Inside a child's mind: The relations between mind wandering and executive function across 8- to 12-year-olds.

Mind wandering refers to attention oriented away from a current task to thoughts unrelated to the task, often resulting in poorer task performance. In adults, mind wandering is a common occurrence that is associated with the executive function facets of inhibitory control, working memory capacity, and task switching. In this study, we cross-sectionally examined whether the relation between mind wandering frequency and executive function changes across 8- to 12-year-old children. A total of 100 children completed three tasks targeting three facets of executive function. During each task, participants were occasionally prompted to report whether they were focused on the task or mind wandering. In examining the association between mind wandering frequency and executive function across the age range, we found a significant interaction between age and working memory capacity, such that it was negatively associated with mind wandering frequency only in 12-year-olds. This interaction with age was not significant for inhibitory control and task switching ability. Our results revealed differential relations between mind wandering and executive function facets, which vary with developmental stages. These findings highlight potential areas for targeted intervention to improve mind wandering regulation in children.

Preschoolers modulate contrastive inferences during online language comprehension.

This study examined 4- and 5-year-olds' incremental interpretation of size adjectives, focusing on whether contrastive inferences are modulated by speaker behavior. Children (N = 120, 59 females, mostly White, tested between July, 2018 and August, 2019) encountered either a conventional or unconventional speaker who labeled objects in a correspondingly typical or atypical way. Critical utterances contained size adjectives (e.g., "Look at the big duck"). With conventional speakers, gaze measures indicated that children rapidly used the adjective to differentiate members of a contrasting pair, indicating that even 4-year-olds derive contrastive inferences. With unconventional speakers, contrastive inferences were delayed in processing. The findings demonstrate that preschoolers adjust their use of pragmatic cues when presented with evidence disconfirming their default assumptions about a speaker.

Five-year-olds' sensitivity to knowledge discrepancies about object identity during online language comprehension.

In everyday communication, children experience situations where their knowledge or perspectives differ from those of their communicative partner. The current study examined this issue in the context of real-time language comprehension, focusing on 5-year-old children's ability to manage knowledge discrepancies about the identity of mutually visible objects. In Experiment 1, we examined 5-year-olds' ability to manage privileged knowledge about an object's identity. Using a referential communication task, we tested children (N = 60) in either a shared knowledge condition, where both the child and the speaker knew the identity of a visually misleading object (e.g., a candle that looks like an apple), or a privileged knowledge condition, where only the child knew the identity of the visually misleading object. Of interest was whether children could suppress private knowledge while processing a phonologically related word (e.g., "Look at the candy"). Results showed that children did not inhibit this knowledge during the early moments of referential interpretation. In Experiment 2 (N = 30), we contrasted the privileged knowledge condition in Experiment 1 with the more traditional scenario used to test common ground use, where the child knows the speaker cannot see certain display objects. Results confirmed a stronger ability to manage discrepancies in the latter case. Together, the findings demonstrate differences in children's ability to manage distinct types of knowledge discrepancies during real-time language comprehension.

Father- and Mother-Child Reminiscing About Past Pain and Young Children's Cognitive Skills.

Objective Painful experiences are common, distressing, and salient in childhood. Parent-child reminiscing about past painful experiences is an untapped opportunity to process pain-related distress and, similar to reminiscing about other distressing experiences, promotes children's broader development. Previous research has documented the role of parent-child reminiscing about past pain in children's pain-related cognitions (i.e., memories for pain), but no study to date has examined the association between parent-child reminiscing about past painful experiences and children's broader cognitive skills. Design and Methods One hundred and ten typically developing four-year-old children and one of their parents reminisced about a past painful autobiographical event. Children then completed two tasks from the NIH Toolbox Cognitive Battery, the Flanker Inhibitory Control & Attention Test and the Picture Sequence Memory Test, to measure their executive function and episodic memory, respectively. Results Results indicated that the relation between parental reminiscing style and children's executive function was moderated by child sex, such that less frequent parental use of yes-no repetition questions was associated with boys' but not girls', greater performance on the executive function task. Children displayed greater episodic memory performance when their parents reminisced using more explanations. Conclusions The current study demonstrates the key role of parent-child reminiscing about pain in children's broader development and supports the merging of developmental and pediatric psychology fields. Future longitudinal research should examine the directionality of the relation between parent-child reminiscing about past pain and children's developmental outcomes.

