Interactions of gender inequality and parental discipline predicting child aggression in low- and middle-income countries.

Children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are disproportionately at risk of not meeting their developmental potential. Parental discipline can promote and hinder child outcomes; however, little research examines how discipline interacts with contextual factors to predict child outcomes in LMICs. Using data from 208,156 households with children between 36 and 59 months (50.5% male) across 63 countries, this study examined whether interactions between gender inequality and discipline (shouting, spanking, beating, and verbal reasoning) predicted child aggression. Results showed aggression was higher in countries with high gender inequality, and associations between discipline and child aggression were weaker in countries where gender inequality was higher. Improvements in country-level gender parity, in addition to parenting, will be necessary to promote positive child outcomes in LMICs.

Childhood Maltreatment and Longitudinal Epigenetic Aging: NIMHD Social Epigenomics Program.

Importance: Child physical and emotional abuse and neglect may affect epigenetic signatures of accelerated aging several years after the exposure. Objective: To examine the longitudinal outcomes of early-childhood and midchildhood exposures to maltreatment on later childhood and adolescent profiles of epigenetic accelerated aging. Design, Setting, and Participants: This cohort study used data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (enrolled 1998-2000), a US birth cohort study with available DNA methylation (DNAm) data at ages 9 and 15 years (assayed between 2017 and 2020) and phenotypic data at birth (wave 1), and ages 3 (wave 3), 5 (wave 4), 9 (wave 5), and 15 (wave 6) years. Data were analyzed between June 18 and December 10, 2023. Exposures: Emotional aggression, physical assault, emotional neglect, and physical neglect via the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scale at ages 3 and 5 years. Main Outcomes and Measures: Epigenetic accelerated aging (DNAmAA) was measured using 3 machine learning-derived surrogates of aging (GrimAge, PhenoAge, and DunedinPACE) and 2 machine learning-derived surrogates of age (Horvath and PedBE), residualized for age in months. Results: A total of 1971 children (992 [50.3%] male) representative of births in large US cities between 1998 and 2000 were included. Physical assault at age 3 years was positively associated with DNAmAA for PhenoAge (ß = 0.073; 95% CI, 0.019-0.127), and emotional aggression at age 3 years was negatively associated with PhenoAge DNAmAA (ß = -0.107; 95% CI, -0.162 to -0.052). Emotional neglect at age 5 years was positively associated with PhenoAge DNAmAA (ß = 0.051; 95% CI, 0.006-0.097). Cumulative exposure to physical assault between ages 3 and 5 years was positively associated with PhenoAge DNAmAA (ß = 0.063; 95% CI, 0.003-0.123); emotional aggression was negatively associated with PhenoAge DNAmAA (ß = -0.104; 95% CI, -0.165 to -0.043). The association of these measures with age 15 years PhenoAge DNAmAA was almost fully mediated by age 9 years PhenoAge DNAm age acceleration. Similar patterns were found for GrimAge, DunedinPACE, and PhenoAge, but only those for PhenoAge remained after adjustments for multiple comparisons. Conclusions and Relevance: In this cohort study, altered patterns of DNAmAA were sensitive to the type and timing of child maltreatment exposure and appeared to be associated with more proximate biological embedding of stress.

Positioning adolescence in the developmental timeline.

Adolescence, the second decade of life, bridges childhood and adulthood, but also represents a host of unique experiences that impact health and well-being. Lifespan theories often emphasize the continuity of individual characteristics and their contexts from childhood to adolescence, underscoring the distal influence of childhood experiences. Yet, adolescence is marked by transitions that may provoke discontinuities, particularly within individuals, their contexts, and their interactions within those contexts. These discontinuities occur at varied times, orders, and intensities for individual youth, suggesting that adolescence may be a developmental turning point where earlier life experiences may be mediated, reversed, or transformed by proximal events. This perspective piece emphasizes the importance of considering transitions, discontinuities, and developmental turning points in adolescence as well as their potential to explain heterogeneity in adolescent and adult outcomes. We explore one biological and one contextual transition in adolescence and highlight innovative theories and methods for investigating continuity and discontinuity dynamics across development, which could lead to new insights related to the adolescent period and its importance in shaping future life trajectories.

