COVID-19 Life Events Spill-Over on Family Functioning and Adolescent Adjustment.

We examined US parent and youth perceptions of how life events, both positive and negative, associated with COVID-19 resulted in changes in family and youth functioning. Families (n = 105, 80% white, 48% male, and 87% mothers) completed surveys during the pandemic (May to July 2020) and 3 years prior (for youth ages M = 10.6, SD = 1.17 and M = 13.6, SD = 1.19). Declines in youth, though not parent, report of open family communication, parental support, and family satisfaction were found. Declines were associated with various domains of pandemic-related stress in parent report, though positive life events served as buffers. Pre-pandemic family functioning also predicted pandemic stress. Spillover effects in turn impacted youth functioning. The current findings shed light on how experiences of the pandemic are linked with family functioning and have implications for how to support families during this time.

Parasympathetic response to challenge in infancy moderates the effects of sociodemographic risk on academic achievement at school entry.

Exposure to higher levels of sociodemographic risk is associated with lower levels of academic achievement among young children. However, there is variability in the strength of this association, which may be traced to individual differences in physiological processes underlying self-regulation. In the current study, we examined whether the response of the parasympathetic nervous system to challenge, indexed by change in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), moderated the association between risk and school readiness at 5 years of age in a diverse sample of young children. We found that parasympathetic response to the Still-Face Paradigm moderated the effects of risk on a measure of school readiness, such that there was no association between risk and school readiness among children who exhibited RSA decreases during challenge at 6 months of age, a purported index of self-regulation at this age. For those infants who did not exhibit RSA withdrawal during this challenge, exposure to early cumulative risk was associated with lower scores on achievement assessment. These results speak to the possibility that certain patterns of parasympathetic response can serve as a protective factor for young children growing up in disadvantaged environments.

Observed Peer Competence Moderates Links between Children's Self-Regulation Skills and Academic Performance.

The current study focuses on the relations between observed measures of children's self-regulation and academic achievement, as well as the extent to which observations of children's peer competence in preschool moderates these links. Data were drawn from 102 students (male = 48; M age = 4.82 years, SD age = 0.46 years) enrolled in pre-kindergarten classrooms. A series of linear path models was used to test study hypotheses, and the nature of significant interactions was elucidated by examining simple slopes and regions of significance. Children's self-regulation, but not peer competence, significantly predicted both reading and math performance assessed using the Woodcock Johnson III, ß = .43, p < .001 and ß = .39, p < .001, respectively. Tests of moderation effects revealed that the association between children's poor self-regulation and poor math performance, but not reading performance, ß = -.28, p = .022 and ß = -.11, p = .23, was negated for children with average to high peer competence. These results demonstrate the protective quality of peer competence for academic performance using observational methods collected in preschools.

Automated respiratory sinus arrhythmia measurement: Demonstration using executive function assessment.

Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is a quantitative metric that reflects autonomic nervous system regulation and provides a physiological marker of attentional engagement that supports cognitive and affective regulatory processes. RSA can be added to executive function (EF) assessments with minimal participant burden because of the commercial availability of lightweight, wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) sensors. However, the inclusion of RSA data in large data collection efforts has been hindered by the time-intensive processing of RSA. In this study we evaluated the performance of an automated RSA-scoring method in the context of an EF study in preschool-aged children. The absolute differences in RSA across both scoring methods were small (mean RSA differences = -0.02-0.10), with little to no evidence of bias for the automated relative to the hand-scoring approach. Moreover, the relative rank-ordering of RSA across both scoring methods was strong (rs = .96-.99). Reliable changes in RSA from baseline to the EF task were highly similar across both scoring methods (96%-100% absolute agreement; Kappa = .83-1.0). On the basis of these findings, the automated RSA algorithm appears to be a suitable substitute for hand-scoring in the context of EF assessment.

The effect of teachers' memory-relevant language on children's strategy use and knowledge.

Building on longitudinal findings of linkages between aspects of teachers' language during instruction and children's use of mnemonic strategies, this investigation was designed to examine experimentally the impact of instruction on memory development. First and second graders (N = 54, M(age) = 7 years) were randomly assigned to a science unit that varied only in teachers' use of memory-relevant language. Pretest, posttest, and 1-month follow-up assessments revealed that although all participating children learned new information as a result of instruction, those exposed to memory rich teaching exhibited greater levels of strategic knowledge and engaged in more sophisticated strategy use in a memory task involving instructional content than did students exposed to low memory instruction. The findings provide support for a causal linkage between teachers' language and children's strategic efforts.

What Parents and Children Say When Talking about Children's Gratitude: A Thematic Analysis.

