How mothers talk to their children about failure, mistakes and setbacks is related to their children's fear of failure.

BACKGROUND: Many people fear failure and making mistakes. This fear can be transmitted from parents to children, suggesting that parental communication regarding failures and setbacks may play a critical role in shaping a child's perception of mistakes. AIMS: In this study, we investigated how everyday parent-child conversations about setbacks influence children's fear of making mistakes. SAMPLE: Drawing on the large pre-birth Growing Up in New Zealand cohort, we focused on a sub-sample of 231 mother-child dyads who engaged in a recorded conversations about a "recent disappointment or setback" when the children were 8 years old. METHOD: Conversations between mothers and children about the recent disappointments were coded to identify whether parents recognised or acknowledge their child's emotional response, if action plans were discussed, and the types of resources that the child could draw on. The children also completed a questionnaire about their global self-worth and their fear of making mistakes. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: The discussion of clear action plans, in the absence of a discussion about collaborative resources, was found to be associated with an increased fear of making mistakes among children. Conversely, when mothers clearly acknowledged their child's emotions and discussed ways to work collaboratively with their child on future problems, there was a notable decrease in the child's fear of mistakes. However, it is noteworthy that many mothers in our study either minimally acknowledged or dismissed their child's emotions(40%), rarely discussed action plans (55%), or collaborative resources (79%)when discussing the recent setback.

Task demands matter in shaping how preschoolers express instrumental helping, comforting, and sharing: A longitudinal analysis.

The current research provides a detailed longitudinal examination of instrumental helping, comforting, and sharing in early childhood. Preschoolers completed a series of prosocial behavior tasks when they were 2 years old (n = 200), 3 years old (n = 161), and 4 years old (n = 135). As expected, children's prosocial behaviors increased with age across all tasks. Yet children's prosocial behaviors were more nuanced than expected, with significant differences in scores between trials within each type of prosocial behavior. Cross-lagged panel modelling revealed that instrumental helping at 3 years predicted comforting when an experimenter was sad or cold at 4 years. Furthermore, children's comforting of a sad experimenter at 3 years predicted sharing their own toy with a sad experimenter at 4 years. These findings offer novel insights into the developmental trajectory of three types of prosocial behavior in early childhood.

The effects of live parental infant-directed singing on infants, parents, and the parent-infant dyad: A systematic review of the literature.

Singing to infants is widely accepted as an enjoyable, positive, and beneficial interaction between the parent and infant across cultures. Whilst the literature suggests that live infant-directed singing impacts the infant, the parent doing the singing and the dyad in powerful ways, no systematic review of the evidence has yet been conducted. To this end, this systematic review identified 21 studies that investigated the effect of live parental infant-directed singing. These impacts were categorized as either being directly related to the infant, the parent, or the parent-infant dyad. Three main themes - one for each of the impact categories considered - were identified using thematic analysis techniques; infant-directed singing impacts on: infants' emotional regulation, provides validation of the parent's role, and promotes affect attunement within the dyad. The findings reinforce the benefits of live parental infant-directed singing for all parties involved, particularly when parents sing to typically developing infants born at full term. In contrast, the findings were inconsistent for pre-term infants. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Feeling loved as a strong link in relationship interactions: Partners who feel loved may buffer destructive behavior by actors who feel unloved.

Feeling loved (loved, cared for, accepted, valued, understood) is inherently dyadic, yet most prior theoretical perspectives and investigations have focused on how actors feeling (un)loved shapes actors' outcomes. Adopting a dyadic perspective, the present research tested whether the established links between actors feeling unloved and destructive (critical, hostile) behavior depended on partners' feelings of being loved. Does feeling loved need to be mutual to reduce destructive behavior, or can partners feeling loved compensate for actors feeling unloved? In five dyadic observational studies, couples were recorded discussing conflicts, diverging preferences or relationship strengths, or interacting with their child (total N = 842 couples; 1,965 interactions). Participants reported how much they felt loved during each interaction and independent coders rated how much each person exhibited destructive behavior. Significant Actors' × Partners' Felt-Loved interactions revealed a strong-link/mutual felt-unloved pattern: partners' high felt-loved buffered the damaging effect of actors' low felt-loved on destructive behavior, resulting in actors' destructive behavior mostly occurring when both actors' and partners' felt-loved was low. This dyadic pattern also emerged in three supplemental daily sampling studies. Providing directional support for the strong-link/mutual felt-unloved pattern, in Studies 4 and 5 involving two or more sequential interactions, Actors' × Partners' Felt-Loved in one interaction predicted actors' destructive behavior within couples' subsequent conflict interactions. The results illustrate the dyadic nature of feeling loved: Partners feeling loved can protect against actors feeling unloved in challenging interactions. Assessing Actor × Partner effects should be equally valuable for advancing understanding of other fundamentally dyadic relationship processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Moving beyond response times with accessible measures of manual dynamics.

