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Scientific theories differ in their ultimate and proximate explanations (Mayr, 1961; Tadinac, 2020; Tinbergen, 1963). Ultimate explanations are functional--concerned with the evolutionary origins and survival value over generations of some [...], Two theories of the attachment behavior system are reviewed in terms of the evolutionary and organismic mechanisms they propose. The life history theory of attachment (LHTA) maintains that the system is an evolved module comprised of adaptive strategies--the organized attachment patterns (secure, insecure-anxious, and insecure-avoidant). These manifest in early childhood depending on the harshness and unpredictability of caretaking environment. The more recently proposed biobehavioral-cultural model of attachment (BCMA) challenges the modularity claim. It suggests that the attachment system is responsive to reward uncertainty in a manner consistent with schedule-induced behavior--a behavior class subcortically mediated with evolutionary origins in foraging. New ideas are proposed for understanding attachment patterns within the context of verbal behavior development. Keywords Attachment * Evolution * Culture * Reinforcement schedules

We investigated the role of sociocultural (between-groups) and individual (within-group) factors on the development of preschoolers' resource-allocation preferences. We tested claims of the "joint impact hypothesis" of social values development that social-emotional understanding skills would predict the transition from simpler (individualistic allocations) to more complex (cooperative, competitive allocations) social values and that cultural background would determine which values emerged. American children ages 37-67 months from Spanish-speaking Latino (n = 134), English-speaking Latino (n = 50), and English-speaking Caucasian (n = 98) backgrounds twice completed a resource-allocation task and a social-emotional understanding assessment, separated by 6 months. Contrary to predictions, results revealed that for no group were complex choice allocations more common at Time 2 than at Time 1. Moreover, for the Caucasian group, social-emotional understanding did not predict time-dependent choice allocation behavior. For Latinos, however, results revealed differential social values development according to language background. For Spanish-speaking Latinos, higher social-emotional understanding scores predicted emergent cooperative choices, and for English-speaking Latinos, higher scores predicted emergent competitive choices. Findings are consistent with differential socialization wherein social-emotional understanding skills facilitate the development of culturally mainstream values for more acculturated Latinos and ethnic cultural values for less acculturated Latinos.

A 9-year-old clinic-referred boy, his mother, and his teacher were observed in 38 home and 38 school sessions on the same days. Categories of the boy's oppositional behavior and the inappropriate social attention of his mother and teacher were graphed to visually inspect changes during baseline, a parent-training phase, a follow-up phase, and a final parent-training booster phase. Parent-training phases produced reductions in the mother's inappropriate attention and in the boy's oppositional behavior, whereas the follow-up and baseline phases were associated with higher rates of these categories. Generalization occurred in the school across these home phases, as seen in the increase in rates of the boy's problem behavior, despite the lack of change in his teacher's attention. Correlational analyses of proportion scores reflecting the boy's home-school oppositional behavior and mother-teacher social attention suggested his responsiveness to relative changes in adult social contingencies across settings.

The authors explored predictions from basic emotion theory (BET) that facial emotion expression recognition skills are insular with respect to their own development, and yet foundational to the development of emotional perspective-taking skills. Participants included 417 preschool children for whom estimates of these 2 emotion understanding variables and receptive language skills were obtained at 2 time points, separated by 24 weeks. Path results for autoregressive cross-lagged structural equation models revealed support for the BET predictions for younger preschoolers (ages 36 to 48 months). In contrast, results for older preschoolers (ages 49 to 67 months) revealed bidirectional influences between receptive language and emotion understanding consistent with constructionist theories of emotion. Findings support a hybrid model in which associations between receptive language and emotion understanding skills are initially nonsignificant and become significant over time. The implications of emotion expression recognition as an early toehold for the development of more advanced emotion understanding skills are discussed.

