Child Development, March/April 2015, Volume 86, Number 2, Pages 337–341
In This Issue
Infants: Hands and Feet Although many studies have explored face-processing abilities shortly after birth, little research has investigated how newborns process visual information related to other human body parts, such as hands. In their study of 30 Italian newborns (24– 48 hours old), Longhi et al. (p. 632) show that the infants orient more frequently and look longer at animation of a hand closing in a structurally impossible way than at animation of a hand closing in a structurally possible way. This preferential response vanishes when dynamic information is lacking. The findings indicate that newborns’ ability to recognize the body form is not confined to faces, but extends to other salient body parts, such as hands, when they’re in motion. By suggesting that newborns can detect and recognize the biomechanical properties of hand movements, the study points to such recognition as a possible building block of the emerging capability to understand others’ actions. Why does the newborn stepping pattern typically disappear within the first couple of months of life only to reappear shortly before the onset of upright walking? This question has interested researchers for decades because the disappearance of stepping is a clear and compelling example of the curious U-shaped trajectories that characterize the development of many early behaviors. In their study of about 40 French 2-month-olds, Barbu-Roth et al. (p. 441) show that stepping doesn’t disappear because the babies’ legs become too heavy to lift, as previously thought. Rather, stepping on a surface seems to disappear because babies’ flexor-tone bias at 2 months makes it difficult for them to extend their legs to support their body weight when they’re lowered onto the surface. The results raise questions about early opportunities to train leg extension in infants who are at risk of developing locomotor delays.
Child Maltreatment Children who are maltreated often have difficulties with cognitive skills, and emotional and behavioral well-being. Most research in this area has relied on administrative data from Child Protective Services.
Font and Berger (p. 536) looked at longitudinal data from a population-based group of almost 5,000 American children from relatively disadvantaged urban families and used two statistical approaches to examine associations of interest: the direction and magnitude of effects among children at ages 3, 5 and 9 years, and whether they varied by type of maltreatment. Findings: Early child maltreatment influenced later developmental outcomes, but early developmental characteristics also increased the likelihood that the children would be maltreated later. In identifying two-directional relations between children’s maltreatment and developmental outcomes, the study sheds light on the value of early intervention for mitigating the adverse effects of maltreatment.
Child Care: Effects of Family Income and Stress While losses in family income predict increases in behavior problems for many children, attending high-quality early childhood education and care centers offers some protection against families’ economic declines, according to a study out of Norway by Zachrisson and Dearing (p. 425). In Norway, publicly subsidized high-quality early childhood education and care is available to all children, from lowincome to affluent, starting at age 1. The researchers drew data from a longitudinal study of more than 75,000 children and their families who were assessed from birth through age 3. Their study finds that children who don’t take part in high-quality early childhood programs have more early behavior problems when their families’ income drops. Starting out-of-home child care can be challenging for children, requiring them to separate from parents for long periods, engage in new routines, and interact with new peers. Bernard, Peloso, Laurenceau, Zhang, and Dozier (p. 456) studied almost 170 American children from different racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds who ranged in age from 1 month to 8 years. They find that during a 10-week period of transition to new child care, chil© 2015 The Author Child Development © 2015 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved. 0009-3920/2015/8602-0001 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12373
338
In This Issue
dren’s cortisol rose from midmorning to afternoon when they were in child care, compared to declining across the day when they were at home. Cortisol helps maintain circadian patterns of daily activity and plays a role in response to stress. The pattern was most pronounced for the preschoolers and continued throughout the 10 weeks of the study rather than changing as the children acclimated to their surroundings. The findings suggest that child care elicited a rise in cortisol even months into the transition.
Memory in Preterm Babies Premature birth can harm brain development, especially the hippocampus, a region that’s essential for forming and retrieving contextual memories. In their study of about 30 German 8- to 10-year-olds (some of whom were born prematurely and some of whom were full term), Kipp et al. (p. 379) find that in children born prematurely, the hippocampus is smaller. These children also differ in subtle but important aspects of their memory—the ability to form and retrieve memories about context, such as what, when, and where something happened. This type of memory is important, but can be missed on the usual set of direct assessments. This study suggests that it may be valuable to find targeted ways to help strengthen this aspect of memory in children born preterm.