A metascience investigation of inclusive, open, and reproducible science practices in research posters at the 2021 SRCD biennial meeting.

Over the past decade, there has been a growing appreciation of metascience issues in psychological science. Using data collected from 2615 posters presented at the 2021 biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, this article examines the use of transparent research practices to increase rigor and reproducibility as well as generalizability through greater inclusivity of diverse samples. Research presented through poster presentations was heavily skewed toward quantitative studies featuring American researchers using Western hemisphere samples. Sharing of data/materials, preregistrations, and replications were uncommon. During a time when governments are increasingly requiring more open practices and access, this research provides an important baseline by which developmental science can benchmark progress toward the goals of greater inclusivity and openness.

Attention and behavior problems in childhood predict adult financial status, health, and criminal activity: A conceptual replication and extension of Moffitt et al. (2011) using cohorts from the United States and the United Kingdom.

This study is a conceptual replication of a widely cited study by Moffitt et al. (2011) which found that attention and behavior problems in childhood (a composite of impulsive hyperactive, inattentive, and impulsive-aggressive behaviors labeled "self-control") predicted adult financial status, health, and criminal activity. Using data from longitudinal cohort studies in the United States (n = 1,168) and the United Kingdom (n = 16,506), we largely reproduced their pattern of findings that attention and behavior problems measured across the course of childhood predicted a range of adult outcomes including educational attainment (ßU.S. = -0.22, ßU.K. = -0.13) and spending time in jail (ORU.S. = 1.74, ORU.K. = 1.48). We found that associations with outcomes in education, work, and finances diminished in the presence of additional covariates for children's home environment and achievement but associations for other outcomes were more robust. We also found that attention and behavior problems across distinct periods of childhood were associated with adult outcomes. Specific attention and behavior problems showed some differences in predicting outcomes in the U.S. cohort, with attention problems predicting lower educational attainment and hyperactivity/impulsivity predicting ever spending time in jail. Together with the findings from Moffitt et al., our study makes clear that childhood attention and behavior problems are associated with a range of outcomes in adulthood for cohorts born in the 1950s, 1970s, and 1990s across three countries. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Developmental cascades and educational attainment.

Developmental cascades describe how systems of development interact and influence one another to shape human development across the lifespan. Despite its popularity, developmental cascades are commonly used to understand the developmental course of psychopathology, typically in the context of risk and resilience. Whether this framework can be useful for studying children's educational outcomes remains underexplored. Therefore, in this chapter, we provide an overview of how developmental cascades can be used to study children's academic development, with a particular focus on the biological, cognitive, and contextual pathways to educational attainment. We also provide a summary of contemporary statistical methods and highlight existing data sets that can be used to test developmental cascade models of educational attainment from birth through adulthood. We conclude the chapter by discussing the challenges of this research and explore important future directions of using developmental cascades to understand educational attainment.

Working memory development from early childhood to adolescence using two nationally representative samples.

We leveraged nationally representative data from the Panel study of Income Dynamics-Child Development Supplement (N = 3,562) and the Early Childhood Longitudinal study (N = 18,174), to chart the development of working memory, indexed via verbal forward and backward digit span task performance, from 3 to 19 years of age. Results revealed nonlinear growth patterns for forward and backward digit span tasks, with the most rapid growth occurring during childhood followed by a brief accelerated period of growth during early adolescence. We also found similar developmental trajectories on digit span task performance for males and females across the U.S. population. Together, this study highlights the relative importance of the childhood period for working memory development and provides researchers with a reference against which to compare the developmental changes of working memory in individual studies. From a practical perspective, clinicians and educators can also use this information to understand important periods of working memory growth using national developmental trends. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

It matters how you start: Early numeracy mastery predicts high school math course-taking and college attendance.

Using data from the Applied Problems subtest of the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement (Woodcock & Johnson, 1989/1990, Woodcock-Johnson psycho-educational battery-revised. Allen, TX: DLM Teaching Resources) administered to 1,364 children from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Childcare and Youth Development (SECCYD), this study measures children's mastery of three numeric competencies (counting, concrete representational arithmetic and abstract arithmetic operations) at 54 months of age. We find that, even after controlling for key demographic characteristics, the numeric competency that children master prior to school entry relates to important educational transitions in secondary and post-secondary education. Those children who showed low numeric competency prior to school entry enrolled in lower math track classes in high school and were less likely to enrol in college. Important numeracy competency differences at age 54 months related to socioeconomic inequalities were also found. These findings suggest that important indicators of long-term schooling success (i.e., advanced math courses, college enrollment) are evident prior to schooling based on the levels of numeracy mastery.