The present study utilized meta-analytic procedures to estimate the diagnostic validity of instruments used to screen young children, ages 1.5-5 years, for autism. Five scales met inclusion criteria, and data from 18 studies contributed the meta-analysis. Results revealed that 4 of 5 scales met criteria for "good" validity, including two broad band scales (instruments not restricted to screening for autism). The current results suggest that validity differences might be a function of how instruments sample across the DSM content domains. Specifically, high validity instruments included a higher proportion of items assessing social interaction skills. The availability of valid broad- and narrow-band instruments, as well as implications for constructing future screening instruments, is discussed.

Research Findings: The present study evaluated the utility of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) as a teacher-report measure of internalizing and externalizing problems in preschool-age children. Participants included preschoolers drawn from Germany and the United States, with the American sample composed of both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking children. In some respects the SDQ demonstrated adequate reliability and validity across these 3 culturally and linguistically divergent samples, but some problems were noted with the internal consistency of the subscales and the clinical cutoff scores. Practice or Policy: The findings generally support the potential usefulness of the SDQ as a psychopathology screening instrument within culturally and linguistically diverse preschool settings. However, normative studies need to be conducted with preschool samples so that the SDQ cutoff scores used to identify clinically significant emotional and behavioral problems can be appropriately adjusted for age, gender, and culture. (Contains 8 tables.)

The present study utilized a short-term longitudinal research design to model the relationship between shyness-anxiousness and receptive language skills. Hypotheses regarding the direction of the causal relationship, mediation, and moderation were evaluated. Subjects included 340 Head Start attendees from primarily English- and Spanish-speaking homes. Results suggest that a unidirectional relationship between shyness-anxiousness and receptive language skills emerges in preschool. Shyness-anxiousness impacted receptive language skills and this relationship was mediated by communication competence. Neither gender nor native language moderated the indirect relationship from shyness-anxiousness to receptive language through communication competence. These results are discussed with respect to elucidating the nature of the bidirectional relationship between shyness-anxiousness and language skills and identifying intervention targets to improve language outcomes for shy-anxious preschoolers. (Contains 2 figures and 2 tables.)

The present study utilized a quasi-experimental design to investigate the effects of a data dissemination strategy on the development of letter naming and object counting skills in preschoolers. The intervention involved the repeated assessment of these skills and a framework for how the resulting data were made available to teachers. The framework highlights: (a) limiting data collection to performance assessments of variables under teacher control, (b) frequent assessment of these variables, (c) graphic display of data and (d) presentation of data in peer-group workshops. The intervention resulted in improved performance on both outcome variables relative to a no treatment control group and a phonics control group. In addition, teaching behaviors were observed to occur during the intervention that predicted child academic outcomes. Discussion is focused on how non-directive data management strategies may improve teacher adherence to evidence-based practices and child academic outcomes.

In this article, I argue that a class of religious behaviors exists that is induced, for prepared organisms, by specific stimuli that are experienced according to a response-independent schedule. Like other schedule-induced behaviors, the members of this class serve as minimal units out of which functional behavior may arise. In this way, there exist two classes of religious behavior: nonoperant schedule-induced behaviors and operant behaviors. This dichotomy is consistent with the distinction insisted upon by religious scholars and philosophers between "graceful" and "effortful" religious behaviors. Embracing the distinction allows an explanation of many aspects of religious experience and behavior that have been overlooked or disregarded by other scientific approaches to religion. (Contains 2 footnotes.)

The present study utilized a short-term longitudinal research design to examine the hypothesis that shyness in preschoolers is differentially related to different aspects of emotion processing. Using teacher reports of shyness and performance measures of emotion processing, including (1) facial emotion recognition, (2) non-facial emotion recognition, and (3) emotional perspective-taking, we examined 337 Head Start attendees twice at a 24-week interval. Results revealed significant concurrent and longitudinal relationships between shyness and facial emotion recognition, and either minimal or non-existent relationships between shyness and the other aspects of emotion processing. Correlational analyses of concurrent assessments revealed that shyness predicted poorer facial emotion recognition scores for negative emotions (sad, angry, and afraid), but not a positive emotion (happy). Analyses of change over time, on the other hand, revealed that shyness predicted change in facial emotion recognition scores for all four measured emotions. Facial emotion recognition scores did not predict changes in shyness. Results are discussed with respect to expanding the scope of research on shyness and emotion processing to include time-dependent studies that allow for the specification of developmental processes. (Contains 4 tables.)

