhibitory control, but failed to appropriately represent more "internal" regulatory processes (e.g., working memory). Associations between the RRSM and other measures of children's executive function and self-regulation (i.e., direct assessments, adult reports) were low to moderate (r = 0.03 to 0.44), suggesting these tools are likely to be complementary in that they provide overlapping but ultimately distinct information regarding children's regulatory performance. Finally, results suggested substantial within-child variation in regulatory behaviors across different situations within the classroom, with the same children demonstrating consistently stronger attention control and inhibitory control during transitions than during either teacher- or student-directed activities. These findings underscore the situationally-dependent nature of children's self-regulatory performance, with implications for both theory and practice. Future research is needed to replicate these findings in more diverse, representative samples of children.

Most research on reading acquisition is conducted in high-income countries, and the majority of the limited research from middle- and low-income countries focuses exclusively on school settings. We therefore know little about how home literacy environments (HLEs) relate to early reading skill acquisition in low-resource settings. This study uses baseline data from 18 Save the Children (SC) project sites across 14 countries in Central America, Asia, and Africa to address several questions. First, we examine the structure of HLE in the data set, with a particular focus on its relationship to socioeconomic status (SES). Second, we extend our measurement model to examine the relationship between HLE and early literacy skills across the sample of more than 14,000 first- and second-grade boys and girls (mean age: 8.4 years) from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. We conclude that SES, home reading behaviors, and home reading materials are separate, though related constructs, and that materials in the home are a moderately strong predictor of early reading in these contexts. Our findings indicate that studies investigating literacy environments in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) should clearly and distinctly conceptualize SES, literacy behaviors, and literacy materials. In addition, the robustness of the relationships between the presence of reading materials in the home and children’s early literacy skills suggests that increasing access to these materials may enhance skill development in low-resource contexts.

Children from low-income families often enter kindergarten academically behind their higher income peers. Recent findings also indicate gaps in social-emotional aspects of school readiness, raising...

• After decades of program implementation and evaluation, the early childhood education (ECE) field needs to move towards more effective and efficient strategies. One tool that has been developed to support this shift is theory of change (TOC). Though TOCs have been widely recognized for their potential utility, the extent to which they have been employed consistently in ECE research is unclear. In this paper, we draw upon a comprehensive, systematically developed archival database of high-quality ECE evaluations (N = 277) conducted over nearly five decades (1960–2007) to explore how the field has historically described and measured TOCs. We find that some components of TOCs have been used widely, and also that evaluators have increasingly measured implementation fidelity and standardization of program strategies over time. However, we additionally find that most ECE research has yet to move beyond the investigation of overall impacts towards more precise explanations of causal pathways. Instead, it remains common to focus on understanding whether a program is “effective” but relatively rare to explore how, why, for whom, and under what conditions an ECE program does or does not work.

Recent international development efforts have emphasized the importance of supporting early childhood development, yet little is known about the availability of early learning opportunities in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The present study uses nationally representative data from >163,000 three- and four-year-olds living in 63 countries to estimate the availability of in- and out-of-home early learning opportunities in LMICs. Results suggest that 71.9% of preschool-aged children experience high levels of at-home stimulation (e.g., reading, counting, drawing), 33.6% attend center-based early childhood care and education (ECCE) programming, 29.1% experience both, and 22.9% experience neither. Large geographical and socioeconomic disparities in learning opportunities were found both across and within countries, particularly for ECCE.