Socioeconomic Variations in the Frequency of Parent Number Talk: A Meta-Analysis.

Using data from 12 studies, we meta-analyze correlations between parent number talk during interactions with their young children (mean sample age ranging from 22 to 79 months) and two aspects of family socioeconomics, parent education, and family income. Potential variations in correlation sizes as a function of study characteristics were explored. Statistically significant positive correlations were found between the amount of number talk in parent-child interactions and both parent education and family income (i.e., r = 0.12 for education and 0.14 for income). Exploratory moderator analyses provided some preliminary evidence that child age, as well as the average level of and variability in socioeconomic status, may moderate effect sizes. The implications of these findings are discussed with special attention to interpreting the practical importance of the effect sizes in light of family strengths and debate surrounding "word gaps".

Preschool executive function and adult outcomes: A developmental cascade model.

The present study examined longitudinal associations between preschoolers' executive function (EF) and adult educational attainment, impulse control, and general health directly and through its cascading effects on childhood and adolescent EF using a large, national, and prospective longitudinal sample of participants. Data were drawn from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (NICHD SECCYD) and included a diverse sample (52% male at birth; 76% White; 13% Black; 6% Hispanic; and 5% other; 14.23 mean years of maternal education) of 1,364 participants born in 1991 and followed through age 26. Four main findings emerged. First, we observed significant bivariate relations between EF measured at 54 months and adult educational attainment (r = .36, p < .01), and impulse control (r = .11, p = .01). Second, early EF measured during preschool and childhood explained variance in adult educational attainment and impulse control above and beyond adolescent EF. Third, childhood EF mediated the association between preschool EF and adult educational attainment and impulse control but did not operate through adolescent EF. Finally, neither preschool EF nor EF measured at other developmental stages predicted health during adulthood. Together, these findings shed light on the direct and cascading influences of EF across development on important domains of adult functioning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Next Directions in Measurement of the Home Mathematics Environment: An International and Interdisciplinary Perspective.

This article synthesizes findings from an international virtual conference, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), focused on the home mathematics environment (HME). In light of inconsistencies and gaps in research investigating relations between the HME and children's outcomes, the purpose of the conference was to discuss actionable steps and considerations for future work. The conference was composed of international researchers with a wide range of expertise and backgrounds. Presentations and discussions during the conference centered broadly on the need to better operationalize and measure the HME as a construct - focusing on issues related to child, family, and community factors, country and cultural factors, and the cognitive and affective characteristics of caregivers and children. Results of the conference and a subsequent writing workshop include a synthesis of core questions and key considerations for the field of research on the HME. Findings highlight the need for the field at large to use multi-method measurement approaches to capture nuances in the HME, and to do so with increased international and interdisciplinary collaboration, open science practices, and communication among scholars.

Pathways from Socioeconomic Status to Early Academic Achievement: The Role of Specific Executive Functions.

Among the many factors contributing to the SES-achievement gap, executive function (EF) skills have received a considerable amount of attention, given their role in supporting academic skill development. While recent work has demonstrated that global EF constructs mediate SES-achievement relations, less attention has been paid to unpacking the role of specific EF components in linking SES to achievement. Data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 1,273) were analyzed to assess direct and indirect associations between SES indicators, preschool EF skills, and first-grade math and reading achievement. Using path analysis, we found parent education and working memory to be uniquely and most predictive of both achievement domains. Further, after controlling for baseline academic skills, verbal ability, and other child- and family-level covariates, only working memory mediated the association between parent education and children's math achievement. These findings offer a comprehensive look at the specific mechanisms through which socioeconomic disadvantage contributes to children's academic development and provide an initial step towards generating more precise targets for policies and interventions aimed at closing the achievement gap.

Early word-learning skills: A missing link in understanding the vocabulary gap?

