Behavioral and Physiological Antecedents of Inhibited and Uninhibited Behavior

4-month-old infants were specifically selected for patterns of affective and motoric reactivity that were hypothesized to be associated with later inhibited and uninhibited behavior. Infants were classified as high on motor activity and negative affect, high on motor activity and positive affect, or low on motor activity and affect. Brain electrical activity was assessed in these infants at 9 months of age, and behavior toward novelty was observed at 14 months of age. Infants who were high on motor activity and negative affect exhibited greater right frontal EEG activation at 9 months of age and inhibited behavior at 14 months of age. Infants classified as high motor/high positive at 4 months of age exhibited uninhibited behavior at 14 months of age. No relations were found between frontal asymmetry at 9 months of age and inhibited behavior at 14 months of age. However, greater activation in both the left and right frontal hemispheres was associated with higher inhibition scores at 14 months of age. These findings are discussed in terms of the role that affective and physiological reactivity may play in the development of social behavior during toddlerhood.     

Child Care and Children's Peer Interaction at 24 and 36 Months: The NICHD Study of Early Child Care

Data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care were examined to determine how children's experiences in child care were related to peer competence at 24 and 36 months of age, after controlling for the effects of family and child characteristics. Peer competence was assessed using mother and caregiver ratings as well as observations of children with their peers in child care, and at 36 months from observations of dyadic play with a familiar peer. Consistent, albeit modest, relations were found between child-care experiences in the first 3 years of life and children's peer competencies. Positive, responsive caregiver behavior was the feature of child care most consistently associated with positive, skilled peer interaction in child care. Children with more experience in child-care settings with other children present were observed to be more positive and skilled in their peer play in child care, although their caregivers rated them as more negative with playmates. Children who spent more hours in child care were rated by their caregivers as more negative in peer play, but their observed peer play was not related to the quantity of care. Child-care experiences were not associated with peer competence as rated by mothers or as observed in dyadic play with a friend. Maternal sensitivity and children's cognitive and language competence predicted peer competence across all settings and informants, suggesting that family and child-care contexts may play different, but complementary roles in the development of early emerging individual differences in peer interaction.     

Infant reactivity and reliance on mother during emotion challenges: prediction of cognition and language skills in a low-income sample

This investigation considers the association between patterns of emotional reactivity and reliance on mother in infancy and cognitive and language developments at age 2. Low-income women (N = 518) and their firstborn infants participated in (1) a lab-based assessment where emotion challenges were presented when the infants were 6 to 9 months old, and (2) an assessment of language and cognitive skills at age 2. After controlling for birthweight, early sensorimotor delay, and age at testing, infants who displayed a pattern of combined high reactivity and high reliance on mother in response to positive, anger, and fear emotion challenges had higher cognitive and language skills at age 2 compared with infants who displayed patterns of low reactivity and low reliance on mother. Children who showed high fearful distress and low reliance on mother and whose mothers had low psychological resources had especially poor developmental outcomes. The role of maternal availability in the socialization of emotion and early communication is discussed.     

Infant Proneness-to-Distress Temperament, Maternal Personality, and Mother-Infant Attachment: Associations and Goodness of Fit

66 mother-infant pairs were examined when the infants were 9 and 13 months. The purpose of this report was to examine relations between infant proneness-to-distress temperament, maternal personality characteristics, and mother-infant attachment. There were no main-effect relations between infant proneness-to-distress temperament as assessed at 9 months and infant attachment classification at 13 months. This was true whether security of attachment (A and C vs. B) or proposed temperament (A1-B2 vs. B3-C2) groupings of attachment classifications were examined. Infant proneness-to-distress temperament, however, was associated with maternal behavior and personality. Furthermore, security of attachment could be predicted by an interaction between maternal personality and infant proneness-to-distress. The importance of considering goodness-of-fit relations in predicting attachment security is discussed.     

Attachment, positive affect, and competence in the peer group: two studies in construct validation.

