Understanding Working Memory and Mathematics Development in Ethnically/Racially Minoritized Children through an Integrative Theory Lens.

Limited research on working memory has centered on ethnically/racially minoritized children, thereby limiting researchers' abilities to draw conclusions about working memory or to provide additional supports in cultivating working memory for these children. Using the Integrative Theory as a lens, the current study explored the predictive benefit of parent academic socialization strategies on the working memory and subsequent mathematics skills of a nationally representative sample of ethnically/racially minoritized children. Using structural equation modeling techniques, a path model including social position; family structure; leisure activities; parent academic socialization strategies; and their association with kindergarten Asian/Asian-American (N = 1211), Black (N = 1927), and Latine (N = 3671) children's working memory and first-grade mathematics skills were examined. Furthermore, multigroup moderation was used to test for differences between ethnic/racial groups. Connections to social capital theory, community cultural wealth, and culturally relevant interpretations of the study findings are discussed.

The benefits of math activities depend on the skills children bring to the table.

Playing board games and other math activities can provide young children with opportunities to develop their math skills. However, it is critical to understand for whom these activities may be most beneficial. In two studies, we examine the extent to which foundational cognitive skills moderate the effects of playing math games on math skills. In Study 1, we look cross-sectionally at the association between parents' frequency of math activities with their 3- to 4-year-old children (N = 124) and children's math achievement, examining the extent to which children's skills moderate this relation. We find that frequent math activities are only associated with better math performance for children with better number knowledge. In Study 2, we test this experimentally by randomly assigning parents and children (N = 76) to play with a number-related board game, an active control board game, or a business-as-usual control group. Controlling for number knowledge, inhibitory control, and vocabulary at pretest, no differences in math skills at posttest were observed between the training groups. However, a significant interaction emerged between training group assignment and number knowledge, such that children with higher pretest number knowledge had higher posttest math scores when assigned to the number board game condition compared to the two control conditions, but no differences among conditions were seen for children with lower number knowledge. Collectively, these findings suggest that math activities may be most beneficial for math skills when children have stronger number knowledge and underscore the need for tailoring activities to children's current skill level. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Task features change the relation between math anxiety and number line estimation performance with rational numbers: Two large-scale online studies.

Math performance is negatively related to math anxiety (MA), though MA may impact certain math skills more than others. We investigated whether the relation between MA and math performance is affected by task features, such as number type (e.g., fractions, whole numbers, percentages), number format (symbolic vs. nonsymbolic), and ratio component size (small vs. large). Across two large-scale studies (combined n = 3,822), the MA-performance relation was strongest for large whole numbers and fractions, and stronger for symbolic than nonsymbolic fractions. The MA-performance relation was also stronger for smaller relative to larger components, and MA relating to specific number types may be a better predictor of performance than general MA for certain tasks. The relation between MA and estimation performance changes depending on task features, which suggests that MA may relate to certain math skills more than others, which may have implications for how people reason with numerical information and may inform future interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The role of executive function in shaping the longitudinal stability of math achievement during early elementary grades.

There is substantial rank-order stability in children's mathematical skills throughout development. Research has shown that children who enter school with relatively low math skills are unlikely to catch up to peers who begin kindergarten with more developed math skills. Emerging evidence suggests that children's executive function skills might play an important role in shaping the rate and stability of mathematical skill development during early development. Therefore in the present study, we used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort 2010-11-a prospective sample of over 18,000 children in the United States-to examine executive function as an antecedent to characteristics of growth in math skills and to test whether executive function moderates the longitudinal stability of math achievement from kindergarten through second grade. Latent growth curve models reveal that executive function is related to not only the level of math skills at school entry but also to the rate of growth in early elementary years. Moreover, we found that executive function moderated the stability of math achievement from kindergarten to second grade, suggesting that early executive function skills can serve as a compensatory mechanism for children who enter school with lower levels of mathematical skills. These findings might have important implications for narrowing gaps in math achievement during early elementary school.