Parent-child conversations are a widely recognized socializing mechanism, linked to children's developing moral agency, empathy, and emotional competence. Similarly, parent-child conversations about gratitude have been linked to growth in children's gratitude. However, the messages that parents and children exchange in conversations about children's gratitude have yet to be investigated in depth. In the current study, we investigate the types of events that parents discuss with their children during times when they saw displays of children's gratitude and events when the children missed the opportunity to display gratitude, along with the messages that parents and children share during these conversations. The study involved a thematic analysis of the gratitude conversations of 43 parent-child dyads (88% mothers, 77% European American, 51% boys, child Mage=10.62, SD=1.15) living in the United States. Gratitude and missed opportunity events primarily involved situations in which the child had the opportunity to attend an event or to receive a material gift, food, or assistance. Three themes characterized parent and child messages. First, parents suggested that being happy was a sign of being grateful, a way to make others happy, and the goal of benefactors' behavior. Second, parents suggested that children should focus on what they receive rather than on what they did not receive. Finally, children conveyed that they could not always be grateful, but that in several cases they were able to both feel and display their excitement and gratitude. In particular, children reported feeling grateful when they received something they thought was special or enjoyable, unique or unexpected, that they knew would make their parent happy or that they felt lucky to have since others did not have it. Together these findings suggest the importance of future research investigating how children and parents coordinate and prioritize the various elements of gratitude moments in deciding how to be grateful and to socialize children's gratitude.

Parents' responses to children's ingratitude are associated with children's gratitude and internalizing 3 years later.

The current study is the first to examine how parents respond to children's ingratitude and how such responses impact children's later gratitude and internalizing symptoms. We focused on parental responses in families with children aged 6-9 years when gratitude may be actively forming as part of socioemotional learning and other-oriented behavior. Parent-child dyads (n = 101; 52% female; 81% European American, 9% Asian/Asian American, 5% African American, 4% Latino) completed lab-based assessments at baseline and 3 years later. Results indicate that we can reliably assess and differentiate six parental responses to children's ingratitude (i.e., parental self-blame, distress, punishment, instruction, let-it-be, and give-in) using a novel scenario-based measure. Moreover, parents of older children reported more self-blame, distress, and let-it-be responses than those of younger children. More frequent distress and less frequent punishing and giving-in responses to ingratitude by parents predicted greater parent-reported child gratitude at follow-up whereas more frequent distress and less instruction and giving-in responses predicted greater child-reported gratitude at follow-up. Punishing responses also predicted greater later internalizing symptoms in children, whereas self-blame and distress responses predicted lower subsequent symptoms. Collectively, findings showed that parental responses to children's ingratitude predicted child gratitude and internalizing symptoms 3 years later, even after controlling for other factors comprising the parent ecology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Relations between children's metamemory and strategic performance: time-varying covariates in early elementary school.

Although much is known about the development of memory strategies and metamemory during childhood, evidence for linkages between these memory skills, either concurrently or over time, has been limited. Drawing from a longitudinal investigation of the development of memory, repeated assessments of children's (N=107) strategy use and declarative metamemory were made to examine the development of these skills and the relations between them over time. Latent curve models were used first to estimate the trajectories of children's strategy use and metamemory and then to examine predictors of children's performance in each of these domains. Children's metamemory at the beginning of Grade 1 was linked to child- and home-level factors, whereas the development of both skills was related to maternal education level. Additional modeling of the longitudinal relations between strategic sorting and metacognitive knowledge indicated that metamemory at earlier time points was predictive of subsequent strategy use.

Coping and Mental Health in Early Adolescence during COVID-19.

The current longitudinal study examines changes in overall mental health symptomatology from before to after the COVID-19 outbreak in youth from the southeastern United States as well as the potential mitigating effects of self-efficacy, optimism, and coping. A sample of 105 parent-child dyads participated in the study (49% boys; 81% European American, 1% Alaska Native/American Indian, 9% Asian/Asian American; 4% Black/African American; 4% Latinx; and 4% other; 87% mothers; 25% high school graduate without college education; 30% degree from 4-year college; 45% graduate or professional school). Parents completed surveys when children were aged 6-9, 8-12, 9-13, and 12-16, with the last assessments occurring between May 13, 2020 and July 1, 2020 during the COVID-19 outbreak. Children also completed online surveys at ages 11-16 assessing self-efficacy, optimism, and coping. Multi-level modeling analyses showed a within-person increase in mental health symptoms from before to after the outbreak after controlling for changes associated with maturation. Symptom increases were mitigated in youth with greater self-efficacy and (to some extent) problem-focused engaged coping, and exacerbated in youth with greater emotion-focused engaged and disengaged coping. Implications of this work include the importance of reinforcing self-efficacy in youth during times of crisis, such as the pandemic, and the potential downsides of emotion-focused coping as an early response to the crisis for youth.