2 studies were undertaken to assess the positive affective correlates of secure attachment in infancy and to assess the relation between secure attachment in infancy and competence in the peer group at age 3 1/2 years. In study 1, smiling and smiling combined with vocalizing and/or showing toys distinguished securely from anxiously attached infants during free play at age 18 months. Rated quality of affective sharing distinguished securely from anxiously attached infants during free play at 18 months and 24 months. Thus, secure attachment involves more than the absence of negative or maladaptive behavior directed toward a caregiver. Study 2 assessed cross-age, cross-situational, and cross-behavioral consistency in quality of social adaptation. Quality of infant-mother attachment relationships at age 15 months was related to Q-sort assessments of personal and interpersonal competence in the preschool play-group at age 3 1/2 years. The results contribute to the validation of attachment as an important developmental construct. They also suggest that age appropriate assessment of developmental social competence constructs can be a useful alternative to the study of homotypic behavioral continuity.     

Speech perception in infancy predicts language development in the second year of life: a longitudinal study

Infants' early phonetic perception is hypothesized to play an important role in language development. Previous studies have not assessed this potential link in the first 2 years of life. In this study, speech discrimination was measured in 6-month-old infants using a conditioned head-turn task. At 13, 16, and 24 months of age, language development was assessed in these same children using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory. Results demonstrated significant correlations between speech perception at 6 months of age and later language (word understanding, word production, phrase understanding). The finding that speech perception performance at 6 months predicts language at 2 years supports the idea that phonetic perception may play an important role in language acquisition.     

The development of social referencing

The development of social referencing in 40 infants aged 6-9, 10-13, and 14-22 months was investigated in this study. Social referencing was defined broadly to include children's looks toward parents, their instrumental toy behaviors, affective expressions, and other behaviors toward parents. Children's looks at parents were more selective with increasing age, with older infants preferring to look directly at their parents' faces and younger infants showing no preference for looks to faces over looks elsewhere at the parent. Younger infants looked most often when their parents expressed positive affect, whereas older infants looked most often when parents displayed fearful reactions toward a stimulus. Evidence of a behavioral regulatory effect on instrumental toy behaviors was found only among infants 10-13 months of age. However, only infants older than 14 months of age inhibited touching the toy until after referencing the parent. On some measures these older infants showed a preference for toys associated with fearful messages. Affective expressions were in line with positive and negative behavior toward toys. No support for mood modification or simple imitation as explanations for the effects was found. Results indicated that the looking behavior of younger children may function differently than that of older children, and that social referencing involves a number of component skills that develop during the end of the first year and throughout the second year of life.     

The development of emotion expression during the first two years of life

This study examines the course of emotion expression development over the first 2 years of life in a sample of full-term and preterm children. 58 mother/infant pairs were videotaped at infant ages of 2 1/2, 5, 7 1/2, and 22 months, recording face-to-face interaction involving play and separation/reunion sessions. The tapes were coded on a second-to-second basis using Izard's facial affect coding system. Data analysis focused on (1) differences in expressive behavior at 22 months as a function of risk status, gender, attachment status, and patterns of earlier maternal contingency behavior; (2) stability of specific emotional expressive patterns across assessment periods; and (3) the relation of expressive behavior and security of attachment at 2 years to qualities of earlier affective interchange. Mother's contingency behavior (both general level and specific contingency patterns) appeared to have a material effect on the course of emotional development, as did birth status and gender. Prematurity was associated with differential socioemotional development well into the second year, much in contrast to the "catch-up effect" observed in linguistic and cognitive functioning. Discrete emotions analysis of attachment groups yielded differentiation along a broad negative/positive dimension, but it also showed that insecurely attached children can be characterized as showing inhibited anger expression. The results of this study are discussed within the framework of organizational models of infant affective development; attachment theory and discrete emotions approaches were found to yield different yet equally informative data on the course of socioemotional development.     

Preterm infant interaction with the caregiver in the first year of life and competence at age two.

Caregiver-infant interactions were studied for 50 preterm infants and their primary caregivers. Naturalistic observations in the home were made when the infants were 1, 3, and 8 months of age. The social transactions in the first year were related to competence at age 2, thereby extending a previous report showing a moderate association between caregiver-infant interaction and competence at 9 months. The frequency of early social transactions was predictive of the infant's competence at age 2 on the Gesell Developmental Schedules, a sensorimotor scale, a measure of receptive language, and the Bayley Mental Scale. Early social transactions were as predictive of 2-year competence as were caregiver-child transactions at age 2. The study suggests that social transactions as early as 1 month reflect some quality of the relationship between the caregiver and the infant that is important to the child's later mental performance.     