Exploring effects of an early math intervention: The importance of parent-child interaction.

We explore whether training parents' math skills or playing number games improves children's mathematical skills. Participants were 162 parent-child dyads; 88.3% were white and children (79 female) were 4 years (M = 46.88 months). Dyads were assigned to a number game, shape game, parent-only approximate number system training, parent-only general trivia, or a no-training control condition and asked to play twice weekly for 8 weeks. Children in the number game condition gained over 15% SD on an assessment of mathematical skill than did those in the no-training control. After 8 additional weeks without training, effects diminished; however, children of parents in the ANS condition underperformed those in the no-treatment control, which was partially explained by changes in the home numeracy environment.

Mothers' and fathers' executive function both predict emergent executive function in toddlerhood.

There are multivariate influences on the development of children's executive function throughout the lifespan and substantial individual differences can be seen as early as when children are 1 and 2 years of age. These individual differences are moderately stable throughout early childhood, but more research is needed to better understand their origins. To some degree, individual differences in executive function are correlated between mother and child, but no research to date has examined these associations prior to when children are preschool age, nor have any studies considered the role of fathers' and mothers' executive function in tandem. Here, we use a sample of 484 families (Mothers 89.2% white; Fathers 92.5% white) in three countries (UK, USA, Netherlands) to investigate the role of each parents' executive function on the development of children's (49.7% female) executive function from 14 (M = 14.42, SD = 0.57) to 24 (M = 24.47, SD = 0.78) months, as well as parenting practices that underlie these associations. Results of structural equation models suggest stability in some-but not all-components of executive function and growing unity between components as children age. We replicate extant findings such that mothers' executive function predicts children's executive function over and above stability and extend these findings to include associations between father and child skills. We find an additive role of fathers' EF, similar in magnitude to the role of mothers' EF. Finally, for both mothers and fathers we find that sensitivity and autonomy supportive practices mediate the relations between parents' and children's executive function.

Parents' expressed emotions and children's executive functions.

The ways in which people talk about their family members may say as much as the words themselves. For example, emotions expressed by family members of mentally ill patients during unscripted speech samples relate to the risk of relapse and the prognosis of psychiatric disorders; however, the idea of expressed emotions as a construct has previously been limited to parents of children and adolescents aged 4-18 years who suffer from severe emotional or behavior dysregulation. Here, we applied an expressed emotions coding paradigm to speech samples obtained from mothers and fathers of 104 typically developing children when the children were 14 months of age. This is the first study applying the expressed emotions coding paradigm at this age. Parents were prompted to give thoughts, attitudes, and feelings about their children; speech samples were coded for critical comments (e.g., "She is very whiny"), emotional over-involvement (e.g., "I was so worried, I couldn't sleep"), and quality of relationship (e.g., "We get along great"). During the same home visit, children completed three executive function tasks that measured children's inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. We found negative associations between fathers' criticism and their children's inhibition and between fathers' emotional over-involvement and their children's working memory. In contrast, we found positive associations between mothers' expressed quality of relationship and their children's working memory. This approach to analyzing parents' speech samples may allow for unique insights into the thoughts, attitudes, and feelings of new parents and how that might guide children's development.

Numeracy and COVID-19: examining interrelationships between numeracy, health numeracy and behaviour.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people across the globe have been exposed to large amounts of statistical data. Previous studies have shown that individuals' mathematical understanding of health-related information affects their attitudes and behaviours. Here, we investigate the relation between (i) basic numeracy, (ii) COVID-19 health numeracy, and (iii) COVID-19 health-related attitudes and behaviours. An online survey measuring these three variables was distributed in Canada, the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK) (n = 2032). In line with predictions, basic numeracy was positively related to COVID-19 health numeracy. However, predictions, neither basic numeracy nor COVID-19 health numeracy was related to COVID-19 health-related attitudes and behaviours (e.g. follow experts' recommendations on social distancing, wearing masks etc.). Multi-group analysis was used to investigate mean differences and differences in the strength of the correlation across countries. Results indicate there were no between-country differences in the correlations between the main constructs but there were between-country differences in latent means. Overall, results suggest that while basic numeracy is related to one's understanding of data about COVID-19, better numeracy alone is not enough to influence a population's health-related attitudes about disease severity and to increase the likelihood of following public health advice.