Button-press measures of response time (RT) and accuracy have long served a central role in psychological research. However, RT and accuracy provide limited insight into how cognitive processes unfold over time. To address this limitation, researchers have used hand-tracking techniques to investigate how cognitive processes unfold over the course of a response, are modulated by recent experience, and function across the lifespan. Despite the efficacy of these techniques for investigating a wide range of psychological phenomena, widespread adoption of hand-tracking techniques within the field is hindered by a range of factors, including equipment costs and the use of specialized software. Here, we demonstrate that the behavioral dynamics previously observed with specialized motion-tracking equipment in an Eriksen flanker task can be captured with an affordable, portable, and easy-to-assemble response box. Six-to-eight-year-olds and adults (N = 90) completed a computerized version of the flanker task by pressing and holding a central button until a stimulus array appeared. Participants then responded by releasing the central button and reaching to press one of two response buttons. This method allowed RT to be separated into initiation time (when the central button was released) and movement time (time elapsed between initiation and completion of the response). Consistent with previous research using motion-tracking techniques, initiation times and movement times revealed distinct patterns of effects across trials and between age groups, indicating that the method used in the current study presents a simple solution for researchers from across the psychological and brain sciences looking to move beyond RTs.

Enduring COVID-19 lockdowns: Risk versus resilience in parents' health and family functioning across the pandemic.

Have the demands of the COVID-19 pandemic risked declines in parents' health and family functioning, or have most parents been resilient and shown no changes in health and family functioning? Assessing average risk versus resilience requires examining how families have fared across the pandemic, beyond the initial months examined in prior investigations. The current research examines changes in parents' health and functioning over the first 1.5 years of the pandemic. Parents (N = 272) who had completed general pre-pandemic assessments completed reassessments of psychological/physical health, couple/family functioning, and parenting within two mandatory lockdowns in New Zealand: at the beginning of the pandemic (26 March-28 April 2020) and 17 months later (18 August-21 September 2021). Parents exhibited average declines in psychological/physical health (greater depressive symptoms; reduced well-being, energy and physical health) and in couple/family functioning (reduced commitment and family cohesion; greater problem severity and family chaos). By contrast, there were no average differences in parent-child relationship quality and parenting practices across lockdowns. Declines in health and couple/family functioning occurred irrespective of pre-pandemic health and functioning, but partner support buffered declines in couple/family functioning. The results emphasize that attending to the challenges parents and couples face in the home will be important to mitigate and recover from the impact of the pandemic on parents' and children's well-being.

Initial interactions matter: Warm-up play affects 2-year-olds' cooperative ability with an unfamiliar same-aged peer.

Interaction quality during cooperative exchanges affects children's ability to successfully coordinate their actions with a same-aged peer to attain a shared goal. However, it is unclear how initial interactions in one context shape children's ability to cooperate in a subsequent task. In the current research, we examined whether the interaction quality (e.g., affiliation, antagonism, joint coordinated engagement, joint contribution) of a warm-up period between 2-year-old unfamiliar dyads (N = 144 dyads) predicts the dyad's performance and interaction quality in a following cooperative task. Children who participated more effectively during a toy clean-up activity at the end of the warm-up interaction were more likely to respond to their partner's efforts to cooperate in the novel cooperative task. Initial displays of affiliation during the warm-up period appeared to enhance cooperative ability by facilitating cooperative motivation. The current research demonstrates that initial interactions influence toddlers' cooperative performance and thus highlights the importance of considering task order and children's social behaviors when designing studies on cooperative competence.

A Survey of Screen Media Access and Use in Primary School Children's Households.

Our primary aim was to gain a better understanding of current technology availability and use in the homes of primary school children. The online-accessible questionnaire was made available for families with a child enrolled at primary school, with over 300 families participating. The results suggest that it is common for children to be introduced to screen media early in life and that they watch a wide range of content. While many families have rules regarding their children's technology use, screen media is a significant part of their lives, with many children exceeding the recommended two hours of viewing per day. Future research could investigate whether media access and use differ between ethnic and socio-demographic groups, and whether changes have occurred as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Parents' distress and poor parenting during a COVID-19 lockdown: The buffering effects of partner support and cooperative coparenting.