young children’s mental state ascription is more consistent than previously assumed. Preschoolers sing, dance, and generally perform a lot—in school, at home, in the back seat of the car, and at the grocery store—with relish and confidence. Yet in just a few years, these children will be pasted to the wall during a middle school dance. What robs older children, as well as adults, of the joy of performance? In their study of about 160 middle-class American children ages 3–12 from diverse backgrounds, Chaplin and Norton (p. 651) find that it’s the ability to understand others’ minds —and to understand that those others may not share your opinion of your skills—that makes children start to think they can’t dance. This improved theory of mind began at age 4 (long before children enter puberty). In forgoing such activities as singing, dancing, and performing, youth may be missing out on benefits for health and happiness. People often believe that significant life events happen for a deeper purpose—for example, to teach a lesson or send a sign. In experiments with about 150 American children ages 5–10 and about 100 American adults, Banerjee and Bloom (p. 503) explored the developmental origins of this common belief. They find that young children, like many adults, have a broad bias toward believing that everything happens for a reason. The researchers conclude that perceiving purpose in life events may therefore have its roots in childhood, is unrelated to exposure to religious ideas in childhood, and may reflect a general, early-emerging sensitivity to purpose in the social and natural worlds.
Belief Systems Recently, researchers have studied how children develop the capacity to ascribe subjective mental states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions to others and themselves. One essential property of such mental state is their so-called aspectuality: Our minds don’t represent all aspects of objects and situations, but only those aspects of which we’re aware. Why do children recognize this feature of mental states? Previous evidence has been mixed. In their study of about 120 German 3- to 6-yearolds from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds, Rakoczy, Bergfeld, Schwarz, and Fizke (p. 486) tested children with new, relatively simple tasks of belief ascription that required an understanding of aspectuality. Findings: Children understood aspectuality much earlier (around ages 4–5) than previous research indicated, and their performance correlated strongly with performance on standard tasks of belief ascription. The results suggest that
Emotional Expression The volitional regulation of expressing emotions— the ability to deliberately control one’s own emotional expressions—is a key aspect of children’s socio-emotional competence. Relevant motor and cognitive prerequisites of this ability include the deliberate simulation of emotional expressions and emotional understanding of the distinction between actually experienced emotion and expression. These abilities improve continuously from preschool to elementary school age, so you’d expect a continuous increase in the volitional regulation of expression that accompanies spontaneously elicited emotions, too, but research has not borne that out. In their study of about 100 German 4-, 6-, and 8-year-olds from middle-class families, Kromm, F€arber, and Holodynski (p. 579) find that children’s competence to deliberately regulate their
In This Issue
emotional expressions increases with age and it is positively associated with emotional understanding of how to distinguish between experienced emotion and expression.
Adolescents’ Socioemotional Development Many types of rule-breaking behaviors, such as vandalism, theft, alcohol and drug use, and other status offenses, become more prevalent during the teen years. Why are some teens at greater risk than others for breaking rules? Ettekal and Ladd (p. 614) examined how rule breaking develops in young American teens and the extent to which it results from children’s earlier behavioral dispositions, adverse peer environments, or both. They used data from a longitudinal project assessing almost 400 children from diverse ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds who were followed annually from kindergarten through eighth grade. For children with early behavioral problems, two types of adverse peer experiences—being persistently disliked by peers and having friends who engaged in antisocial behaviors—resulted in more rule breaking when they were teens. Among children who didn’t have early behavioral problems, being disliked by peers throughout childhood increased the likelihood of having deviant friends, which in turn resulted in more rule breaking. The findings can inform interventions that are developmentally appropriate and tailored to distinct risk factors associated with breaking rules. Gender identity was rated as more central to the self than racial identity in an all-Black, all-male school, according to Rogers, Scott, and Way (p. 407). In their study of about 180 primarily lowincome adolescent Black American boys (ages 13–16) who completed surveys three times between the start of ninth grade and the end of tenth grade, the researchers find that the boys defined themselves more readily in terms of gender than race, and they evaluated their gender identities more positively compared to race. In addition, their identities were interwoven and worked together, each one supporting the other over time. The findings highlight the flux and flexibility of adolescents’ identity over time, which may provide a window of opportunity for intervention and support. The results also shift attention from deficits and differences to strengths and processes, which is important for Black males who are often viewed as monolithic. For teenagers, learning to establish a healthy degree of autonomy and closeness in relationships
339
(rather than easily giving in to peer pressure) is an important task. In their longitudinal study, Oudekerk, Allen, Hessel, and Molloy (p. 472) find one reason adolescents struggle with balancing autonomy and closeness in relationships: parents’ psychological control. They looked at almost 190 ethnically and socioeconomically diverse American teens starting when they were 13 and continuing to age 21. Teens whose parents exerted more psychological control over them (e.g., using guilt, withdrawing love, fostering anxiety) when they were 13 had more problems establishing friendships and romantic relationships that balanced closeness and independence, both in adolescence and into early adulthood. The findings support a developmental cascade model, which suggests that when parents undermine youth’s development of healthy relationship skills, youth have difficulties navigating disagreements in future relationships.