Although research has shown fade-out of the cognitive benefits of classroom-based preschool interventions, less is known regarding the durability of social-emotional impacts. This study examines the extent to which the multicomponent Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP) intervention lowered risk of internalizing, externalizing, attention, and social difficulties from Head Start through elementary school for 602 low-income children. Results suggest that most children in this sample showed few social-emotional difficulties over time. However, one quarter of the sample exhibited profiles of transitory or building difficulties over six years. Random assignment to the CSRP preschool intervention significantly reduced children's odds of transitory attention and social difficulties in middle childhood, with preliminary evidence suggesting stronger impacts for children attending elementary schools characterized by low academic rigor and high neighborhood crime. CSRP was not found to be effective in preventing more robust, increasing forms of difficulty in the externalizing and attention domains. Implications for early childhood intervention and policy are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Limited evidence describes promoting development and reducing violence in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), a missed opportunity to protect children and promote development and human capital. This study presents a systematic literature review of integrated early childhood development plus violence prevention (ECD+VP) interventions in LMICs. The search yielded 5,244 unique records, of which N = 6 studies met inclusion criteria. Interventions were in Chile, Jamaica, Lebanon, Mexico, Mozambique, and Turkey. Five interventions were parent education programs, including center-based sessions (n = 3) and home visiting (n = 2), while one intervention was a teacher education program. All but one study reported improvements in both child development and maltreatment outcomes. The dearth of evidence on ECD+VP interventions suggests additional research is needed. Integrated ECD+VP interventions may improve multiple child outcome domains while leveraging limited resources in LMICs.

Parental cognitive and socioemotional stimulation in early childhood is a strong predictor of children’s skill development and future life success. At the same time, little work has examined the effect of environmental risk factors on parents’ engagement in stimulation practices. The present study estimates the acute effect of geocoded community violent crime on 491 Colombian mothers’ reported engagement in stimulating activities with their children younger than five. We exploit naturalistic exogenous variation in the timing and location of a violence incident relative to a mothers’ participation in a household survey to identify internally valid estimates. Findings show that mothers reduced their engagement in stimulating activities, on average, by 0.23–0.30 SD following an incident of violent crime in their residential neighborhoods. The estimated effect was larger for mothers living in the poorest neighborhoods and for mothers exposed to domestic violence. Implications for research on the effects of violence on children and their caregivers as well as for interventions at different ecological levels are discussed.

Despite global interest in supporting and monitoring early childhood development (ECD), few valid and reliable tools exist for capturing ECD at scale across cultural contexts. This study describes the development and validation of the Caregiver Reported Early Development Instruments (CREDI) short form, a new tool for measuring the motor, cognitive, language, social–emotional, and mental health skills of children under age three in culturally diverse settings. Results from 8022 children living in 17 low-, middle-, and high-income countries suggest that the CREDI short form is valid, reliable, and acceptable for measuring population-level ECD. Data highlight differences in CREDI scores within and across countries based on maternal education, child nutritional status, and household stimulation practices. Implications for ECD policy and practice are described.

ObjectiveTo determine the magnitude of relationships of early life factors with child development in low/middle-income countries (LMICs).DesignMeta-analyses of standardised mean differences (SMDs) estimated from published and unpublished data.Data sourcesWe searched Medline, bibliographies of key articles and reviews, and grey literature to identify studies from LMICs that collected data on early life exposures and child development. The most recent search was done on 4 November 2014. We then invited the first authors of the publications and investigators of unpublished studies to participate in the study.Eligibility criteria for selecting studiesStudies that assessed at least one domain of child development in at least 100 children under 7 years of age and collected at least one early life factor of interest were included in the study.AnalysesLinear regression models were used to assess SMDs in child development by parental and child factors within each study. We then produced pooled estimates across studies using random effects meta-analyses.ResultsWe retrieved data from 21 studies including 20 882 children across 13 LMICs, to assess the associations of exposure to 14 major risk factors with child development. Children of mothers with secondary schooling had 0.14 SD (95% CI 0.05 to 0.25) higher cognitive scores compared with children whose mothers had primary education. Preterm birth was associated with 0.14 SD (–0.24 to –0.05) and 0.23 SD (–0.42 to –0.03) reductions in cognitive and motor scores, respectively. Maternal short stature, anaemia in infancy and lack of access to clean water and sanitation had significant negative associations with cognitive and motor development with effects ranging from −0.18 to −0.10 SDs.ConclusionsDifferential parental, environmental and nutritional factors contribute to disparities in child development across LMICs. Targeting these factors from prepregnancy through childhood may improve health and development of children.