Socioeconomic status (SES) has been repeatedly linked to the developmental trajectory of vocabulary acquisition in young children. However, the nature of this relationship remains underspecified. In particular, despite an extensive literature documenting young children's reliance on a host of skills and strategies to learn new words, little attention has been paid to whether and how these skills relate to measures of SES and vocabulary acquisition. To evaluate these relationships, we conducted two studies. In Study 1, 205 2.5- to 3.5-year-old children from widely varying socioeconomic backgrounds were tested on a broad range of word-learning skills that tap their ability to resolve cases of ambiguous reference and to extend words appropriately. Children's executive functioning and phonological memory skills were also assessed. In Study 2, 77 of those children returned for a follow-up session several months later, at which time two additional measures of vocabulary were obtained. Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and multivariate regression, we provide evidence of the mediating role of word-learning skills on the relationship between SES and vocabulary skill over the course of early development.

An overview of issues in infant and developmental research for the creation of robust and replicable science.

In the last few years, the field of psychology has been challenged with a crisis in the rigor and reproducibility of the science. The focus of these issues has primarily been in social, cognitive, and cognitive neuroscience psychology, however, the area of developmental research is not immune to these issues. This paper provides an overview of the "replication crisis" and the choices made by researchers that are often not noted in methods, thus making the replication of studies more difficult. In this review we discuss issues of researcher flexibility in the data design and selection of sample size, collection, and analysis stages of research. In each of these areas we address examples of bias and how developmental researchers can address these issues in their own research.

Socioemotional wellbeing of mixed race/ethnicity children in the UK and US: Patterns and mechanisms.

Existing literature suggests that mixed race/ethnicity children are more likely to experience poor socioemotional wellbeing in both the US and the UK, although the evidence is stronger in the US. It is suggested that this inequality may be a consequence of struggles with identity formation, more limited connections with racial/ethnic/cultural heritage, and increased risk of exposure to racism. Using data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study (n = 13,734) and the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (n ~ 6250), we examine differences in the socioemotional wellbeing of mixed and non-mixed 5/6 year old children in the UK and US and explore heterogeneity in outcomes across different mixed groups in both locations. We estimate a series of linear regressions to examine the contribution of factors that may explain any observed differences, including socio-economic and cultural factors, and examine the extent to which these processes vary across the two nations. We find no evidence of greater risk for poor socioemotional wellbeing for mixed race/ethnicity children in both national contexts. We find that mixed race/ethnicity children experience socio-economic advantage compared to their non-mixed minority counterparts and that socio-economic advantage is protective for socioemotional wellbeing. Cultural factors do not contribute to differences in socioemotional wellbeing across mixed and non-mixed groups. Our evidence suggests then that at age 5/6 there is no evidence of poorer socioemotional wellbeing for mixed race/ethnicity children in either the UK or the US. The contrast between our findings and some previous literature, which reports that mixed race/ethnicity children have poorer socioemotional wellbeing, may reflect changes in the meaning of mixed identities across periods and/or the developmental stage of the children we studied.

Sharing as a model for understanding division.

Emerging research suggests that children's ability to divide is the best predictor of later arithmetic development. Although division is typically taught around grade 3, children much younger than this practice division when sharing and allocating resources (e.g. sharing food). To test the hypothesis that social sharing abilities are linked to the emergence of complex numerical division abilities, we examined sharing and division abilities in adults and children. The first study used functional near infrared spectroscopy to examine the neurocognitive bases of division in adults (N=28; age range: 18-23 years) during a task that evaluated their judgment of proportions in the context of sharing, as well as traditional numerical division tasks. The second study explored the relation between sharing and emergent math abilities in children (N=53; age range: 4-6 years) using the same sharing task and established math measures. Our findings suggest that social sharing activities might engage similar cognitive mechanisms that support mathematical reasoning. The study informs theories of numerical cognition and highlights the importance of examining gaps in how early life activities support cognitive development.

Mapping the Growth of Heterogeneous Forms of Externalizing Problem Behavior Between Early Childhood and Adolescence:A Comparison of Parent and Teacher Ratings.