Tools for Literacy Research has shown that early readers’ print knowledge, rapid naming, phonological awareness, vocabulary, and verbal memory predict reading and spelling abilities. Christopher et al. (p. 342) asked why these skills predict literacy. Using a longitudinal study of about 480 identical and fraternal twin pairs in the United States, they find that on their own, genetic influences on the five prereading skills were primarily responsible for the correlations with reading and spelling abilities at the end of first and fourth grades. However, fourth grade reading comprehension also had important shared environmental covariance with some of the prereading skills. Large portions of variance on the prereading skills were shared with the other prereading skills, with genetic factors accounting for about a quarter of that common variance. Genetic and shared environmental influences on the common prereading variance covaried with reading and spelling, as did genetic influences specific to print knowledge, rapid naming, and for fourth grade reading comprehension, verbal memory. The results have practical implications for providing children with tools for literacy.
Language Learning Infants are exposed to language largely through face-to-face interactions that provide acoustic and visual speech cues, but also through social cues that
340
In This Issue
can foster language learning. Although social information is thought to play a crucial role during infants’ attunement to native language, both audiovisual speech information and social information have received little attention in research on early language development. In their study of about 40 German 6-month-olds, Altvater-Mackensen and Grossman (p. 362) asked how the interactive behavior of mothers and infants influences audiovisual and auditory speech perception. They find that mothers’ and infants’ behavior modulated infants’ preference for matching audiovisual speech, but didn’t influence their sensitivity to sound contrasts in auditory speech perception. The findings suggest that mothers’ contingent responding, such as imitation and vocal play that mimics babbling, helps infants associate auditory and visual speech cues. Research has documented cognitive benefits associated with learning a second language or studying a musical instrument in childhood, but little is known about the nature of the mechanisms inducing the benefits and the persistence of these benefits over time. Moreno, Lee, Janus, and Bialystok (p. 394) investigated these questions in about 40 North American 4- to 6-year-olds who received either French or music training in two 1-hour sessions a day for a month. Through EEG, they find immediate effects on brain activity following each of the training periods as well as a sustained presence of these effects 1 year later. These results point to the brain plasticity induced by training and provide evidence for the lasting benefit of intervening early. Although bilingualism was once thought to harm children’s cognitive development and education by posing extra demands in the brain to use two languages instead of one, more recent evidence suggests exactly the opposite: that bilingualism helps children’s cognitive development by boosting their abilities to deal with conflict and difficult tasks. But what role is played by socioeconomic status (SES), which has long been thought to influence cognition? In their study comparing attention abilities of about 50 bilingual children with those of about 50 monolingual children, ages 6–12, all from Greece and all of low SES, Ladas, Carroll, and Vivas (p. 557) measured and controlled for children’s SES. The children performed equally in all the tasks, although the ability to resolve conflict was related to children’s level of bilingual experience. The results suggest that when SES is controlled, bilingualism doesn’t influence attention negatively or positively.
The Trajectory of Shyness Infants who frequently react to unfamiliar objects, people, and situations by becoming afraid and withdrawing are referred to as having a behaviorally inhibited temperament. As these infants grow up, many continue to be inhibited or reticent when they experience new things, including meeting new people. Inhibited children are more likely than their peers to develop anxiety problems, especially social anxiety, as they get older; social anxiety disorder is one of the most common psychiatric disorders among children and adolescents. In their longitudinal study of 165 European-American, middle- to upper-middle class adolescents (ages 14–17) who were recruited at 4 months, Lewis-Morrarty et al. (p. 598) find that behavioral inhibition that persists across early childhood is associated with social anxiety in adolescence, but only among youth who were insecurely attached to their parents as infants. The results can inform the prevention and treatment of adolescent social anxiety by identifying specific factors that increase risk for this outcome among children who are persistently shy.