Despite increased investment in early childhood care and education (ECCE) globally, little is known about its effectiveness in low-income countries. Using kernel exact matching within a national sample of 1,623 Zambian 6-year-olds, we test the associations between ECCE participation and seven domains of children's school readiness. We find ECCE participation to be significantly and positively predictive of children's receptive vocabulary, letter naming, reasoning, fine motor, executive function, and task performance skills (d = 0.20 − 0.65). Although ECCE predicted better outcomes across program types and dosage levels, associations between ECCE participation and school readiness were descriptively if not significantly larger for children attending nonprofit (versus governmental or private) programs and for those attending ECCE between three and five hours per day (versus those attending less than three or six or more hours per day). Implications of these findings, particularly for the 68% of Zamb...

While the importance of mothers’ education for children’s development has been well-established, little is known regarding the relative importance of maternal versus paternal education for supporting children’s early developmental outcomes in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Using data from 98,464 three- and four-year-old children in 44 LMICs, this study found robust associations between both parents’ education levels and children’s development scores. Parents’ provision of support for learning (i.e., books, stimulating interactions) was a key mechanism through which parental education relates to children’s development – with each parent’s education predicting both his or her own and his or her partner’s efforts to support children’s early learning. Support for learning served as a relatively stronger mechanism in middle-income countries than low-income countries.

Background: The growth of >300 million children

Recent research suggests that Head Start may be differentially effective in improving low-income children’s early language and literacy skills based on a number of individual- and family-level characteristics. Using data from the Head Start Impact Study (n = 3503; 50% male, 63% treatment group), the present study extends this work to consider program impact variation based on centers’ location in urban versus rural communities. Results indicate that Head Start is more effective in increasing children’s receptive vocabulary (as measured by the PPVT) in urban areas and their oral comprehension (as measured by the Woodcock-Johnson Oral Comprehension task) in rural areas. Additional analyses suggest that related characteristics of the center – including concentration of dual language learners and provision of transportation services – may underlie these associations. Implications for research on program evaluation and policy are discussed.

Governments in sub-Saharan Africa have made marked efforts to increase school enrollment. Yet attendance and completion rates remain low, particularly for girls. This study examines the reasons that school children do not attend school in a sample of Ghanaian students. Girls were more likely to miss school because a family member was sick, whereas boys were more likely to miss school due to work. Caregivers’ inability to pay school fees and belief that it is better to educate boys than girls were related to lower school attendance for girls but not for boys. Implications of the findings to inform efforts to improve educational access for all children are discussed.

Over the past decade, researchers have shown increased interest in examining the cognitive development of children in non-Western countries, often in connection with evaluations of health and educational interventions. However, many studies have used Western-developed measures without proper consideration of contextual validity. Across domains—from language to cognition to non-cognitive skills—this results in varying degrees of bias that call into question the findings of these studies. In this article, we focus in particular on the problem of differences in dimensionality perception between children in sub-Saharan Africa and those in Western countries. Although most Western children are exposed to extensive two-dimensional materials during early childhood, such as picture books and photographs, most rural African children are not. We therefore argue that assessments using two-dimensional stimuli, such as line drawings or patterns, may be inappropriate for capturing cognitive development in settings where such formats are unfamiliar to young children. We also discuss a modified assessment of non-verbal reasoning designed to be contextually appropriate for children in rural Africa—the Object-based Pattern Reasoning Assessment (OPRA). Created during a national study of pre-school child development in Zambia, this new assessment uses local materials such as beans and stones, requires little training to administer, and avoids potential instrument bias related to two-dimensionality among young children living in developing countries.

Past research suggests robust positive associations between household socioeconomic status and children's early cognitive development in Western countries. Relatively little is known about these relations in low-income country settings characterized by economic adversity, high prevalence of malnutrition and infectious disease, and relatively lower school enrollment. The present study develops and empirically evaluates an adapted model of early childhood development using a sample of 2,711 Zambian 6-year-olds. Early learning in and out of the home was found to explain much of the relation between socioeconomic status and children's cognitive skills, including language, nonverbal reasoning, and executive function. Child height-for-age (a proxy for overall nutritional status and health) was also predictive of children's cognitive skills and both early and on-time school enrollment. Implications for global child development, intervention, and future work are discussed.

