Developmental Psychology

Ethical and epistemic costs of a lack of geographical and cultural diversity in developmental science.
Increasing geographical and cultural diversity in research participation has been a key priority for psychological researchers. In this article, we track changes in participant diversity in developmental science over the past decade. These analyses reveal surprisingly modest shifts in global diversity of research participants over time, calling into question the generalizability of our empirical foundation. We provide examples from the study of early child development of the significant epistemic and ethical costs of a lack of geographical and cultural diversity to demonstrate why greater diversification is essential to a generalizable science of human development. We also discuss strategies for diversification that could be implemented throughout the research ecosystem in the service of a culturally anchored, generalizable, and replicable science. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Parental guidance fosters hands-on learning by infants in culturally different ways.
The present research examined cultural patterns of parental guidance for infants as they learned about a new physical rule with hands-on experience. Nine-month-olds participated in two sites: Taipei, Taiwan and Santa Cruz, California, United States (N = 96; 48 males, 48 females). They watched a single exemplar of covering events that demonstrated the to-be-learned rule, which was insufficient visual experience to learn the rule. As infants explored the objects while observing, their mothers provided culturally distinct guidance. The dyads in Taipei co-enacted directive guidance through parents’ hand-holding infants, whereas the dyads in Santa Cruz focused on infants’ free exploration. Despite different emphases of learning, both groups of infants benefited from hands-on experience and learned the rule with the single exemplar. The finding points to diverse pathways to support the early development of physical concepts for infants from different cultural backgrounds. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Prospective associations between stressors and alcohol use from early adolescence to young adulthood in Mexican-origin youth in the United States.
Stressors experienced across multiple domains (e.g., family and peers) may contribute to alcohol use trajectories; however, little is known about the longitudinal links between stressors and alcohol use among Latinx youth. Guided by prior work on stressors and alcohol use, the present study used longitudinal data to examine whether Mexican-origin adolescents’ (N = 674; 50% female; 28% Mexico born; 72% U.S. born) experiences of family and peer stressors across early to middle adolescence (Mage = 10.86, SDage = 0.51) predicted trajectories of alcohol use frequency and binge drinking from middle adolescence to young adulthood (Mage = 23.17, SDage = 0.59). Using two strategies for modeling stressors, we report results that showed more support for stressors across early adolescence as predictors of alcohol use trajectories when stressors were modeled as growth trajectories versus modeled as distal and proximal stressors. Findings underscore the need to consider strategies to attenuate the longitudinal links between stressors and alcohol use among Mexican-origin youth. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Israel-Arab Muslim children’s socioemotional functioning at kindergarten and during the COVID-19 pandemic: Relations with cognitive and socioemotional abilities, gender, and socioeconomic status.
Self-regulation (SR; emotion-related, and behavioral), executive function, and theory of mind (ToM) all play an important role in child socioemotional functioning (SEF). However, much remains unknown about the interplay among these abilities when facing various challenging situations. Additionally, the role of these abilities in child SEF has not yet been studied among minority children from an Eastern culture. Thus, we conducted one study with two models to examine the combined contribution of these core abilities, concurrently, to children’s SEF during the transition to kindergarten, and longitudinally (about 3 years later) to children’s SEF during COVID-19. Overall, 202 kindergarten children (aged 4.9–6.5 years) participated, of which 136 of them in the longitudinal follow-up (aged 8.83–10.6 years). We used behavioral tasks and teacher and maternal reports. Mothers also reported their own distress during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the transition to kindergarten, we found that emotion-related SR was positively related to children’s SEF. We also found that emotion-related SR moderated the relation between inhibition and ToM. In the follow-up study, we found that emotion-related SR in kindergarten significantly predicted children’s SEF during the COVID-19 crisis, directly and indirectly, through children’s SEF in kindergarten and their maternal COVID-related distress. Moreover, emotion-related SR moderated the longitudinal association between children’s ToM at kindergarten age and their SEF during the COVID-19 crisis. Our findings highlight the central role that emotion-related SR plays in children’s ability to face different challenges. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
The codevelopment of early social and cognitive skills in Ghana.
Children’s early skills are strong predictors of later learning outcomes. Research aiming to disentangle the causal effects of early skills from unmeasured, stable characteristics related to learning throughout development demonstrates that unmeasured confounders explain a large portion of the effects of early skills previously identified. To date, such research has been conducted exclusively in high-income Western countries, where education systems are better funded and overall learning outcomes are much higher than in low- and middle-income countries. The present study examined these issues in Ghana, a lower middle-income country in West Africa, using longitudinal data over 6 years (N = 2,012; 49.7% girls). We first used multilevel regression to estimate the associations of preschoolers’ social and cognitive skills on their fourth and fifth grade outcomes. Next, we employed the random intercept cross-lagged-panel model to test whether the estimated effects of preschool on later skills are sensitive to a model that attempts to adjust for stable confounding factors during this developmental period. Our findings indicate interindividual stability in math and literacy, as well as codevelopment of math, literacy, and executive function during early and middle childhood. We contribute evidence on children’s skill-building dynamics in a global context, with implications for how to optimize intervention programs and policies aiming to support children’s academic achievement and learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Network analysis of ethnic–racial socialization competency and content among diverse parents of color: An eye toward intervention targets.