The role of infant attention and parental sensitivity in infant cognitive development in the Netherlands and China.

Infant attention and parental sensitivity are important predictors of later child executive function (EF). However, most studies have investigated infant and parent factors in relation to child EF separately and included only mothers from Western samples. The current study examined whether both infant attention at 4 months and parental sensitivity at 4 and 14 months were related to infant EF (i.e., inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility) at 14 months among 124 Dutch and 63 Chinese first-time mothers and fathers and their infants. Findings revealed that parental sensitivity at 4 months was not correlated with infant EF abilities at 14 months. However, infant attention at 4 months was significantly related to 14-month working memory, but not to inhibition and cognitive flexibility. Maternal sensitivity at 14 months was significantly related to 14-month inhibition, but not to working memory and cognitive flexibility. No country differences were found in the relation among 4-month infant attention, parental sensitivity, and EF outcomes. Results show that both infant and parent factors are associated with early EF development and that these correlates of early EF skills may be similar in Western and non-Western samples.

A rational explanation for links between the ANS and math.

The proposal by Clarke and Beck offers a new explanation for the association between the approximate number system (ANS) and math. Previous explanations have largely relied on developmental arguments, an underspecified notion of the ANS as an "error detection mechanism," or affective factors. The proposal that the ANS represents rational numbers suggests that it may directly support a broader range of math skills.

Prenatal mother-father cortisol linkage predicts infant executive functions at 24 months.

The present study investigated associations between prenatal mother-father cortisol linkage and infant executive functions. Data come from an international sample (N = 358) of predominantly white and middle- to upper-class first-time parents. During late pregnancy, parents collected diurnal salivary cortisol samples and reported on levels of psychological stress. At 24 months, children completed a battery of executive function tasks. Parent cortisol linkage was operationalized as the time-dependent, within-dyad association between maternal and paternal diurnal cortisol. Results indicated that prenatal linkage was positively related to infant executive functions, suggesting that stronger mother-father cortisol linkage was associated with higher executive function scores. Additionally, this relation was moderated by paternal average cortisol levels such that executive function scores were lower when fathers had higher average cortisol levels and linkage was weak. This association suggests that elevated paternal cortisol amplifies the negative relation between lower cortisol linkage and lower infant executive function scores. Importantly, these findings were observed while controlling for observational measures of caregiving and self-report measures of psychosocial functioning and infant social-emotional behavior. These results suggest that prenatal linkage of mother's and father's stress physiology plays a potentially important part in programming and regulating infant neurocognitive development.

Screen Time in the Coronavirus 2019 Era: International Trends of Increasing Use Among 3- to 7-Year-Old Children.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate changes in electronic screen-based media use in 3- to 7-year-old children across 6 countries as a result of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. STUDY DESIGN: Between April and July 2020, parents of 2516 children completed online survey measures reporting current ("now") and retrospective ("before the pandemic") screen-based media use for the purposes of entertainment, educational app use, and socializing with family and friends. Parents also reported family socioeconomic characteristics and impacts of the pandemic to their physical wellbeing (eg, whether a family member or friend had been diagnosed with COVID-19) and social disruption (eg, whether family experienced a loss of income or employment due to the pandemic). RESULTS: On average, children engaged with screens more than 50 minutes more during the pandemic than before. This was largely driven by increases in screen use for entertainment purposes (nearly 40 minutes) and for use of educational apps (over 20 minutes). There was no overall change in screen use for socializing with family and friends. Children from lower socioeconomic status households increased screen use both for entertainment and educational app use more so than did children from higher socioeconomic status households. CONCLUSIONS: The global pandemic caused by COVID-19 has increased overall electronic screen-based media use. As lives become increasingly digital by necessity, further research is needed to better understand positive and negative consequences of electronic screen-based media use.