The COVID-19 pandemic is placing demands on parents that may amplify the risk of parents' distress and poor parenting. Leveraging a prepandemic study in New Zealand, the current research tested whether parents' psychological distress during a mandated lockdown predicts relative residual changes in poorer parenting and whether partner support and cooperative coparenting buffer this potentially detrimental effect. Participants included 362 parents; 310 were from the same family (155 dyads). Parents had completed assessments of psychological distress and parenting prior to the pandemic and then reported on their distress, parenting, partner support, and cooperative coparenting during a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown. Parents' distress during the lockdown predicted relative residual increases in harsh parenting, but this effect was buffered by partner support. Parents' distress also predicted residual decreases in warm/responsive parenting and parent-child relationship quality, but these effects were buffered by cooperative coparenting. Partner support and cooperative coparenting are important targets for future research and interventions to help parents navigate challenging family contexts, including COVID-19 lockdowns. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotion regulation and psychological and physical health during a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown.

The current research tests the links between emotion regulation and psychological and physical health during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Study 1, parents (N = 365) who had reported on their psychological and physical health prior to the pandemic completed the same health assessments along with their use of emotion regulation strategies when confined in the home with their school-aged children during a nationwide lockdown. In Study 2, individuals (N = 1,607) from a nationally representative panel study completed similar measures of psychological and physical health and use of emotion regulation strategies one-year prior to the lockdown and then again during the lockdown. Accounting for prepandemic psychological health, greater rumination and emotional suppression were independently associated with poorer psychological health (greater depressive symptoms and psychological distress, lower emotional and personal well-being), even when controlling for the emotional challenges of the pandemic (emotion control difficulties, perceived support; Studies 1 and 2) and a range of demographic covariates (Study 2). Greater rumination was also associated with greater fatigue in both studies, but greater rumination and emotional suppression were only independently associated with poorer perceptions of physical health in Study 2. The results for cognitive reappraisal were mixed; positive associations with personal well-being and general health only emerged in Study 2. The results provide evidence that key models in affective science help explain differences in psychological and physical health within the throes of a real-world demanding context and thus offer targets to help facilitate health and resilience during the pandemic (and other crises). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Associations between technoference, quality of parent-infant interactions, and infants' vocabulary development.

"Technoference" describes the distraction from interpersonal activities that can occur due to use of mobile screen devices. Focusing on parent-infant interactions, our study investigated the associations between potential sources of "technoference" and parental responsiveness, scaffolding and directiveness toward their infant, and coordinated joint attention (CJA). Previous research demonstrates that each of these dimensions is related to early language development. Potential sources of "technoference" employed in our study included the amount of time the parent spends on their mobile device per hour when with their infant; the number of audible notifications the parent receives per hour, the number of times per hour they check their device; and parents' score on the Distraction In Social Relations and Use of Parent Technology (DISRUPT) scale. We investigated associations between our measures of parental "technoference" and infants' language development, and whether parental responsiveness, scaffolding, directiveness or parent-infant CJA mediate associations between "technoference" and language. Frequency of audible notifications negatively predicted infant vocabulary, and this relationship was fully mediated by parental directiveness.

Conflict-coparenting spillover: The role of actors' and partners' attachment insecurity and gender.

The current research applied a dyadic perspective to examine conflict-coparenting spillover by examining (a) whether actors' or partners' hostility during couples' conflict discussions predicted greater hostility in a subsequent play activity with their child and (b) whether these actor and partner effects were moderated by two factors that prior theory and research suggest may shape conflict-coparenting spillover: attachment insecurity and parent gender. Cohabiting or married couples were video recorded discussing their most serious conflict while their 4-5-year-old child was in a separate room (N = 94 families). Immediately following their conflict discussions, couples were reunited with their child to participate in a semistructured family activity. Independent teams of observational coders rated how much each partner displayed (a) hostility during the conflict discussion (conflict hostility) and (b) hostility during the family activity (coparenting hostility). The results provide novel evidence that conflict-coparenting spillover is a dyadic process shaped by actors' and partners' attachment insecurity and gender. Men exhibited greater conflict-coparenting spillover even if they were low in attachment anxiety, but men's conflict-coparenting spillover was lower when their partners were lower in attachment anxiety and avoidance. Women's lower attachment anxiety also was associated with women's own lower conflict-coparenting spillover. This pattern suggests that men are more vulnerable to conflict-coparenting spillover, whereas women lower in attachment anxiety and avoidance appear able to contain both their own and their partners' conflict hostility from spilling over to family interactions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Peek-a-who? Exploring the dynamics of early communication with an interactive partner swap paradigm and state space grid visualization.