Assessment within the fields of early childhood education and early childhood intervention is guided by the "deductive-psychometric model", which is a framework for legitimizing constructs that arise from theories. An alternative approach, termed the "inductive-experimental model", places significantly more restrictions on what constitutes a legitimate construct. In this paper, the utility of these two assessment models, one more generative and one more restrictive, are evaluated within the context of a Head Start setting. Given the pragmatic goal of informing instruction, we argue for the superiority of the more restrictive approach. Implications for early childhood intervention are also discussed.

The middle school version of the Washington Assessment of Risks and Needs of Students (msWARNS) is a self-report instrument designed for use by school personnel to identify barriers to school attendance and school success for sixth- to eighth-grade students. It measures six domains relevant to improving school outcomes that include aggression-defiance, depression-anxiety, substance use, peer deviance, home environment, and school engagement. In the present study, a bifactor S − 1 model, for which the aggression-defiance domain was the reference factor for the general factor and the other domains constituted the subfactors, had good fit and better fit than several other alternative models. Results of multigroup confirmatory factor analysis revealed invariance across different groups defined by gender and race/ethnicity (Native American, African American, Hispanic, and White), with a sample of referred middle school students (N = 2,356; ages 10–15 years). Reliability analyses support the use of the general factor to guide decision-making, the reliable use of the depression-anxiety factor for providing additional insights, and the remaining factors for guiding communication, as part of an assessment and intervention program for middle school students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study applied taxometric analyses to the Washington Assessment of Risks and Needs of Students (WARNS)—an instrument designed to assess multiple domains of functioning related to justice system involvement arising from school disengagement—a trajectory referred to as the school to prison pipeline. Previous taxometric studies of constructs related to juvenile justice system involvement found dimensional rather than taxonic (dichotomous) latent structures. Participants were 5008 students from 89 Washington school districts who completed the WARNS as part of standard educational practices. The results were uniformly consistent with a dimensional latent structure. Also supporting a dimensional latent structure, dichotomized WARNS scores were significantly less strongly associated with student arrests, school suspensions, and school skip days than continuous WARNS scores. These findings support the dimensionality of risk and needs and have implications for assessments undertaken to improve school and social outcomes for at-risk youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Washington Assessment of Risks and Needs of Students is a youth self-report screening instrument developed for use by high school and juvenile court personnel faced with the legal and practical challenges of high truancy and dropout rates. It purports to measure six facets of risks and needs of youth relevant to improving school outcomes. In this study, a bifactor model measuring a general factor and six specific factors was examined for fit and invariance across different groups defined by sex and race/ethnicity, with a sample of court-petitioned high school students (N = 937; ages 13-17 years). The results of multigroup confirmatory factor analysis revealed an essentially invariant bifactor structure across the groups. Further analysis of reliability support the use of the general factor to guide decision making for youth at risk for truancy and school failure, and scores deriving from the six specific factors as providing insight on specific areas of risk and need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Washington state requires school districts to file court petitions on students with excessive unexcused absences resulting in thousands of youth becoming involved in the court system. Once in the system, decisions are made about the level of risk each youth has for maladaptive behaviors. The Washington Assessment of the Risks and Needs of Students was created to assist youth service providers, courts, and schools to identify an adolescent’s needs for social, emotional, or educational intervention. However, the profile-based decisions advocated for by test developers lack empirical justification. This study employed latent profile analysis to examine risk and needs profiles of adolescents based on the Washington Assessment of the Risks and Needs of Students assessment. Profiles were developed to aid understanding of behaviors associated with school truancy, and examined across outcome variables (e.g., suspensions, arrests) to evaluate evidence in support of predictive claims. Results suggest distinct profiles that differ on important outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]