Examining Maternal Elaborative Reminiscing as a Protective Factor in the Intergenerational Transmission of Psychopathology.

Most research examining the impact of early parental depression on the developing child has focused on the nature of parenting practices observed in depressed adults. Maternal elaborative reminiscing, or the extent to which mothers elaboratively discuss past shared experiences with their children, has a considerable influence on children's emotional and social development and is understudied within the context of maternal depression. The current study is the first to examine whether maternal elaborative reminiscing in middle childhood mediates the association between exposure to maternal depressive symptoms in infancy and later internalizing and externalizing problems. The study included 206 mother-child dyads recruited from the community who participated in a prospective longitudinal study. Maternal depressive symptoms were assessed when offspring were 6-months old. At 5-years old, dyads were observed during a free play task to measure sensitive and harsh-intrusive parenting and during a reminiscing task to measure maternal elaboration. Teacher-reported internalizing and externalizing problems were collected at age 7. A saturated path model revealed that maternal elaborative reminiscing, but not sensitive or harsh-intrusive parenting, fully mediated the association between maternal depression in infancy and externalizing, but not internalizing, problems. Reduced maternal elaboration during parent-child reminiscing constitutes one way in which risk from early maternal depression is associated with later externalizing problems.

Gratitude Conversations: An Experimental Trial of an Online Parenting Tool.

Gratitude is associated with a host of positive outcomes; yet, little is understood about the ways in which parents may foster gratitude in their children. The current study allows for the examination of one possible mechanism, namely parent-child conversations, that may be used to encourage gratitude in children. Using a rigorous experimental design, we tested whether an online program that was designed to enrich parents' skills in having conversations about gratitude with their children was effective in changing parents' socialization behaviors and children's gratitude. Results demonstrated that parents can successfully utilize an online program to enhance their gratitude-related communication. This training permeates other aspects of how parents socialize gratitude in children and positively impacts children's gratitude moments. Implications for program development and understanding the role of parents in the development of children's gratitude are discussed.

Raising Grateful Children One Day at a Time.

The current study examined micro-developmental processes related to the socialization of children's gratitude. Specifically, we tested whether parents who engage in more frequent daily socialization practices targeting children's gratitude reported more frequent displays of gratitude by their children after controlling for potential confounds (i.e., parents' own gratitude, sensitive parenting, and children's socio-emotional functioning). The sample of 101 parent-child dyads completed a baseline lab visit followed by a seven-day diary study. Using multi-level modeling, we found that parents who engaged in more frequent gratitude socialization acts (versus parents with fewer socialization acts) reported more frequent displays of gratitude by their children across the seven-day period (a between-dyad effect). We also found that on days when a parent engaged in more socialization acts than usual (versus days when that parent engaged in fewer acts than usual) parents reported relative increases in gratitude displays by their children (a within-dyad effect). These findings show that parent socialization acts are associated with children's displayed gratitude and point to the need for future work to explore reactive and proactive parent-child interactions that may underlie these associations as well as associations between micro-developmental and macro-developmental processes.

Linking teachers' memory-relevant language and the development of children's memory skills.

This longitudinal study was designed to (a) examine changes in children's deliberate memory across the 1st grade; (b) characterize the memory-relevant aspects of their classrooms; and (c) explore linkages between the children's performance and the language their teachers use in instruction. To explore contextual factors that may facilitate the development of skills for remembering, 107 first graders were assessed 3 times with a broad set of tasks, while extensive observations were made in the 14 classrooms from which these children were sampled. When the participating teachers were classified as high or low in terms of their "mnemonic orientation," in part on the basis of their use of metacognitive information and requests for deliberate remembering during instruction in language arts and mathematics, differences were observed in the use of mnemonic techniques by the children in their classes. By the end of the year, the children drawn from these 2 groups of classrooms differed in their spontaneous use of simple behavioral strategies for remembering and in their response to training in more complex verbally based mnemonic techniques.

Pore Engineering for Enhanced Mass Transport in Encapsulin Nanocompartments.

Encapsulins are robust and engineerable proteins that form hollow, nanosized, icosahedral capsids, making them attractive vehicles for drug delivery, scaffolds for synthetic bionanoreactors, and artificial organelles. A major limitation of native encapsulins is the small size of pores in the protein shell. At 3 Å diameter, these pores impose significant restrictions on the molecular weight and diffusion rate of potential substrates. By redesigning the pore-forming loop region in encapsulin from Thermotoga maritima, we successfully enlarged pore diameter up to an estimated 11 Å and increased mass transport rates by 7-fold as measured by lanthanide ion diffusion assay. Our study demonstrates the high tolerance of encapsulin for protein engineering and has created a set of novel, functionally improved scaffolds for applications as bionanoreactors.