The Socialization of Young Children's Empathy for Pain: The Role of Mother- and Father-Child Reminiscing.

OBJECTIVE: Empathy for pain allows one to recognize, understand, and respond to another person's pain in a prosocial manner. Young children develop empathy for pain later than empathy for other negative emotions (e.g., sadness), which may be due to social learning. How parents reminisce with children about past painful events has been linked to children's pain cognitions (e.g., memory) and broader socioemotional development. The present study examined how parent-child reminiscing about pain may be linked to children's empathic behaviors toward another person's pain. METHODS: One hundred and fourteen 4-year-old children (55% girls) and for each, one parent (51% fathers) completed a structured narrative elicitation task wherein they reminisced about a past painful autobiographical event for the child. Children were then observed responding in a lab-based empathy task wherein they witnessed a confederate pretending to hurt themselves. Children's empathic behaviors and parent-child narratives about past painful events were coded using established coding schemes. RESULTS: Findings revealed that parents who used more neutral emotion language (e.g., How did you feel?) when discussing past painful events had children who exhibited more empathic concern in response to another's pain. Similarly, children who used more explanations when reminiscing about past painful events displayed more empathic concern about another's pain. CONCLUSIONS: Findings highlight a key role of parent-child reminiscing about the past pain in the behavioral expression of empathy for pain in young children.

Developmental Pathways Between Infant Gestures and Symbolic Actions, and Children's Communicative Skills at Age 5: Findings From the All Our Families Pregnancy Cohort.

Using data from the All Our Families study, a longitudinal study of 1992 mother-child dyads in Canada (47.7% female; 81.9% White), we examined the developmental pathways between infant gestures and symbolic actions and communicative skills at age 5. Communicative gestures at age 12 months (e.g., pointing, nodding head "yes"), obtained via parental report, predicted stronger general communicative skills at age 5 years. Moreover, greater use of symbolic actions (e.g., "feeding" a stuffed animal with a bottle) indirectly predicted increased communicative skills at age 5 via increased productive vocabulary at 24 months. These pathways support the hypothesis that children's communicative skills during the transition to kindergarten emerge from a chain of developmental abilities starting with gestures and symbolic actions during infancy.

Child Language Difficulties and Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms: A Meta-Analysis.

This study conducted two meta-analyses to synthesize the association between children's language skills and two broad-band dimensions of psychopathology: internalizing and externalizing. Pooled estimates across 139 samples (externalizing k = 105; internalizing k = 90) and 147,305 participants (age range: 2-17 years old; mean % males: 53.75; mean % White participants: 55.59; mean % minority participants: 43.12) indicated small but significant associations between child language skills and externalizing problems (Hedges' g = .22) and between language skills and internalizing problems (Hedges' g = .23). The association between language difficulties and externalizing problems was stronger amongst males and in children with low versus high sociodemographic risk. Implications of the results for theory and practice are discussed.

Linking Quality and Quantity of Parental Linguistic Input to Child Language Skills: A Meta-Analysis.

This meta-analysis examined associations between the quantity and quality of parental linguistic input and children's language. Pooled effect size for quality (i.e., vocabulary diversity and syntactic complexity; k = 35; N = 1,958; r = .33) was more robust than for quantity (i.e., number of words/tokens/utterances; k = 33; N = 1,411; r = .20) of linguistic input. For quality and quantity of parental linguistic input, effect sizes were stronger when input was observed in naturalistic contexts compared to free play tasks. For quality of parental linguistic input, effect sizes also increased as child age and observation length increased. Effect sizes were not moderated by socioeconomic status or child gender. Findings highlight parental linguistic input as a key environmental factor in children's language skills.

The chronicity and timing of prenatal and antenatal maternal depression and anxiety on child outcomes at age 5.

