Preschool children's screen time during the COVID-19 pandemic: associations with family characteristics and children's anxiety/withdrawal and approaches to learning.

With schools closed due to the COVID-19, many children have been exposed to media devices for learning and entertainment, raising concerns over excessive screen time for young children. The current study examined how preschoolers' screen time was associated with their family characteristics and anxiety/withdrawal and approaches to learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were 764 caregivers of 3- to 6-year-old children (mean age = 59.07 months, SD = 12.28 months; 403 boys and 361 girls) from nine preschools in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic started. The effects of family characteristics on children's screen time during the pandemic outbreak and the associations between screen time and children's anxiety/withdrawal and approaches to learning were examined using path analysis. The results showed that children who spent more time on interactive screen use (e.g., playing with tablets) showed higher levels of anxiety/withdrawal and fewer positive learning behaviors. Unexpectedly, children who spent more time on noninteractive screen use (e.g., watching TV) showed lower levels of anxiety/withdrawal. Additionally, children's screen time was related to family characteristics: children living in more chaotic families with fewer screen time restrictions spent more time on screen use after the pandemic outbreak. The findings suggest that young children's frequent use of interactive screens, such as tablets and smartphones, might be harmful to their learning and wellbeing during the pandemic. To mitigate the potential negative effects, it is essential to manage the screen time of preschoolers by establishing rules for their interactive screen use and improving the household routines related to the overall screen use.

Subtypes of mathematical learning disability and their antecedents: A cognitive diagnostic approach.

Using cognitive diagnostic modeling (CDM), this study identified subtypes of mathematics learning disability (MLD) based on children's numerical skills and examined the language and spatial precursors of these subtypes. Participants were 99 MLD children and 420 low achievers identified from 1839 Finnish children (966 boys) who were followed from preschool (age 6) to fourth grade (2007-2011). Five subtypes were identified: the arithmetic fluency deficit only subtype, the counting deficit subtype, the pervasive deficit subtype, the symbolic deficit subtype, and the counting and concept deficit subtype. Different subtypes depended on different constellations of language and spatial deficits. Findings highlight the effectiveness of CDM in identifying MLD subtypes and underscore the importance of understanding the specific deficits and antecedents of the subtypes.

Spatial skills and number skills in preschool children: The moderating role of spatial anxiety.

Spatial ability is a strong and stable predictor of mathematical performance. However, of the three key components of spatial ability, spatial perception and spatial visualization have received less attention than mental rotation in relation to specific mathematical competencies of young children. Even less is known about the role of spatial anxiety in this relationship. This study examined the longitudinal relations of spatial perception and spatial visualization to three number skills (i.e., number line estimation, subitizing, and word problem-solving) among 190 preschool children, and whether these relations varied as a function of spatial anxiety. The results showed that children's spatial perception and spatial visualization skills, measured in the third preschool year (Time 1 [T1]), were positively associated with their word problem-solving six months later (Time 2 [T2]). Children's T1 spatial perception was also positively associated with their T2 subitizing and number line skills. In addition, T1 spatial anxiety moderated the relation between T1 spatial perception and T2 subitizing: the relation between the two was stronger for children with low levels of spatial anxiety than it was for those with moderate or high levels. The findings offer valuable insights into how spatial cognition and affect jointly relate to children's early number skills.

Longitudinal relations between the approximate number system and symbolic number skills in preschool children.

This study examined the longitudinal relation between the approximate number system (ANS) and two symbolic number skills, namely word problem-solving skill and number line skill, in a sample of 138 Chinese 4- to 6-year-old children. The ANS and symbolic number skills were measured first in the second year of preschool (Time 1 [T1], mean age = 4.98 years; SD = 0.33) and then in the third year of preschool (Time 2 [T2]). Cross-lagged analyses indicated that word problem-solving skill at T1 predicted ANS acuity at T2 but not vice versa. In addition, there were bidirectional relations between children's word problem-solving skill and number line estimation skill. The observed longitudinal relations were robust to the control of child's sex, age, maternal education, receptive vocabulary, spatial visualization, and working memory except for the relation between T1 word problem-solving skill and T2 number line estimation skill, which was explained by child's age.

Establishing a Longitudinal Comparable Scale of Chinese Children's Cognitive Development through Calibrated Projection Linking.

In the past decades, the longitudinal approach has been remarkably and increasingly used in the investigations of children's cognitive development. Recently, many researchers have started to realize the importance and necessity of examining measurement invariance for any further longitudinal analysis. However, there are few empirical studies demonstrating how to conduct further analysis when the assumption of measurement invariance of an instrument is violated. The primary purpose of this study is to explore how a newly-developed calibrated projection method can be applied to reduce the impact of lack of parameter invariance in a longitudinal study of preschool children's cognitive development. The sample consisted of 882 children from China who participated in two waves of the cognitive tests when they were 4 and 5 years old. Before this study was conducted, the IRT method was used to examine the measurement invariance of the instrument. The results showed that five items presented difficulty parameter drift and three items presented discrimination/slope parameter drift. In the study, the invariant items were treated as "common items" and calibrated projection linking was used to establish a comparable scale across two time points. Then the linking method was evaluated by three properties: grade-to-grade growth, grade-to-grade variability, and the separation of distributions. The results showed that the grade-to-grade growth across two waves was larger and exhibited a larger effect size; the grade-to-grade variability showed less scale shrinkage, which indicated a smaller measurement error; the separation of distributions showed a larger growth as well.

Construct Validity of the Children's Coping Strategies Scale (CCSS): A Bifactor Model Approach.

There has been debate regarding the factor structure of the Children's Coping Strategies Scale (CCSS); in most previous studies there were different subscales, representing coping strategies. However, according to the theoretically multidimensional construct of coping, coping consists of an adaptive process and uses the lowest possible level of coping strategy. Accordingly, this study applies a new method of multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) to testing the latent structure of teenagers' coping strategies and to improve the construct validity of the CCSS. The participants were 1,138 16-year-old high school students (48.2% female, 51.8% male) studying arts and science. This study compares three different model types: a unidimensional model, a simple multidimensional construct model, and a bifactor model. The results indicate that the latent structure of CCSS is not only described by specific coping strategies (e.g., rumination) but also by a general adaptation process, which is consistent with theoretical understandings of coping. Furthermore, the five-factor model, which contains a "reflection" dimension, is more suitable for Chinese teenagers.