Effective caregiver-infant communication occurs when interactive partners successfully coordinate multiple modalities (e.g., body movements, affect, eye gaze). The complex interplay of multiple modalities during caregiver-infant interactions is difficult to capture, which has made a comprehensive, evidence-based understanding of caregiver-infant communication difficult to achieve. We present a novel methodological approach to address this challenge by combining an Interactive Partner Swap (IPS) paradigm with a longitudinal design, detailed multimodal coding, and data visualization via state space grids (SSGs). We demonstrate the utility of our approach by presenting three sets of SSGs which reveal both dyadic flexibility and stability in caregiver-infant peek-a-boo interactions across three levels: micro (moment-to-moment), meso (interactive context), and macro (infant development). By using SSGs to explore the patterns that hold and others that differ systematically across interactive partner and infant development, our novel approach promises to offer critical first steps to creating a more detailed understanding of the dynamics of early multimodal communication.

Sexist attitudes predict family-based aggression during a COVID-19 lockdown.

The current research examined whether men's hostile sexism was a risk factor for family-based aggression during a nationwide COVID-19 lockdown in which families were confined to the home for 5 weeks. Parents who had reported on their sexist attitudes and aggressive behavior toward intimate partners and children prior to the COVID-19 pandemic completed assessments of aggressive behavior toward their partners and children during the lockdown (N = 362 parents of which 310 were drawn from the same family). Accounting for pre-lockdown levels of aggression, men who more strongly endorsed hostile sexism reported greater aggressive behavior toward their intimate partners and their children during the lockdown. The contextual factors that help explain these longitudinal associations differed across targets of family-based aggression. Men's hostile sexism predicted greater aggression toward intimate partners when men experienced low power during couples' interactions, whereas men's hostile sexism predicted greater aggressive parenting when men reported lower partner-child relationship quality. Novel effects also emerged for benevolent sexism. Men's higher benevolent sexism predicted lower aggressive parenting, and women's higher benevolent sexism predicted greater aggressive behavior toward partners, irrespective of power and relationship quality. The current study provides the first longitudinal demonstration that men's hostile sexism predicts residual changes in aggression toward both intimate partners and children. Such aggressive behavior will intensify the health, well-being, and developmental costs of the pandemic, highlighting the importance of targeting power-related gender role beliefs when screening for aggression risk and delivering therapeutic and education interventions as families face the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Relationship problems, agreement and bias in perceptions of partners' parental responsiveness, and family functioning.

The current study examined whether couples' relationship problems negatively influenced perceptions of partners' parenting and, in turn, undermined family functioning. Couples (N = 96) completed assessments of relationship problems and family chaos before participating in a family play activity with their 4- to 5-year-old child. Parents reported on their own and their partner's responsiveness toward their child and how much the interaction was a positive and connected family experience. Objective observers also rated each parent's responsiveness toward their child. Parents completed measures assessing family chaos 1 year later. Perceptions of partners' parental responsiveness were significantly associated with both partners' self-reported and observers' ratings of partners' parental responsiveness, but such levels of relative agreement were modest. After accounting for agreement, perceptions of parental responsiveness was shaped by 2 sources of bias: (a) Parents who felt that they were less versus more responsive to their child viewed their partners as less versus more responsive as a parent (assumed similarity), and (b) parents who experienced greater relationship problems perceived their partner to be less responsive as a parent (relationship bias). Perceiving partners to be a less responsive parent, in turn, predicted (a) feeling less connected as a family during the interaction and residual increases in family chaos 1 year later. The results indicate that couples' relationship problems spill over to bias perceptions of parenting, which interferes with couples' ability to provide a connected, stable, and secure family environment. The results highlight that perceptual processes are important in understanding and addressing the ways couples' problems spill over across family subsystems. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Let's get it together: Infants generate visual predictions based on collaborative goals.