BACKGROUND: Maternal depression and anxiety have been associated with deleterious child outcomes. It is, however, unclear how the chronicity and timing of maternal mental health problems predict child development outcomes. The aim of the current study was to assess the effect of both chronicity and timing of maternal anxiety and depression in pregnancy, infancy, and the toddler period on children's internalizing and externalizing symptoms, as well as social and communication skills at age 5. METHOD: Participants were 1,992 mother-child pairs drawn from a large prospective pregnancy cohort. Mothers reported on anxiety and depression symptoms with clinical screening tools at six time points between <25 weeks gestation and 3 years postpartum. Child outcomes were assessed at age 5. RESULTS: Effect sizes were small for brief incidents of depression/anxiety and increased for intermittent and chronic problems (i.e., three or more timepoints) compared with mothers who had never experienced clinical-level anxiety or depression. Maternal anxiety/depression during pregnancy, infancy, and toddlerhood predicted all child outcomes, even after controlling for depression/anxiety during the other timepoints. However, maternal anxiety and depression during toddlerhood had a stronger association with child internalizing/externalizing symptoms and communication skills than either prenatal or postpartum depression/anxiety. CONCLUSIONS: Increasing number of exposures to clinical-level anxiety and depression is related to poorer child outcomes. Neither prenatal nor postpartum periods emerged as "sensitive" periods. Rather, maternal depression and anxiety during toddlerhood was more strongly associated with child outcomes at age 5. Results highlight the need for continued support for maternal mental health across early childhood.

Preschoolers Flexibly Shift Between Speakers' Perspectives During Real-Time Language Comprehension.

In communicative situations, preschoolers use shared knowledge, or "common ground," to guide their interpretation of a speaker's referential intent. Using eye-tracking measures, this study investigated the time course of 4-year-olds' (n = 95) use of two different speakers' perspectives and assessed how individual differences in this ability related to individual differences in executive function and representational skills. Gaze measures indicated partner-specific common ground guided children's interpretation from the earliest moments of language processing. Nonegocentric online processing was positively correlated with performance on a Level 2 visual perspective-taking task. These results demonstrate that preschoolers readily use the perspectives of multiple partners to guide language comprehension and that more advanced representational skills are associated with the rapid integration of common ground information.

The Emergence of Cognitive Maps for Spatial Navigation in 7- to 10-Year-Old Children.

Although much is known about adults' ability to orient by means of cognitive maps (mental representations of the environment), it is less clear when this important ability emerges in development. In the present study, 97 seven- to 10-year-olds and 26 adults played a video game designed to investigate the ability to orient using cognitive maps. The game required participants to reach target locations as quickly as possible, necessitating the identification and use of novel shortcuts. Seven- and 8-year-olds were less effective than older children and adults in using shortcuts. These findings provide clear evidence of a distinct developmental change around 9 years of age when children begin to proficiently orient and navigate using cognitive maps.

Pragmatic Language Comprehension After Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury: A Scoping Review.

OBJECTIVE: This scoping review aims to examine the literature pertaining to pragmatic language comprehension in pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI), in order to summarize the current evidence and to identify areas for further research. METHODS: We searched MEDLINE Ovid and PsycINFO Ovid using search terms to identify all articles that examined pragmatic language comprehension in children and adolescents with TBI published until November 2017. RESULTS: A total of 13 articles met our inclusion criteria. The studies included examined a number of pragmatic domains including knowledge-based and pragmatic inferences, detection and judgment of ambiguous sentences, comprehension of humor, understanding of figurative language (eg, metaphors and idioms), and comprehension of irony and deceptive praise. CONCLUSION: The research suggests that children and adolescents with TBI, as compared with healthy or orthopedically injured controls, display deficits in comprehension of pragmatic language. Children with severe TBI demonstrate more widespread deficits in pragmatic comprehension abilities, whereas children with mild TBI show relatively intact pragmatic comprehension. Limitations and gaps identified in the literature warrant further research in this area.

A Developmental Cascade from Prenatal Stress to Child Internalizing and Externalizing Problems.