The Socialization of Children's Memory: Linking Maternal Conversational Style to the Development of Children's Autobiographical and Deliberate Memory Skills.

Data from a large-scale, longitudinal research study with an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample were utilized to explore linkages between maternal elaborative conversational style and the development of children's autobiographical and deliberate memory. Assessments were made when the children were 3, 5, and 6 years of age, and the results reveal concurrent and longitudinal linkages between maternal conversational style in a mother-child reminiscing task and children's autobiographical memory performance. Maternal conversational style while reminiscing was also significantly related to children's strategic behaviors and recall in two deliberate memory tasks, both concurrently and longitudinally. Results from this examination replicate and extend what is known about the linkages between maternal conversational style, children's abilities to talk about previous experiences, and children's deliberate memory skills as they transition from the preschool to early elementary school years.

Grateful parents raising grateful children: Niche selection and the socialization of child gratitude.

Given that children's exposure to gratitude-related activities may be one way that parents can socialize gratitude in their children, we examined whether parents' niche selection (i.e., tendency to choose perceived gratitude-inducing activities for their children) mediates the association between parents' reports of their own and their children's gratitude. Parent-child dyads (N =101; children aged 6-9; 52% girls; 80% Caucasian; 85% mothers) participated in a laboratory visit and parents also completed a seven-day online diary regarding children's gratitude. Decomposing specific indirect effects within a structural equation model, we found that parents high in gratitude were more likely to set goals to use niche selection as a gratitude socialization strategy, and thereby more likely to place their children in gratitude-related activities. Placement in these activities, in turn, was associated with more frequent expression of gratitude in children. We describe future directions for research on parents' role in socializing gratitude in their children.

Intimate Partner Violence, Maternal Sensitive Parenting Behaviors, and Children's Executive Functioning.

OBJECTIVE: Despite knowledge that intimate partner violence (IPV) can negatively affect children's socioemotional and behavioral development, less is known about the impact of IPV on children's cognitive development, including whether it influences their executive functioning (EF). The goal of the current study was to address this gap in the literature, by examining the association between IPV that occurs early in life and EF at school entry. This study also allowed for the investigation of maternal sensitive parenting behaviors as a possible mediator of this relation. METHOD: Using longitudinal data from a socioeconomically and racially diverse sample of families (n = 154), we investigated the association between IPV measured when children were 24, 30, and 36 months old and their EF when they were 60 months old. We also tested whether maternal sensitive parenting behaviors (measured when children were 24, 36, and 60 months old) mediated this association. RESULTS: Results indicate that, even after controlling for a number of family- and child-level covariates, IPV occurring early in children's lives was negatively associated with their EF at school entry. This relation was mediated by maternal sensitive parenting behaviors, such that higher levels of IPV were associated with lower levels of sensitive parenting behaviors, which in turn were positively associated with children's EF. CONCLUSIONS: These findings add to a limited body of literature that links IPV and children's cognitive functioning, and suggest that intervention efforts aimed at improving children's EF may want to simultaneously consider IPV and maternal sensitive parenting behaviors.

Change over Time: Conducting Longitudinal Studies of Children's Cognitive Development.

Developmental scientists have argued that the implementation of longitudinal methods is necessary for obtaining an accurate picture of the nature and sources of developmental change (Magnusson & Cairns, 1996; Morrison & Ornstein, 1996; Magnusson & Stattin, 2006). Developmentalists studying cognition have been relatively slow to embrace longitudinal research, and thus few exemplar studies have tracked individual children's cognitive performance over time and even fewer have examined contexts that are associated with this growth. In this article we first outline some of the benefits of implementing longitudinal designs. Using illustrations from existing studies of children's basic cognitive development and of their school-based academic performance, we discuss when it may be appropriate to employ longitudinal (versus other) methods. We then outline methods for integrating longitudinal data into one's research portfolio, contrasting the leveraging of existing longitudinal data sets with the launching of new longitudinal studies in order to address specific questions concerning cognitive development. Finally, for those who are interested in conducting longitudinal investigations of their own, we provide practical on-the-ground guidelines for designing and carrying out such studies of cognitive development.

Intimate partner violence and children's memory.

The current study was designed to examine the relation between intimate partner violence (IPV) and children's memory and drew from a socioeconomically and racially diverse sample of children living in and around a midsized southeastern city (n = 140). Mother-reported IPV when the children were 30 months old was a significant predictor of children's short-term, working, and deliberate memory at 60 months of age, even after controlling for the children's sex and race, the families' income-to-needs ratio, the children's expressive vocabulary, and maternal harsh-intrusive parenting behaviors. These findings add to the limited extant literature that finds linkages between IPV and children's cognitive functioning and suggest that living in households in which physical violence is perpetrated among intimate partners may have a negative effect on multiple domains of children's memory development.