A meta-analysis of child-parent attachment in early childhood and prosociality.

Although numerous individual studies have attempted to link child-parent attachment and prosociality, a systematic picture of that relationship requires a meta-analytic approach that considers different dimensions of prosociality and potential moderators. The current meta-analysis examined 41 studies drawn primarily from North America and Europe and published between 1978 to 2020. Child age ranged from 12 to 53 months at the assessment of child-parent attachment and 12 to 108 months at the assessment of prosociality. Across 35 studies (100 effect sizes, N = 4,611), child-mother attachment security and child prosociality were significantly associated (r = .19, 95% CI [.14, .23]). No moderators were identified. Exploratory estimates were also derived for subtypes of child-mother attachment insecurity. Across six studies (eight effect sizes, N = 402), child-father attachment security was significantly associated with prosociality (r = .11, 95% CI [.02, .23]). The magnitude of effect sizes did not differ based on parent gender. The discussion considers areas of growth for attachment and prosociality research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The association of fire or police first responder initiated interventions with out of hospital cardiac arrest survival.

OBJECTIVE: Fire and police first responders are often the first to arrive in medical emergencies and provide basic life support services until specialized personnel arrive. This study aims to evaluate rates of fire or police first responder-initiated cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and automated external defibrillator (AED) use, as well as their associated impact on out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) outcomes. METHODS: We completed a secondary data analysis of the MI-CARES registry from 2014 to 2019. We reported rates of CPR initiation and AED use by fire or police first responders. Multilevel modeling was utilized to evaluate the relationship between fire/police first responder-initiated interventions and outcomes of interest: ROSC upon emergency department arrival, survival to hospital discharge, and good neurologic outcome. RESULTS: Our cohort included 25,067 OHCA incidents. We found fire or police first responders initiated CPR in 31.8% of OHCA events and AED use in 6.1% of OHCA events. Likelihood of sustained ROSC on ED arrival after CPR initiated by a fire/police first responder was not statistically different as compared to EMS initiated CPR (aOR 1.01, CI 0.93-1.11). However, fire/police first responder interventions were associated with significantly higher odds of survival to hospital discharge and survival with good neurologic outcome (aOR 1.25, 95% CI 1.08-1.45 and aOR 1.40, 95% CI 1.18-1.65, respectively). Similar associations were see when examining fire or police initiated AED use. CONCLUSIONS: Fire or police first responders may be an underutilized, potentially powerful mechanism for improving OHCA survival. Future studies should investigate barriers and opportunities for increasing first responder interventions by these groups in OHCA.

Data missingness in the Michigan NEMSIS (MI-EMSIS) dataset: a mixed-methods study.

OBJECTIVE: The study was done to evaluate levels of missing and invalid values in the Michigan (MI) National Emergency Medical Services Information System (NEMSIS) (MI-EMSIS) and explore possible causes to inform improvement in data reporting and prehospital care quality. METHODS: We used a mixed-methods approach to study trends in data reporting. The proportion of missing or invalid values for 18 key reported variables in the MI-EMSIS (2010-2015) dataset was assessed overall, then stratified by EMS agency, software platform, and Medical Control Authorities (MCA)-regional EMS oversight entities in MI. We also conducted 4 focus groups and 10 key-informant interviews with EMS participants to understand the root causes of data missingness in MI-EMSIS. RESULTS: Only five variables of the 18 studied exhibited less than 10% missingness, and there was apparent variation in the rate of missingness across all stratifying variables under study. No consistent trends over time regarding the levels of missing or invalid values from 2010 to 2015 were identified. Qualitative findings indicated possible causes for this missingness including data-mapping issues, unclear variable definitions, and lack of infrastructure or training for data collection. CONCLUSIONS: The adoption of electronic data collection in the prehospital setting can only support quality improvement if its entry is complete. The data suggest that there are many EMS agencies and MCAs with very high levels of missingness, and they do not appear to be improving over time, demonstrating a need for investment in efforts in improving data collection and reporting.

Rethinking emotions in the context of infants' prosocial behavior: The role of interest and positive emotions.

Emotions form the foundation of infants' early social interactions and yet their role in prosocial behaviors is generally limited to situations of distress and other negative emotions. The present article argues that both positive emotions and the emotion of interest play important roles in prosocial behavior and development. First, we explore the ways in which positive emotions characterize infants' everyday prosocial behavior and the relationships that support these behaviors. We then examine the emotion of interest and its role in infants' prosocial behavior. This article synthesizes recent research on positive emotions in early prosocial development and provides a first attempt to link the emotion of interest to prosocial behavior. We close by discussing future directions for research on prosocial behavior with these emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Happily Unhelpful: Infants' Everyday Helping and its Connections to Early Prosocial Development.