OBJECTIVE: This study utilized a developmental cascade approach to test alternative theories about the underlying mechanisms behind the association of maternal prenatal stress and child psychopathology. The fetal programming hypothesis suggests that prenatal stress affects fetal structural and physiological systems responsible for individual differences in child temperament, which further increases risk for internalizing and externalizing problems. Interpersonal models of stress transmission suggest that maternal stress influences child mental health via early parenting behaviors. We also examined a continuation of stress hypothesis, in which prenatal stress predicts child mental health via the continuation of maternal stress in the postpartum period. METHODS: Participants were 1,992 mother-child pairs drawn from a prospective pregnancy cohort. Mothers reported on their perceived stress, anxiety, and depression during pregnancy and at 4-month postpartum. Birthweight was assessed via medical records of birthweight. At 4-month postpartum, hostile-reactive parenting behaviors were assessed. Child temperamental negative affect was measured at age 3. Child internalizing and externalizing problems were assessed at age 5. RESULTS: Prenatal stress was associated with both internalizing and externalizing problems via postnatal stress and child temperament. Prenatal stress was also associated with externalizing behaviors via increased hostile-reactive parenting. After accounting for postnatal factors, prenatal stress continued to have a direct effect on child internalizing, but not externalizing, symptoms. CONCLUSION: Results provide support for the fetal programming, interpersonal stress transmission, and continuation of stress models. Findings highlight the need for prenatal preventative programs that continue into the early postnatal period, targeting maternal stress and parenting behaviors.

Socialization of Pain Memories: Parent-Child Reminiscing About Past Painful and Sad Events.

OBJECTIVE: Parent-child reminiscing about past negative events has been linked to a host of developmental outcomes. Previous research has identified two distinct between-parent reminiscing styles, wherein parents who are more elaborative (vs. repetitive) have children with more optimal outcomes. To date, however, research has not examined how parents and children talk about past painful experiences nor compared parent-child reminiscing about past painful versus other distressing events despite key developmental differences in how young children respond to pain versus sadness in others. This study aimed to fill that gap. METHODS: Seventy-eight children aged 4 to 7 years underwent a tonsillectomy. Two weeks postsurgery, children and one of their parents discussed past autobiographical events (i.e., the tonsillectomy, another painful event, a sad event). Parent-child conversations were coded using established coding schemes to capture parental reminiscing style, content, and autonomy support. RESULTS: Findings revealed robust differences in parent-child reminiscing about painful versus sad events. Parents were less elaborative, used less emotionally negative words and explanations, and were less supportive of their children's autonomy while reminiscing about past painful versus sad events. CONCLUSIONS: These findings demonstrate that through reminiscing, parents may socialize children about pain in a way that is different from other distressing events (e.g., sadness). Future research should examine the influence of differential reminiscing about pain versus sadness on developmental and health outcomes.

Not speaking the same language: 17-month-olds shift their perception of novel labels following brief exposure to non-native language.

We examined if and when English-learning 17-month-olds would accommodate Japanese forms as labels for novel objects. In Experiment 1, infants (n = 22) who were habituated to Japanese word-object pairs looked longer at switched test pairs than familiar test pairs, suggesting that they had mapped Japanese word forms to objects. In Experiments 2 (n = 44) and 3 (n = 22), infants were presented with a spoken passage prior to habituation to assess whether experience with a different language would shift their perception of Japanese word forms. Here, infants did not demonstrate learning of Japanese word-object pairs. These findings offer insight into the flexibility of the developing perceptual system. That is, when there is no evidence to the contrary, 17-month-olds will accommodate forms that vary from their typical input but will efficiently constrain their perception when cued to the fact that they are not listening to their native language.

When You're Happy and I Know It: Four-Year-Olds' Emotional Perspective Taking During Online Language Comprehension.

Using a novel emotional perspective-taking task, this study investigated 4-year-olds' (n = 97) use of a speaker's emotional prosody to make inferences about the speaker's emotional state and, correspondingly, their communicative intent. Eye gaze measures indicated preschoolers used emotional perspective inferences to guide their real-time interpretation of ambiguous statements. However, these sensitivities were less apparent in overt responses, suggesting preschoolers' ability to integrate emotional perspective cues is at an emergent state. Perspective taking during online language processing was positively correlated with receptive vocabulary and an offline measure of emotional perspective taking, but not with cognitive perspective taking, conflict or delay inhibitory control, or working memory. Together, the results underscore how children's emerging communicative competence involves different kinds of perspective inferences with distinct cognitive underpinnings.