Screens across the pond: Findings from longitudinal screen time research in the US and UK.

Digital media are increasingly pervasive in the lives of young children. This increase in the availability of digital media might have long-run implications for child development; however, it is too soon to definitively conclude the direction of effects. In part due to this lack of certainty, leading health organizations have chosen to make different recommendations to parents of young children: Many international health organizations (e.g., the American Academy of Pediatrics, World Health Organization) recommend very young children be limited to under one hour of screen time daily, whereas others (e.g., Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health) have intentionally opted not to make recommendations about specific limits. These guidelines might contribute to parents in different countries making meaningfully different choices about children's use of digital media. Using a sample of N = 303 families recruited in Cambridgeshire, England and New York City prior to the birth of couples' first child, we explore predictors of digital media use across the first two years of life. Data were collected when children were 4, 14, and 24 months of age. Results of latent growth curve analyses show that generally, children spend more time engaging with digital media as they grow older; however, growth mixture models reveal most children fit into one of two classes: One group of children (High Media Users; 52.2 %) engages with a substantial amount of digital media, whereas the other (Low Media Users; 48.8 %) engages with relatively little. Children in the US were approximately 30 % more likely to be in the Low Media Users group and there were no differences in group membership on the basis of parents' psychosocial wellbeing. While these differences could be due to a number of factors, these findings may reflect the power of pediatric recommendations.

Background media use is negatively related to language and literacy skills: indirect effects of self-regulation.

BACKGROUND: Media use is pervasive among young children. Over 95% of homes in the US have one or more televisions, and access to screen-based media continues to grow with the availability of new technologies. Broadly, exposure to large amounts of screen-based media is negatively related to language and literacy skills; however, questions remain as to the features of media that are detrimental to these skills and the mechanisms by which they are connected. METHODS: A nationally representative sample of 922 children aged 3-7 years was recruited. Parents completed phone-based questionnaires of children's language, literacy, and self-regulation skills and a 24-h time diary in 2009. Path models were used to estimate the direct and indirect associations between context and content of media use with language and literacy skills. RESULTS: Background and entertainment television, but not educational television, were negatively associated with language and literacy. Further, the link between background television and language and literacy skills was fully mediated by self-regulation. CONCLUSIONS: Television left on in the background and entertainment programming (or that which is not child-directed) is particularly detrimental for language and literacy skills. Additional research is needed to further explore self-regulation as a mechanism by which screen use predicts academic skills. IMPACT: Background and entertainment television are negatively associated with language and literacy skills in 3- to 7-year-old children. We find no relation between educational programming and language and literacy skills. Self-regulation is a potential mechanism underlying the relation between background television and language and literacy skills. Anticipatory guidance for parents would be to consider turning off screen-based media devices when no one is watching. Parents should be mindful of the types of content their children are watching on screen-based media.

Screen Time and Executive Function in Toddlerhood: A Longitudinal Study.

Technology is pervasive in homes with young children. Emerging evidence that electronic screen-based media use has adverse effects on executive functions may help explain negative relations between media use and early academic skills. However, longitudinal investigations are needed to test this idea. In a sample of 193 British toddlers tracked from age 2 to 3 years, we test concurrent and predictive relations between screen use and children's executive function. We find no concurrent association between screen use and executive function; however, screen time at age 2 is negatively associated with the development of executive functions in toddlerhood from age 2 to 3, controlling for a range of covariates including verbal ability. Implications for parenting, education, and pediatric recommendations are discussed.

The Multifactorial Nature of Early Numeracy and Its Stability.