Young children's everyday helping in the home has received relatively little attention in research on prosocial behavior. Nevertheless, key features such as young children's cheerful participation in chores around the home, including in ways that make accomplishing these chores more difficult for parents, can reveal important facets of early prosocial development. The present study reports the results of an Internet (MTurk) survey of over 500 families with children aged 1-4 years about their children's prosocial tendencies, participation in nine common chores, whether children's helping attempts were helpful or not, and attributions about children's motives for helping. Consistent with much prior research, parents reported that children became more prosocial with age. The majority of parents reported children's participation in everyday helping is at times unhelpful. Parents attributed children's helping to a variety of motives and these too, changed with age. Fathers had somewhat different perceptions of children's everyday helping than mothers. Results are discussed in terms of how understanding everyday helping can contribute to ongoing debates in the literature about the roots of prosocial behavior.

Learning to talk to ourselves: Development, ignorance, and agency.

Although anti-reflectivism seems to preclude a role for reflection, this dichotomy could be synthesized in a Piagetian developmental framework. Development integrates a role for error and ignorance in reflection, and supports Doris's espousal of valuation, collaboration, and pluralism, and the importance of extrinsic factors to the self.

Infant helping in the first year of life: Parents' recollection of infants' earliest prosocial behaviors.

Prosocial behavior is widely thought to emerge early in the second year of life. This paper presents evidence that helping emerges early in the first year of life. Parents of 80 children asked to recollect the earliest instance of their child helping recalled help in two contexts: chores (e.g., cleaning up) and care and self-care (e.g., feeding and dressing). A subset of parents recalled helping even before eight months of age, most often in the context of self-care tasks. The presence of helping this early in the lifespan is situated in recent research, and its implications for current theories of early prosocial behavior are discussed.

Explicit scaffolding increases simple helping in younger infants.

Infants become increasingly helpful during the second year. We investigated experimentally whether adults' explicit scaffolding influences this development. Infants (N = 69, 13-18 months old) participated in a series of simple helping tasks. Half of infants received explicit scaffolding (encouragement and praise), whereas the other half did not. Among younger infants (below 15 months), infants who received explicit scaffolding helped twice as often as infants in the control group, and also helped more on several subsequent trials when no scaffolding was provided. As predicted, older infants were not affected by explicit scaffolding. These results demonstrate the influence of social experiences in early helping, but also how the effects of scaffolding may depend on the developmental level of the child. Less explicit forms of scaffolding may be effective when children are older. (PsycINFO Database Record

Helping the One You Hurt: Toddlers' Rudimentary Guilt, Shame, and Prosocial Behavior After Harming Another.

This study explored the role of guilt and shame in early prosocial behavior by extending previous findings that guilt- and shame-like responses can be distinguished in toddlers and, for the first time, examining their associations with helping. Toddlers (n = 32; Mage  = 28.9 months) were led to believe they broke an adult's toy, after which they exhibited either a guilt-like response that included frequently confessing their behavior and trying to repair the toy; or a shame-like response that included frequently avoiding the adult and seldom confessing or attempting to repair the toy. In subsequent prosocial tasks, children showing a guilt-like response helped an adult in emotional distress significantly faster and more frequently than did children showing a shame-like response.

The development of moral sense and moral thinking.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: The review critically evaluates recent claims that infants have innate knowledge of morality and examines the sources of moral norms. RECENT FINDINGS: Many studies show that toddlers readily help adults with daily tasks. A more contentious set of studies suggests that young infants prefer actors who help others to those who hinder them. Some researchers have interpreted these findings as indicating that morality is innately present in humans. Others look to alternative explanations in developmental systems theory. SUMMARY: Explaining the emergence of morality as innate, or wholly socialized, is problematic; instead morality could emerge in a developmental system in which children's early capacities are shaped by interpersonal engagement. Children's improving ability to coordinate with others at a practical level is later transformed through language and reflective thought, as children gain the ability to talk about what was previously implicit in interaction. Throughout, parents and caregivers have many opportunities to foster children's moral development in daily interactions.

Children's early helping in action: Piagetian developmental theory and early prosocial behavior.