Teens and Friendship Teens are well aware of the difference between “well-liked” and “popular” peers. Research indicates that low “likeability” predicts later engagement in health risk behaviors, such as substance use, but high “popularity” also may be a risk factor, particularly for behaviors that adolescents value as cool, such as alcohol use. Choukas-Bradley, Giletta, Neblett, and Prinstein (p. 519) examined whether popularity or likeability in ninth grade made it more likely that adolescents would use alcohol in high school for about 360 African-American, LatinoAmerican, and White low-income American teens. Findings: White and Latino teens who were popular in ninth grade showed steeper growth in drinking from ninth to twelfth grade than less popular peers; this wasn’t true for popular African American teens. Policymakers and those involved in prevention efforts may benefit from considering norms that are specific to ethnicity when they look at the value of alcohol use among different groups of teens. How much do friends influence youth’s wellbeing? Much research has considered the influence of peer networks on youth’s negative behaviors. Parker et al. (p. 642) looked at hopefulness; specifically, they used social network analysis to examine
Child Development, March/April 2015, Volume 86, Number 2, Pages 337–341
In This Issue
Infants: Hands and Feet Although many studies have explored face-processing abilities shortly after birth, little research has investigated how newborns process visual information related to other human body parts, such as hands. In their study of 30 Italian newborns (24– 48 hours old), Longhi et al. (p. 632) show that the infants orient more frequently and look longer at animation of a hand closing in a structurally impossible way than at animation of a hand closing in a structurally possible way. This preferential response vanishes when dynamic information is lacking. The findings indicate that newborns’ ability to recognize the body form is not confined to faces, but extends to other salient body parts, such as hands, when they’re in motion. By suggesting that newborns can detect and recognize the biomechanical properties of hand movements, the study points to such recognition as a possible building block of the emerging capability to understand others’ actions. Why does the newborn stepping pattern typically disappear within the first couple of months of life only to reappear shortly before the onset of upright walking? This question has interested researchers for decades because the disappearance of stepping is a clear and compelling example of the curious U-shaped trajectories that characterize the development of many early behaviors. In their study of about 40 French 2-month-olds, Barbu-Roth et al. (p. 441) show that stepping doesn’t disappear because the babies’ legs become too heavy to lift, as previously thought. Rather, stepping on a surface seems to disappear because babies’ flexor-tone bias at 2 months makes it difficult for them to extend their legs to support their body weight when they’re lowered onto the surface. The results raise questions about early opportunities to train leg extension in infants who are at risk of developing locomotor delays.
Child Maltreatment Children who are maltreated often have difficulties with cognitive skills, and emotional and behavioral well-being. Most research in this area has relied on administrative data from Child Protective Services.
Font and Berger (p. 536) looked at longitudinal data from a population-based group of almost 5,000 American children from relatively disadvantaged urban families and used two statistical approaches to examine associations of interest: the direction and magnitude of effects among children at ages 3, 5 and 9 years, and whether they varied by type of maltreatment. Findings: Early child maltreatment influenced later developmental outcomes, but early developmental characteristics also increased the likelihood that the children would be maltreated later. In identifying two-directional relations between children’s maltreatment and developmental outcomes, the study sheds light on the value of early intervention for mitigating the adverse effects of maltreatment.