Early numeracy is a robust predictor of later mathematical abilities. So far, early numeracy has typically been presented as a unitary or two-factorial construct. Nevertheless, there is recent evidence suggesting that it may also be reflected by more basic numerical competences. However, the structure and stability of such a multifactorial model of early numeracy over time has not been investigated yet. In the present study, we used data from a large, longitudinal sample (N = 1292) in the United States with assessments of math ability in prekindergarten and kindergarten to evaluate both the factorial structure of early numeracy and its stability over time. Confirmatory factor analysis identified four distinct basic numerical competences making up early numeracy in prekindergarten: patterning/geometry, number sense, arithmetic, and data analysis/statistics. Stability as tested by means of measurement invariance indicated configural invariance of these four factors from prekindergarten to kindergarten. This reflected that early numeracy in kindergarten was made up by the same four basic numerical competences as in prekindergarten and thus seemed rather stable over the course of preschool. These findings may not only have implications for research on numerical cognition but particularly for diagnostic processes or the development of interventions in educational practice.

Infant screen exposure links to toddlers' inhibition, but not other EF constructs: A propensity score study.

Technology is pervasive in homes of families with young children, despite evidence for negative associations between infant exposure to screen-based media and cognitive development that has led the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to discourage parents from exposing children under the age of 18 months to any kind of screen time (AAP, 2016). Here, we apply a propensity score matching approach to estimate relations between electronic screen-based media use in infancy and executive function in early toddlerhood. In an international sample of 416 firstborn infants, parental report of regular exposure to screen-based media at 4 months predicted poorer performance on a test of inhibition at 14 months, but was unrelated to either cognitive flexibility or working memory at 14 months. Results of this study are therefore consistent with the view that early exposure to screen-based media adversely affects the development of executive function.

Mothers' distancing language relates to young children's math and literacy skills.

Parents' distancing language-language that requires cognitive abstraction and moves beyond the "here and now"-relates to children's literacy skills, but its association with mathematics remains unexamined. Participants were 242 mother-child dyads from African American, Chinese American, Dominican American, and Mexican American backgrounds. Mothers' distancing language was examined while mothers shared a wordless book with their 5-year-olds; children's math and literacy skills were assessed when children were 5.0 and 6.5 years of age. Mothers' distancing language, but not amount of language (word tokens), related to children's concurrent math and literacy skills. Mothers' distancing language predicted growth in children's literacy skills over time and related to later math indirectly through associations with early math. The importance of distancing language for cognitive growth may have implications for parenting and classroom practice.

Couples becoming parents: Trajectories for psychological distress and buffering effects of social support.

BACKGROUND: Becoming a parent is a time of both joy and stress. Associations between exposure to postnatal depression and negative child outcomes underscore the importance of understanding trajectories and correlates of perinatal depression and anxiety. METHODS: In a study of 438 expectant couples (from the UK, USA and Netherlands) tracked across four time-points (third trimester, 4, 14 and 24 months), we used dyadic latent growth curve modeling (LGCM) of self-reported symptoms of anxiety and depression (CES-D, GHQ, STAI) to investigate the affective impact of becoming a parent. RESULTS: Confirmatory factor analyses of anxious-depressive symptoms revealed a single latent factor with measurement invariance across time and parent. Dyadic LGCM intercepts showed greater prenatal problems in mothers compared with fathers. LGCM slopes revealed stable maternal problems but worsening paternal problems. Both intercepts and slopes showed significant within-couple associations. Controlling for prenatal salivary cortisol levels and perinatal couple relationship quality, support from friends attenuated mothers' psychological distress and support from family reduced fathers' psychological distress across the transition to parenthood. LIMITATIONS: Our sample was low risk (i.e., predominantly well-educated and affluent and no history of serious mental illness), limiting the generalizability of findings. In addition, the inverse association between psychological distress and social support may, in part, reflect the use of self-report for both measures. CONCLUSIONS: The international dyadic longitudinal design strengthens conclusions regarding variation in trajectories of psychological distress in both mothers and fathers. Crucially, social support appears pivotal in enabling new parents to flourish.