Infants engage in social interactions that include multiple partners from very early in development. A growing body of research shows that infants visually predict the outcomes of an individual's intentional actions, such as a person reaching towards an object (e.g., Krogh-Jespersen & Woodward, 2014), and even show sophistication in their predictions regarding failed actions (e.g., Brandone, Horwitz, Aslin, & Wellman, 2014). Less is known about infants' understanding of actions involving more than one individual (e.g., collaborative actions), which require representing each partners' actions in light of the shared goal. Using eye-tracking, Study 1 examined whether 14-month-old infants visually predict the actions of an individual based on her previously shared goal. Infants viewed videos of two women engaged in either a collaborative or noncollaborative interaction. At test, only one woman was present and infants' visual predictions regarding her future actions were measured. Fourteen-month-olds anticipated an individual's future actions based on her past collaborative behavior. Study 2 revealed that 11-month-old infants only visually predict higher-order shared goals after engaging in a collaborative intervention. Together, our results indicate that by the second year after birth, infants perceive others' collaborative actions as structured by shared goals and that active engagement in collaboration strengthens this understanding in young infants.

Emotion regulation, conflict resolution, and spillover on subsequent family functioning.

How does emotion regulation in one social context spillover to functioning in another? We investigate this novel question by drawing upon recent evidence that 3 categories underpin the most commonly assessed emotion regulation strategies: disengagement, aversive cognitive perseveration, and adaptive engagement. We examine how these emotion regulation categories during marital conflict are associated with conflict resolution and assess the associated implications for functioning during a subsequent family activity. We also develop and compare observational and self-report measures of emotion regulation. Couples (N = 101) were video-recorded discussing a major conflict and reported on their emotion regulation during the discussion. Couples then participated in a family activity with their 5-year-old child, and reported on the quality of the family experience and responsiveness toward their child. Observational coders rated how much each participant exhibited each type of emotion regulation during the conflict discussion. Greater disengagement and aversive cognitive perseveration were associated with lower conflict resolution, and in turn, less positive experiences and poorer parental responsiveness during the family activity. Greater adaptive engagement had the opposite effects, but only disengagement and aversive cognitive perseveration had independent effects when controlling for the other emotion regulation categories. Finally, observational and self-report measures were only weakly associated, but illustrated the same pattern of effects. These novel findings suggest that emotion regulation strategies have important flow-on effects beyond the context initially enacted. The results also indicate that self-report versus observed measures of emotion regulation reveal similar patterns, but may capture different intrapersonal and interpersonal elements of emotion regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

We cooperated so now what? Infants expect cooperative partners to share resources.

Research has demonstrated that an understanding of and engagement in cooperative activities emerges early in life. However, little is known about the expectations infants hold about the consequences of cooperative action. We demonstrate that 14-month-old infants expect that cooperative partners will share the recently attained cooperative goal instead of keeping it for themselves. Interestingly, this prediction does not hold if infants saw the two individuals work towards individual goals. These findings contribute to the growing body of literature suggesting that infants possess at least a basic understanding of cooperation well before their second birthday.

Just rewards: 17-Month-old infants expect agents to take resources according to the principles of distributive justice.

Adults expect distributive justice-that rewards are distributed according to the principles of equality and equity. Previous research has demonstrated that preschool-aged children are sensitive to distributive justice, yet the age at which these sensitivities emerge remains unknown. The current research demonstrates that 17-month-old infants (N = 84) expect individuals to distribute shared resources based on the amount of work each partner contributed to attain the resources. These findings provide evidence that sensitivity to two principles of distributive justice, equity and equality, emerges much earlier than has previously been suggested.

24-Month-Olds' Selective Learning Is Not an All-or-None Phenomenon.

Evidence that children maintain some memories of labels that are unlikely to be shared by the broader linguistic community suggests that children's selective learning is not an all-or-none phenomenon. Across three experiments, we examine the contexts in which 24-month-olds show selective learning and whether they adjust their selective learning if provided with cues of in-context relevance. In each experiment, toddlers were first familiarized with a source who acted on familiar objects in either typical or atypical ways (e.g., used a car to mimic driving or hop like a rabbit) or labeled familiar objects incorrectly (e.g., called a spoon a "brush"). The source then labeled unfamiliar objects using either a novel word (e.g., fep; Experiment 1) or sound (e.g., ring; Experiments 2 and 3). Results indicated that toddlers learnt words from the typical source but not from the atypical or inaccurate source. In contrast, toddlers extended sound labels only when a source who had previously acted atypically provided the sound labels. Thus, toddlers, like preschoolers, avoid forming semantic representations of new object labels that are unlikely to be relevant in the broader community, but will form event-based memories of such labels if they have reason to suspect such labels will have in-context relevance.