We compared long-term growth patterns in teachers' and mothers' ratings of Overt Aggression, Covert Aggression, Oppositional Defiance, Impulsivity/inattention, and Emotion Dysregulation across developmental periods spanning kindergarten through grade 8 (ages 5 to 13 years). We also determined whether salient background characteristics and measures of child temperament and parenting risk differentially predicted growth in discrete categories of child externalizing symptoms across development. Participants were 549 kindergarten-age children (51% male; 83% European American; 17% African American) whose problem behaviors were rated by teachers and parents each successive year of development through 8th grade. Latent growth curve analyses were performed for each component scale, contrasting with an overall index of externalizing, in a piecewise fashion encompassing two periods of development: K-1and grades 1-8. Our findings showed that there were meaningful differences and similarities between informants in their levels of concern about specific forms of externalizing problems, patterns of change in problem behavior reports across development, and in the extent to which their ratings of specific problems were associated with distal and proximal covariates. Thus, these data provided novel information about issues that have received scant empirical attention and have important implications for understanding the development and prevention of children's long-term externalizing problems.

Contributions of Research based on the PSID Child Development Supplement.

The Child Development Supplement to the PSID (PSID-CDS) began in 1997 with a cohort of 2,394 households including 3,586 children. Since that auspicious start, three waves of the first cohort were collected - 1997, 2002-03, and 2007-08 - and a new cohort was interviewed in 2014. To date more than 400 journal articles, chapters, books, and dissertations that used the data have been collected in the PSID bibliography. This paper brings together founders and early adopters to summarize important contributions to the child development, time use, media, and health literatures. The purpose of this paper is not a detailed literature review but an overview of the literature and knowledge base to which PSID-CDS researchers have contributed. It points out unique methodological and measurement contributions, summarizes the motivation for research on parental investments in children, reviews findings regarding healthy child development, and examines the role of neighborhoods in children's lives.

Self-Concept Predicts Academic Achievement Across Levels of the Achievement Distribution: Domain Specificity for Math and Reading.

This study examines whether self-concept of ability in math and reading predicts later math and reading attainment across different levels of achievement. Data from three large-scale longitudinal data sets, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development-Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, and Panel Study of Income Dynamics-Child Development Supplement, were used to answer this question by employing quantile regression analyses. After controlling for demographic variables, child characteristics, and early ability, the findings indicate that self-concept of ability in math and reading predicts later achievement in each respective domain across all quantile levels of achievement. These results were replicated across the three data sets representing different populations and provide robust evidence for the role of self-concept of ability in understanding achievement from early childhood to adolescence across the spectrum of performance (low to high).

Family food talk, child eating behavior, and maternal feeding practices.

Families discuss food and eating in many ways that may shape child eating habits. Researchers studying how families talk about food have examined this process during meals. Little work has examined parent-child food-related interactions outside of mealtime. We assessed family food talk at home outside of mealtime and tested whether food talk was associated with obesogenic child eating behaviors, maternal feeding practices, or child weight. Preschool and school-aged mother-child dyads (n = 61) participated in naturalistic voice recording using a LENA (Language ENvironment Analysis) recorder. A coding scheme was developed to reliably characterize different types of food talk from LENA transcripts. Mothers completed the Children's Eating Behavior Questionnaire (CEBQ) and Child Feeding Questionnaire (CFQ) to assess child eating behaviors and maternal feeding practices. Child weight and height were measured and body mass index z-score (BMIz) calculated. Bivariate associations among food talk types, as a proportion of total speech, were examined and multivariate regression models used to test associations between food talk and child eating behaviors, maternal feeding practices, and child BMIz. Proportion of child Overall Food Talk and Food Explanations were positively associated with CEBQ Food Responsiveness and Enjoyment of Food (p's < 0.05). Child food Desire/Need and child Prep/Planning talk were positively associated with CEBQ Enjoyment of Food (p < 0.05). Child Food Enjoyment talk and mother Overt Restriction talk were positively associated with CEBQ Emotional Over-Eating (p < 0.05). Mother Monitoring talk was positively associated with CFQ Restriction (p < 0.05). Mother Prep/Planning talk was negatively associated with child BMIz. Food talk outside of mealtimes related to child obesogenic eating behaviors and feeding practices in expected ways; examining food talk outside of meals is a novel way to consider feeding practices and child eating behavior.