After a brief overview of recent research on early helping, outlining some central problems, and issues, this paper examines children's early helping through the lens of Piagetian moral and developmental theory, drawing on Piaget's "Moral Judgment of the Child" (Piaget, 1932/1997), "Play, Dreams, and Imitation in Childhood" (Piaget, 1945/1951), and the "Grasp of Consciousness" (Piaget, 1976). Piaget refers to a level of moral development in action that precedes heteronomous and autonomous moral reasoning. This action level allows children to begin to interact with people and objects. In his later work, Piaget explores the gradual construction of understanding from this activity level. Taken together, these elements of Piagetian theory provide a promising conceptual framework for understanding the development of early helping.

Here, there and everywhere: emotion and mental state talk in different social contexts predicts empathic helping in toddlers.

A growing body of literature suggests that parents socialize early-emerging prosocial behavior across varied contexts and in subtle yet powerful ways. We focus on discourse about emotions and mental states as one potential socialization mechanism given its conceptual relevance to prosocial behavior and its known positive relations with emotion understanding and social-cognitive development, as well as parents' frequent use of such discourse beginning in infancy. Specifically, we ask how parents' emotion and mental state talk (EMST) with their toddlers relates to toddlers' helping and how these associations vary by context. Children aged 18- to 30-months (n = 38) interacted with a parent during book reading and joint play with toys, two everyday contexts that afford parental discussion of emotions and mental states. Children also participated in instrumental and empathic helping tasks. Results revealed that although parents discuss mental states with their children in both contexts, the nature of their talk differs: during book reading parents labeled emotions and mental states significantly more often than during joint play, especially simple affect words (e.g., happy, sad) and explanations or elaborations of emotions; whereas they used more desire talk and mental state words (e.g., think, know) in joint play. Parents' emotion and mental state discourse related to children's empathic, emotion-based helping behavior; however, it did not relate to instrumental, action-based helping. Moreover, relations between parent talk and empathic helping varied by context: children who helped more quickly had parents who labeled emotion and mental states more often during joint play and who elicited this talk more often during book reading. As EMST both varies between contexts and exhibits context-specific associations with empathic prosocial behavior early in development, we conclude that such discourse may be a key form of socialization in emerging prosociality.

From cleaning up to helping out: parental socialization and children's early prosocial behavior.

Relations between parental socialization and infants' prosocial behavior were investigated in sixty three 18- and 30-month old children. Parents' socialization techniques (e.g., directives, negotiation, reasoning) differed for the two age groups, as did relations between socialization and different forms of emerging prosocial behavior (helping; sharing).

A relational developmental systems approach to moral development.

Morality and cooperation are central to human life. Psychological explanations for moral development and cooperative behavior will have biological and evolutionary dimensions, but they can differ radically in their approach to biology. In particular, many recent proposals have pursued the view that aspects of morality are innate. We briefly review and critique two of these claims. In contrast to these nativist assumptions about the role of biology in morality, we present an alternative approach based on a relational developmental systems view of moral development. The role for biology in this approach is in setting up the conditions--the developmental system--in which forms of interaction and later forms of thinking emerge.

The effects of parental scaffolding on preschoolers' executive function.

The present study explores the effects of parental scaffolding of children's problem solving on the development of executive function (EF). Eighty-two children were assessed at 2, 3, and 4 years of age on a variety of EF tasks and, at ages 2 and 3, on a problem-solving puzzle with which parents offered structured assistance (i.e., scaffolding). Unlike previous studies of parental scaffolding, children's EF was examined at each time point. Scaffolding at age 3 was found to have a direct effect on EF at age 4. Furthermore, scaffolding at age 2 had an indirect on EF at age 4 through the child's verbal ability at age 3.

Knowing minds, controlling actions: the developmental relations between theory of mind and executive function from 2 to 4 years of age.

This longitudinal study examined the concurrent and predictive relations between executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM) in 82 preschoolers who were assessed when they were 2, 3, and 4 years old. The results showed that the concurrent relation between EF and ToM, after controlling for age, verbal ability, and sex, was significant at 3 and 4 years of age but not at 2 years of age. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that EF at age 2 significantly predicted ToM at age 3 and that EF at age 3 significantly predicted ToM at age 4, over and above the effects of age, verbal ability, and prior performance on ToM tasks. However, ToM at ages 2 and 3 did not explain a significant amount of variance in EF at age 4. Bootstrap procedures revealed that verbal ability at age 3 fully mediated the relation between ToM at age 2 and EF at age 4.