When it is apt to adapt: Flexible reasoning guides children's use of talker identity and disfluency cues.

An eye-tracking methodology was used to examine whether children flexibly engage two voice-based cues, talker identity and disfluency, during language processing. Across two experiments, 5-year-olds (N = 58) were introduced to two characters with distinct color preferences. These characters then used fluent or disfluent instructions to refer to an object in a display containing items bearing either talker-preferred or talker-dispreferred colors. As the utterance began to unfold, the 5-year-olds anticipated that talkers would refer to talker-preferred objects. When children then encountered a disfluency in the unfolding description, they reduced their expectation that a talker was about to refer to a preferred object. The talker preference-related predictions, but not the disfluency-related predictions, were attenuated during the second half of the experiment as evidence accrued that talkers referred to dispreferred objects with equal frequency. In Experiment 2, the equivocal nature of talkers' referencing was made more apparent by removing neutral filler trials, where objects' colors were not associated with talker preferences. In this case, children ceased making all talker-related predictions during the latter half of the experiment. Taken together, the results provide insights into children's use of talker-specific cues and demonstrate that flexible and adaptive forms of reasoning account for the ways in which children draw on paralinguistic information during real-time processing.

Disfluencies signal reference to novel objects for adults but not children.

Speech disfluencies can guide the ways in which listeners interpret spoken language. Here, we examined whether three-year-olds, five-year-olds, and adults use filled pauses to anticipate that a speaker is likely to refer to a novel object. Across three experiments, participants were presented with pairs of novel and familiar objects and heard a speaker refer to one of the objects using a fluent ("Look at the ball/lep!") or disfluent ("Look at thee uh ball/lep!") expression. The salience of the speaker's unfamiliarity with the novel referents, and the way in which the speaker referred to the novel referents (i.e., a noun vs. a description) varied across experiments. Three- and five-year-olds successfully identified familiar and novel targets, but only adults' looking patterns reflected increased looks to novel objects in the presence of a disfluency. Together, these findings demonstrate that adults, but not young children, use filled pauses to anticipate reference to novel objects.

The object of my desire: Five-year-olds rapidly reason about a speaker's desire during referential communication.

Two experiments examined whether 5-year-olds draw inferences about desire outcomes that constrain their online interpretation of an utterance. Children were informed of a speaker's positive (Experiment 1) or negative (Experiment 2) desire to receive a specific toy as a gift before hearing a referentially ambiguous statement ("That's my present") spoken with either a happy or sad voice. After hearing the speaker express a positive desire, children (N=24) showed an implicit (i.e., eye gaze) and explicit ability to predict reference to the desired object when the speaker sounded happy, but they showed only implicit consideration of the alternate object when the speaker sounded sad. After hearing the speaker express a negative desire, children (N=24) used only happy prosodic cues to predict the intended referent of the statement. Taken together, the findings indicate that the efficiency with which 5-year-olds integrate desire reasoning with language processing depends on the emotional valence of the speaker's voice but not on the type of desire representations (i.e., positive vs. negative) that children must reason about online.

Words are not enough: how preschoolers' integration of perspective and emotion informs their referential understanding.

When linguistic information alone does not clarify a speaker's intended meaning, skilled communicators can draw on a variety of cues to infer communicative intent. In this paper, we review research examining the developmental emergence of preschoolers' sensitivity to a communicative partner's perspective. We focus particularly on preschoolers' tendency to use cues both within the communicative context (i.e. a speaker's visual access to information) and within the speech signal itself (i.e. emotional prosody) to make on-line inferences about communicative intent. Our review demonstrates that preschoolers' ability to use visual and emotional cues of perspective to guide language interpretation is not uniform across tasks, is sometimes related to theory of mind and executive function skills, and, at certain points of development, is only revealed by implicit measures of language processing.