To help their children survive and thrive in our unequal society, parents of color must engage in the process of ethnic–racial socialization (ERS) or teaching about race, ethnicity, and racism. Equally important to the provision of ERS messages are parents’ confidence, skills, and stress levels around delivering ERS (i.e., ERS competency). Currently, little work speaks to how different aspects of parental ERS competency and the content of the messages they give are related to each other. This is important to better understand not only for the continued refinement of theory but also to inform newly developed and future interventions intervening upon parental ERS. The present study, therefore, utilizes network analysis, an analytical tool not yet applied to the study of ERS but with the capabilities of illustrating the interrelations between specific aspects of ERS content and competency. Among 576 Black, Asian American, and Latinx parents (Mage = 44.52 years old, SDage = 9.16, 59.5% mothers) with adolescent children (Mage = 14.31, SDage = 2.48), we found evidence for relatively sparse interconnections between dimensions of ERS content and competency. However, we identified parental messages about racism and coping (preparation for bias), the celebration of diversity (cultural pluralism), the history and values of one’s ethnic–racial group (cultural socialization), and parents’ levels of socialization-related stress as particularly central, important aspects of ERS; these central components of ERS may have the potential to serve as particularly powerful intervention targets. Specific findings and the potential for network analyses to add to our understanding of the complex process of ERS are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Early adolescents’ ethnic–racial identity in relation to longitudinal growth in perspective taking.
Adolescents experience significant growth in social cognition, including perspective taking and identity formation. Due to the salience of race and ethnicity in the United States, adolescents’ ethnic–racial identity (ERI) may have important implications for their sociocognitive development. The present study tested the association between ERI in early adolescence and subsequent longitudinal growth in perspective taking. Participants included 560 adolescents assessed annually over 4 years, beginning in sixth and seventh grade. Adolescents were from a small, rural community in the southeast United States and were from diverse ethnic–racial backgrounds (primarily Latine, Black/African American, and multiracial). Using linear growth curve modeling, we examined whether initial ERI predicted intercepts and slopes of longitudinal growth in perspective taking across adolescence. Results showed that the development of perspective taking differed based on initial ERI. Perspective taking increased significantly for youth with low and average levels of ERI but remained high and stable for youth at high levels of ERI. This study offers important evidence that Latine, Black, and multiracial youth who explore and find more clarity in their sense of ERI earlier in adolescence also show higher initial levels of perspective taking, which remains high across adolescence. Over time, most youth grow in perspective taking and eventually reach similar levels, but youth high in ERI reach these higher levels earlier than their peers, who had less sense of clarity about their ERI early in adolescence. This is one of the first known studies to directly test the association between ERI and perspective taking, utilizing a diverse, longitudinal sample of adolescents. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Ethnic studies and student development: Cultivating racially marginalized adolescents’ critical consciousness.
There is debate around offering ethnic studies to high school students. Ethnic studies connects learning to students’ lives and analyzes the workings of racism to construct avenues toward equity. As the debate unfolds, it is critical to examine ethnic studies’ implications for youth development and the mechanisms that link it to student outcomes. One of ethnic studies’ long-stated goals is fostering students’ critical consciousness. Critical consciousness refers to critical reasoning around inequality (critical reflection), motivation to challenge inequality (critical motivation), and action taken to disrupt inequality (critical action). Little research has examined youth critical consciousness development within ethnic studies—a consciousness-raising system. Consequently, this longitudinal mixed-methods study examines students’ critical consciousness development in ethnic studies and sheds light on the contextual characteristics (i.e., critical school socialization) that foster critical consciousness. Analyses of 459 ninth-grade students’ (52% girls, 4% nonbinary; 1% Asian, 1% Black, 4% multiracial, 64% Latinx, 7% Native American, 15% described their own race, 7% skipped the question; Mage = 13.92) survey data, and focus group data with 19 students, revealed that ethnic studies-enrolled students grew more in their critical reflection than nonenrolled students. However, the quantitative data demonstrated decreasing critical motivation among all students, whereas the qualitative data suggested emergent critical motivation among ethnic studies-enrolled students. Furthermore, critical school socialization and teacher pedagogy were key to ethnic studies consciousness-raising. Altogether, this study highlights that ethnic studies fosters youth critical consciousness—a worthwhile outcome that should be considered in policy debates about ethnic studies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Transactional experiences of discrimination, depressive symptoms, and ethnoracial socialization in Mexican-origin families.
Racial–ethnic discrimination is a prevalent stressor for Mexican-origin individuals that potentiates health inequities in depressive symptoms. However, existing research has primarily focused on individual-level associations between discrimination and depressive symptoms, neglecting the interdependent nature within family systems. Little is known about how one family member’s discriminatory experiences relate to the depressive symptoms of others. Although ethnoracial socialization may disrupt the link from discrimination to depressive symptoms, how different ethnoracial socialization practices operate and influence parents themselves have not been examined. This study examines the associations among discriminatory experiences, depressive symptoms, and ethnoracial socialization among 604 Mexican-origin adolescents and their parents from low-income families. The findings revealed intraindividual and interindividual discrimination–depressive symptoms associations. Parental ethnoracial socialization’s role in the link varied over time, individuals, and practices. Mental health research and services should consider shared and nonshared experiences among family members and adopt personalized approaches to support different family members. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Remote Infant Studies of Early Learning (RISE): Scalable online replications of key findings in infant cognitive development.