Child Care: Effects of Family Income and Stress While losses in family income predict increases in behavior problems for many children, attending high-quality early childhood education and care centers offers some protection against families’ economic declines, according to a study out of Norway by Zachrisson and Dearing (p. 425). In Norway, publicly subsidized high-quality early childhood education and care is available to all children, from lowincome to affluent, starting at age 1. The researchers drew data from a longitudinal study of more than 75,000 children and their families who were assessed from birth through age 3. Their study finds that children who don’t take part in high-quality early childhood programs have more early behavior problems when their families’ income drops. Starting out-of-home child care can be challenging for children, requiring them to separate from parents for long periods, engage in new routines, and interact with new peers. Bernard, Peloso, Laurenceau, Zhang, and Dozier (p. 456) studied almost 170 American children from different racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds who ranged in age from 1 month to 8 years. They find that during a 10-week period of transition to new child care, chil© 2015 The Author Child Development © 2015 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved. 0009-3920/2015/8602-0001 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12373
In This Issue
Infants: Hands and Feet Although many studies have explored face-processing abilities shortly after birth, little research has investigated how newborns process visual information related to other human body parts, such as hands. In their study of 30 Italian newborns (24– 48 hours old), Longhi et al. (p. 632) show that the infants orient more frequently and look longer at animation of a hand closing in a structurally impossible way than at animation of a hand closing in a structurally possible way. This preferential response vanishes when dynamic information is lacking. The findings indicate that newborns’ ability to recognize the body form is not confined to faces, but extends to other salient body parts, such as hands, when they’re in motion. By suggesting that newborns can detect and recognize the biomechanical properties of hand movements, the study points to such recognition as a possible building block of the emerging capability to understand others’ actions. Why does the newborn stepping pattern typically disappear within the first couple of months of life only to reappear shortly before the onset of upright walking? This question has interested researchers for decades because the disappearance of stepping is a clear and compelling example of the curious U-shaped trajectories that characterize the development of many early behaviors. In their study of about 40 French 2-month-olds, Barbu-Roth et al. (p. 441) show that stepping doesn’t disappear because the babies’ legs become too heavy to lift, as previously thought. Rather, stepping on a surface seems to disappear because babies’ flexor-tone bias at 2 months makes it difficult for them to extend their legs to support their body weight when they’re lowered onto the surface. The results raise questions about early opportunities to train leg extension in infants who are at risk of developing locomotor delays.
Child Maltreatment Children who are maltreated often have difficulties with cognitive skills, and emotional and behavioral well-being. Most research in this area has relied on administrative data from Child Protective Services.
Font and Berger (p. 536) looked at longitudinal data from a population-based group of almost 5,000 American children from relatively disadvantaged urban families and used two statistical approaches to examine associations of interest: the direction and magnitude of effects among children at ages 3, 5 and 9 years, and whether they varied by type of maltreatment. Findings: Early child maltreatment influenced later developmental outcomes, but early developmental characteristics also increased the likelihood that the children would be maltreated later. In identifying two-directional relations between children’s maltreatment and developmental outcomes, the study sheds light on the value of early intervention for mitigating the adverse effects of maltreatment.
Child Care: Effects of Family Income and Stress While losses in family income predict increases in behavior problems for many children, attending high-quality early childhood education and care centers offers some protection against families’ economic declines, according to a study out of Norway by Zachrisson and Dearing (p. 425). In Norway, publicly subsidized high-quality early childhood education and care is available to all children, from lowincome to affluent, starting at age 1. The researchers drew data from a longitudinal study of more than 75,000 children and their families who were assessed from birth through age 3. Their study finds that children who don’t take part in high-quality early childhood programs have more early behavior problems when their families’ income drops. Starting out-of-home child care can be challenging for children, requiring them to separate from parents for long periods, engage in new routines, and interact with new peers. Bernard, Peloso, Laurenceau, Zhang, and Dozier (p. 456) studied almost 170 American children from different racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds who ranged in age from 1 month to 8 years. They find that during a 10-week period of transition to new child care, chil© 2015 The Author Child Development © 2015 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved. 0009-3920/2015/8602-0001 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12373
338
In This Issue
dren’s cortisol rose from midmorning to afternoon when they were in child care, compared to declining across the day when they were at home. Cortisol helps maintain circadian patterns of daily activity and plays a role in response to stress. The pattern was most pronounced for the preschoolers and continued throughout the 10 weeks of the study rather than changing as the children acclimated to their surroundings. The findings suggest that child care elicited a rise in cortisol even months into the transition.
Memory in Preterm Babies Premature birth can harm brain development, especially the hippocampus, a region that’s essential for forming and retrieving contextual memories. In their study of about 30 German 8- to 10-year-olds (some of whom were born prematurely and some of whom were full term), Kipp et al. (p. 379) find that in children born prematurely, the hippocampus is smaller. These children also differ in subtle but important aspects of their memory—the ability to form and retrieve memories about context, such as what, when, and where something happened. This type of memory is important, but can be missed on the usual set of direct assessments. This study suggests that it may be valuable to find targeted ways to help strengthen this aspect of memory in children born preterm.