Prior research has found that higher residential mobility is associated with increased risk for children’s academic and behavioral difficulty. In contrast, evaluations of experimental housing mobility interventions have shown moving from high poverty to low poverty neighborhoods to be beneficial for children’s outcomes. This study merges these disparate bodies of work by considering how poverty levels in origin and destination neighborhoods moderate the influence of residential mobility on 5th graders’ self-regulation. Using inverse probability weighting with propensity scores to minimize observable selection bias, this work found that experiencing a move during early or middle childhood was related to negative child outcomes (as indicated by increased behavioral and cognitive dysregulation measured via direct assessment and teacher-report) in 5th grade. However, these relationships were moderated by neighborhood poverty; moves out of low poverty and moves into high poverty neighborhoods were detrimental, while moves out of high poverty and moves into low poverty neighborhoods were beneficial.

The present longitudinal study tested the roles of early childhood executive control (EC) as well as exposure to poverty-related adversity at family and school levels as key predictors of low-income children’s EC in elementary school (n = 391). Findings suggest that children’s EC difficulties in preschool and lower family income from early to middle childhood are robust predictors of later EC difficulties as rated by teachers in second and third grades. Findings also suggest enrollment in unsafe elementary schools is significantly predictive of higher levels of teacher-rated EC difficulty, but only for those children who showed initially elevated levels of EC difficulty in early childhood. Implications for scientific models of cognitive development and poverty-related adversity are discussed.

Each year, thousands of American children are exposed to violence in their homes and communities. Although research in multiple fields has shown this violence to have severe and negative consequences for children's self-regulation, this work lacks a unified theoretical orientation that sufficiently captures the complexity of these relationships. Using a bioecological systems framework, the present article presents a multidimensional model of the relationship between children's exposure to violence and their self-regulatory development. Specifically, this model considers: (a) different dimensions of exposure (including chronicity, pervasiveness, and proximity); (b) child- and family-level mediating mechanisms (including biological stress-response systems and parenting); (c) the transactional, multidirectional nature of these relationships; and (d) the ways in which individual and environmental factors may contribute to multifinality. Finally, the present article also proposes a number of methodological and conceptual suggestions for strengthening future research in the area of violence, self-regulation, and psychosocial risk.

The present study examined the relationships between caregivers' self-reported positive and negative emotional expressiveness, observer assessments of children's emotion regulation, and teachers' reports of children's internalizing and externalizing behaviors in a sample of 97 primarily African American and Hispanic Head Start families. Results indicated that higher caregiver negativity and lower child emotion regulation independently predicted more internalizing behavior problems in children. Additionally, children's externalizing behavior problems were negatively predicted by caregivers' self-reports of positive emotional expressiveness. Importantly, results also suggested that caregivers' emotional expressiveness and children's behavioral problems may be non-linearly related, and that child gender may play an important moderating role. These results emphasize the importance of family emotional climate and child emotion regulation in the behavioral development of preschool-age children, and highlight the need for improved theoretical and practical understanding of socioemotional development in diverse populations.

The majority of evidence on the interplay between academic and non-academic skills comes from high-income countries. The aim of this study was to examine the bidirectional associations between Ghanaian children's executive function, social-emotional, literacy, and numeracy skills longitudinally. Children (N = 3,862; M age = 5.2 years at time 1) were assessed using direct assessment at three time points over the course of two school years. Controlling for earlier levels of the same skill, early executive function predicted higher subsequent literacy and numeracy skills, and early literacy and numeracy skills predicted higher subsequent executive function, indicating that the development of executive function and academic skills is inter-related and complementary over time. Early literacy and numeracy predicted subsequent social-emotional skills, but early social-emotional skills did not predict subsequent literacy and numeracy skills. The findings provide longitudinal evidence on children's learning and development in West Africa and contribute to a global understanding of the relations between various developmental skills over time.