The current article describes the Remote Infant Studies of Early Learning, a battery intended to provide robust looking time measures of cognitive development that can be administered remotely to inform our understanding of individual developmental trajectories in typical and atypical populations, particularly infant siblings of autistic children. This battery was developed to inform our understanding of early cognitive and language development in infants who will later receive a diagnosis of autism. Using tasks that have been successfully implemented in lab-based paradigms, we included assessments of attention, memory, prediction, word recognition, numeracy, multimodal processing, and social evaluation. This study reports results on the feasibility and validity of administration of this task battery in 55 infants who were recruited from the general population at age 6 months (n = 29; 14 female, 15 male) or 12 months (n = 26; 14 female, 12 male; 62% White, 13% Asian, 1% Black, 1% Pacific Islander, 22% more than one race; 6% Hispanic). Infant looking behavior was recorded during at-home administration of the battery on the family’s home computer and automatically coded for attention to stimuli using iCatcher+, an open-access software that assesses infant gaze direction. Results indicate that while some tasks replicated lab-based findings (attention, memory, prediction, and numeracy), others did not (word recognition, multimodal processing, and social evaluation). These findings will inform efforts to refine the battery as we continue to develop a robust set of tasks to improve the understanding of early cognitive development at the individual level in general and clinical populations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Measuring temperament in developmental research: A thin-slice approach to capturing temperament in infants and toddlers.
Temperament is a key factor in early development and predicts several key developmental outcomes. The ability to capture temperament in a variety of settings and ages is thus increasingly useful. Recent work has demonstrated the utility, reliability, and validity of thin-slice assessments in which brief snapshots of children’s behavior are used to make inferences about general traits (Tackett et al., 2016). Thin-slice has been effective for assessing personality in older children (over 7-years; Tackett et al., 2016, 2017) and preschoolers 3–6 years old (Whalen et al., 2021) when engaging in lab tasks or clinical assessments. However, no work has examined the use of thin-slice for temperament in younger, typically developing infants/toddlers during lab-based tasks. The present study aims to test a downward extension of a modified thin-slice approach to assess temperament using archived videos of 516 infants/toddlers (nfemale = 255; Mage = 27.51 months, Rangeage = 17–47 months). Children were originally recruited from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds across the central United States and completed a short play session, which incorporated standard language and cognition tasks that were not designed to elicit temperament; caregivers also reported their children’s temperament using the Early Child Behavior Questionnaire (Putnam & Rothbart, 2006). Naive raters scored the videos using a modification of the thin-slice approach. We find evidence of good reliability and validity for temperament scores using this approach suggesting thin-slice assessments are another method for measuring temperament in infants and toddlers. Moreover, thin-slice allows for post assessment of temperament even when it had not been formally assessed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Modeling longitudinal change patterns of self-regulation from early to middle childhood: Methodological innovations and individual differences.
Patterns of change in self-regulation from the ages of 2.5 to 12 years were modeled using repeated measures of self-regulation for a sample of 399 African American (n = 180, 45%) and Latinx (n = 219, 55%) children from families experiencing low income. Measures included both direct assessment and parent report. Results confirmed four components of self-regulation: working memory, inhibitory control, complex response inhibition, and set shifting. Furthermore, these components of self-regulation were more differentiated at younger ages but grew increasingly integrated as children developed. During early childhood, Latinx children displayed greater levels of working memory and higher levels of inhibitory control, and African American children displayed greater complex response inhibition and set shifting, but these ethnic differences reversed by early elementary school. By late middle childhood, ethnic differences in self-regulation had virtually disappeared altogether. Few differences by child gender or family poverty status were identified. Recommendations are provided to facilitate the modeling of self-regulation over extended periods of development including (a) utilizing measures that overlap time points, (b) standardizing the measurement scales, and (c) utilizing a flexible latent variable model. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
An introduction to inverse probability weighting and marginal structural models: The case of environmental tobacco exposure and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder behaviors.
Developmental scientists routinely examine how a focal predictor relates to some aspect of children’s development. Although covariate adjustment is typically used to test hypotheses, propensity score-based methods, including inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) and marginal structural models (MSM), can strengthen inference and answer more nuanced, developmentally relevant questions. This article provides a didactic introduction to IPTW and MSM methods and demonstrates their use for testing the impact of environmental smoke exposure (continuous treatment) from 6 to 90 months on parent-reported attention deficit hyperactivity disorder behaviors in first grade for 1,053 children (51% male, 44% Black) in the Family Life Project. We highlight differences that result both in conclusions and in the evaluation of assumptions for IPTW and MSM relative to more traditional covariate adjustment methods. Sample Stata syntax is provided. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)

Developmental Psychology - Vol 61, Iss 1