young children’s mental state ascription is more consistent than previously assumed. Preschoolers sing, dance, and generally perform a lot—in school, at home, in the back seat of the car, and at the grocery store—with relish and confidence. Yet in just a few years, these children will be pasted to the wall during a middle school dance. What robs older children, as well as adults, of the joy of performance? In their study of about 160 middle-class American children ages 3–12 from diverse backgrounds, Chaplin and Norton (p. 651) find that it’s the ability to understand others’ minds —and to understand that those others may not share your opinion of your skills—that makes children start to think they can’t dance. This improved theory of mind began at age 4 (long before children enter puberty). In forgoing such activities as singing, dancing, and performing, youth may be missing out on benefits for health and happiness. People often believe that significant life events happen for a deeper purpose—for example, to teach a lesson or send a sign. In experiments with about 150 American children ages 5–10 and about 100 American adults, Banerjee and Bloom (p. 503) explored the developmental origins of this common belief. They find that young children, like many adults, have a broad bias toward believing that everything happens for a reason. The researchers conclude that perceiving purpose in life events may therefore have its roots in childhood, is unrelated to exposure to religious ideas in childhood, and may reflect a general, early-emerging sensitivity to purpose in the social and natural worlds.
Belief Systems Recently, researchers have studied how children develop the capacity to ascribe subjective mental states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions to others and themselves. One essential property of such mental state is their so-called aspectuality: Our minds don’t represent all aspects of objects and situations, but only those aspects of which we’re aware. Why do children recognize this feature of mental states? Previous evidence has been mixed. In their study of about 120 German 3- to 6-yearolds from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds, Rakoczy, Bergfeld, Schwarz, and Fizke (p. 486) tested children with new, relatively simple tasks of belief ascription that required an understanding of aspectuality. Findings: Children understood aspectuality much earlier (around ages 4–5) than previous research indicated, and their performance correlated strongly with performance on standard tasks of belief ascription. The results suggest that
Emotional Expression The volitional regulation of expressing emotions— the ability to deliberately control one’s own emotional expressions—is a key aspect of children’s socio-emotional competence. Relevant motor and cognitive prerequisites of this ability include the deliberate simulation of emotional expressions and emotional understanding of the distinction between actually experienced emotion and expression. These abilities improve continuously from preschool to elementary school age, so you’d expect a continuous increase in the volitional regulation of expression that accompanies spontaneously elicited emotions, too, but research has not borne that out. In their study of about 100 German 4-, 6-, and 8-year-olds from middle-class families, Kromm, F€arber, and Holodynski (p. 579) find that children’s competence to deliberately regulate their
In This Issue
emotional expressions increases with age and it is positively associated with emotional understanding of how to distinguish between experienced emotion and expression.
Adolescents’ Socioemotional Development Many types of rule-breaking behaviors, such as vandalism, theft, alcohol and drug use, and other status offenses, become more prevalent during the teen years. Why are some teens at greater risk than others for breaking rules? Ettekal and Ladd (p. 614) examined how rule breaking develops in young American teens and the extent to which it results from children’s earlier behavioral dispositions, adverse peer environments, or both. They used data from a longitudinal project assessing almost 400 children from diverse ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds who were followed annually from kindergarten through eighth grade. For children with early behavioral problems, two types of adverse peer experiences—being persistently disliked by peers and having friends who engaged in antisocial behaviors—resulted in more rule breaking when they were teens. Among children who didn’t have early behavioral problems, being disliked by peers throughout childhood increased the likelihood of having deviant friends, which in turn resulted in more rule breaking. The findings can inform interventions that are developmentally appropriate and tailored to distinct risk factors associated with breaking rules. Gender identity was rated as more central to the self than racial identity in an all-Black, all-male school, according to Rogers, Scott, and Way (p. 407). In their study of about 180 primarily lowincome adolescent Black American boys (ages 13–16) who completed surveys three times between the start of ninth grade and the end of tenth grade, the researchers find that the boys defined themselves more readily in terms of gender than race, and they evaluated their gender identities more positively compared to race. In addition, their identities were interwoven and worked together, each one supporting the other over time. The findings highlight the flux and flexibility of adolescents’ identity over time, which may provide a window of opportunity for intervention and support. The results also shift attention from deficits and differences to strengths and processes, which is important for Black males who are often viewed as monolithic. For teenagers, learning to establish a healthy degree of autonomy and closeness in relationships
339
(rather than easily giving in to peer pressure) is an important task. In their longitudinal study, Oudekerk, Allen, Hessel, and Molloy (p. 472) find one reason adolescents struggle with balancing autonomy and closeness in relationships: parents’ psychological control. They looked at almost 190 ethnically and socioeconomically diverse American teens starting when they were 13 and continuing to age 21. Teens whose parents exerted more psychological control over them (e.g., using guilt, withdrawing love, fostering anxiety) when they were 13 had more problems establishing friendships and romantic relationships that balanced closeness and independence, both in adolescence and into early adulthood. The findings support a developmental cascade model, which suggests that when parents undermine youth’s development of healthy relationship skills, youth have difficulties navigating disagreements in future relationships.
Tools for Literacy Research has shown that early readers’ print knowledge, rapid naming, phonological awareness, vocabulary, and verbal memory predict reading and spelling abilities. Christopher et al. (p. 342) asked why these skills predict literacy. Using a longitudinal study of about 480 identical and fraternal twin pairs in the United States, they find that on their own, genetic influences on the five prereading skills were primarily responsible for the correlations with reading and spelling abilities at the end of first and fourth grades. However, fourth grade reading comprehension also had important shared environmental covariance with some of the prereading skills. Large portions of variance on the prereading skills were shared with the other prereading skills, with genetic factors accounting for about a quarter of that common variance. Genetic and shared environmental influences on the common prereading variance covaried with reading and spelling, as did genetic influences specific to print knowledge, rapid naming, and for fourth grade reading comprehension, verbal memory. The results have practical implications for providing children with tools for literacy.
Language Learning Infants are exposed to language largely through face-to-face interactions that provide acoustic and visual speech cues, but also through social cues that
340
In This Issue
can foster language learning. Although social information is thought to play a crucial role during infants’ attunement to native language, both audiovisual speech information and social information have received little attention in research on early language development. In their study of about 40 German 6-month-olds, Altvater-Mackensen and Grossman (p. 362) asked how the interactive behavior of mothers and infants influences audiovisual and auditory speech perception. They find that mothers’ and infants’ behavior modulated infants’ preference for matching audiovisual speech, but didn’t influence their sensitivity to sound contrasts in auditory speech perception. The findings suggest that mothers’ contingent responding, such as imitation and vocal play that mimics babbling, helps infants associate auditory and visual speech cues. Research has documented cognitive benefits associated with learning a second language or studying a musical instrument in childhood, but little is known about the nature of the mechanisms inducing the benefits and the persistence of these benefits over time. Moreno, Lee, Janus, and Bialystok (p. 394) investigated these questions in about 40 North American 4- to 6-year-olds who received either French or music training in two 1-hour sessions a day for a month. Through EEG, they find immediate effects on brain activity following each of the training periods as well as a sustained presence of these effects 1 year later. These results point to the brain plasticity induced by training and provide evidence for the lasting benefit of intervening early. Although bilingualism was once thought to harm children’s cognitive development and education by posing extra demands in the brain to use two languages instead of one, more recent evidence suggests exactly the opposite: that bilingualism helps children’s cognitive development by boosting their abilities to deal with conflict and difficult tasks. But what role is played by socioeconomic status (SES), which has long been thought to influence cognition? In their study comparing attention abilities of about 50 bilingual children with those of about 50 monolingual children, ages 6–12, all from Greece and all of low SES, Ladas, Carroll, and Vivas (p. 557) measured and controlled for children’s SES. The children performed equally in all the tasks, although the ability to resolve conflict was related to children’s level of bilingual experience. The results suggest that when SES is controlled, bilingualism doesn’t influence attention negatively or positively.
The Trajectory of Shyness Infants who frequently react to unfamiliar objects, people, and situations by becoming afraid and withdrawing are referred to as having a behaviorally inhibited temperament. As these infants grow up, many continue to be inhibited or reticent when they experience new things, including meeting new people. Inhibited children are more likely than their peers to develop anxiety problems, especially social anxiety, as they get older; social anxiety disorder is one of the most common psychiatric disorders among children and adolescents. In their longitudinal study of 165 European-American, middle- to upper-middle class adolescents (ages 14–17) who were recruited at 4 months, Lewis-Morrarty et al. (p. 598) find that behavioral inhibition that persists across early childhood is associated with social anxiety in adolescence, but only among youth who were insecurely attached to their parents as infants. The results can inform the prevention and treatment of adolescent social anxiety by identifying specific factors that increase risk for this outcome among children who are persistently shy.
Teens and Friendship Teens are well aware of the difference between “well-liked” and “popular” peers. Research indicates that low “likeability” predicts later engagement in health risk behaviors, such as substance use, but high “popularity” also may be a risk factor, particularly for behaviors that adolescents value as cool, such as alcohol use. Choukas-Bradley, Giletta, Neblett, and Prinstein (p. 519) examined whether popularity or likeability in ninth grade made it more likely that adolescents would use alcohol in high school for about 360 African-American, LatinoAmerican, and White low-income American teens. Findings: White and Latino teens who were popular in ninth grade showed steeper growth in drinking from ninth to twelfth grade than less popular peers; this wasn’t true for popular African American teens. Policymakers and those involved in prevention efforts may benefit from considering norms that are specific to ethnicity when they look at the value of alcohol use among different groups of teens. How much do friends influence youth’s wellbeing? Much research has considered the influence of peer networks on youth’s negative behaviors. Parker et al. (p. 642) looked at hopefulness; specifically, they used social network analysis to examine
Child Development, March/April 2015, Volume 86, Number 2, Pages 337–341
In This Issue
Infants: Hands and Feet Although many studies have explored face-processing abilities shortly after birth, little research has investigated how newborns process visual information related to other human body parts, such as hands. In their study of 30 Italian newborns (24– 48 hours old), Longhi et al. (p. 632) show that the infants orient more frequently and look longer at animation of a hand closing in a structurally impossible way than at animation of a hand closing in a structurally possible way. This preferential response vanishes when dynamic information is lacking. The findings indicate that newborns’ ability to recognize the body form is not confined to faces, but extends to other salient body parts, such as hands, when they’re in motion. By suggesting that newborns can detect and recognize the biomechanical properties of hand movements, the study points to such recognition as a possible building block of the emerging capability to understand others’ actions. Why does the newborn stepping pattern typically disappear within the first couple of months of life only to reappear shortly before the onset of upright walking? This question has interested researchers for decades because the disappearance of stepping is a clear and compelling example of the curious U-shaped trajectories that characterize the development of many early behaviors. In their study of about 40 French 2-month-olds, Barbu-Roth et al. (p. 441) show that stepping doesn’t disappear because the babies’ legs become too heavy to lift, as previously thought. Rather, stepping on a surface seems to disappear because babies’ flexor-tone bias at 2 months makes it difficult for them to extend their legs to support their body weight when they’re lowered onto the surface. The results raise questions about early opportunities to train leg extension in infants who are at risk of developing locomotor delays.
Child Maltreatment Children who are maltreated often have difficulties with cognitive skills, and emotional and behavioral well-being. Most research in this area has relied on administrative data from Child Protective Services.
Font and Berger (p. 536) looked at longitudinal data from a population-based group of almost 5,000 American children from relatively disadvantaged urban families and used two statistical approaches to examine associations of interest: the direction and magnitude of effects among children at ages 3, 5 and 9 years, and whether they varied by type of maltreatment. Findings: Early child maltreatment influenced later developmental outcomes, but early developmental characteristics also increased the likelihood that the children would be maltreated later. In identifying two-directional relations between children’s maltreatment and developmental outcomes, the study sheds light on the value of early intervention for mitigating the adverse effects of maltreatment.
Child Care: Effects of Family Income and Stress While losses in family income predict increases in behavior problems for many children, attending high-quality early childhood education and care centers offers some protection against families’ economic declines, according to a study out of Norway by Zachrisson and Dearing (p. 425). In Norway, publicly subsidized high-quality early childhood education and care is available to all children, from lowincome to affluent, starting at age 1. The researchers drew data from a longitudinal study of more than 75,000 children and their families who were assessed from birth through age 3. Their study finds that children who don’t take part in high-quality early childhood programs have more early behavior problems when their families’ income drops. Starting out-of-home child care can be challenging for children, requiring them to separate from parents for long periods, engage in new routines, and interact with new peers. Bernard, Peloso, Laurenceau, Zhang, and Dozier (p. 456) studied almost 170 American children from different racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds who ranged in age from 1 month to 8 years. They find that during a 10-week period of transition to new child care, chil© 2015 The Author Child Development © 2015 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved. 0009-3920/2015/8602-0001 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12373