Relation of Rearing Environment to Adaptive Behavior of Egyptian Toddlers

2 questions were explored: (1) Do observed relations found in Western cultures between specific psychosocial environmental factors and toddlers adaptive behavior resemble the pattern of relations found in a non-Western setting? (2) Does the specificity of relations between environment and performance found in Western cultures also operate in a non-Western culture? Subjects were 153 Egyptian toddlers, 18–30 months of age, and their caregivers. Twice a month between 18 and 30 months toddlers were observed in naturalistic interactions with their caregivers, and measures of caregiver behavior and toddler functioning were coded. Replicating previous results from Western cultures, canonical analysis indicated that caregiver vocal stimulation was positively related to indices of toddler behavioral competence, while nonverbal response to vocalization and physical contact stimulation were negatively related. The salience of sib caregivers was also noted. Particularly for the age period between 24 and 29 months, results indicated specificity of environmental action such that measures of caregiver vocal stimulation were uniquely related to measures of toddler vocalization, while caregiver response to distress was uniquely related to toddler emotionality. The present pattern of results suggests at least some degree of cross-cultural generalizability of environment-development relations and of the specificity model of environmental action.     

Social interaction among deaf preschoolers. The effects of language ability and age

This study examined the relationship between deaf preschoolers' language abilities and their play behavior. Twenty-nine deaf children aged three to five years were observed during outdoor free play throughout the school year. Their language abilities varied widely and did not correlate with age. On the basis of two language tests, they were divided into three language ability groups--high, middle, and low. Language ability was found to be related to several aspects of play and social interaction. The children with high language ability were more likely than the other children to play with two partners at the same time (i.e., engage in triadic interaction), to interact with teachers, to prefer to play with children of similar language ability, to use language, and to receive language from their partners. Most of these effects seemed to be due solely to differences between the children with high language ability and those in the other two groups. Children in the low and middle language ability groups behaved similarly. Language ability was not related to any other aspect of peer relations. Thus, the impact of language ability seems limited. These results, in conjunction with past research, suggest that, for the most part, deaf preschoolers' language and social skills develop independently from each other.     

Change in Family Income-to-Needs Matters More for Children with Less

Hierarchical linear modeling was used to model the dynamics of family income-to-needs for participants of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care (N = 1,364) from the time that children were 1 through 36 months of age. Associations between change in income-to-needs and 36-month child outcomes (i.e., school readiness, receptive language, expressive language, positive social behavior, and behavior problems) were examined. Although change in income-to-needs proved to be of little importance for children from nonpoor families, it proved to be of great importance for children from poor families. For children in poverty, decreases in income-to-needs were associated with worse outcomes and increases were associated with better outcomes. In fact, when children from poor families experienced increases in income-to-needs that were at least 1 SD above the mean change for poor families, they displayed outcomes similar to their nonpoor peers. The practical importance and policy implications of these findings are discussed.     

The contributions of parental management language to executive function in preschool children

This study investigated relations between preschoolers’ emergent executive function skills and their interactions with parents, with particular focus on the verbal utterances parents use to guide children's behavior (i.e., management language). Parent–child dyads (n = 127) were videotaped during a structured play task and the frequency of two types of management language, Direction (high control) and Suggestion (low control), was observed. Children's executive function was assessed using the Head–Toes–Knees–Shoulders (HTKS) task. Latent growth modeling was used to investigate relations between management language and the development of children's executive function. Direction language (i.e., commands) was negatively associated with children's age three executive function but not significantly related to the rate of executive function development over time. Conversely, Suggestion language (i.e., questions and statements that offer children some degree of choice) was positively related to executive function at age three but negatively related to growth. The potential importance of management language as a parenting behavior that contributes to various aspects of children's self-regulation during preschool and kindergarten is discussed.     

Do late-talking toddlers turn out to have reading difficulties a decade later?

Language and reading outcomes at age 13 were examined in a sample of 22 children who were late talkers as toddlers. The late talkers, all of whom had normal nonverbal ability and age-adequate receptive language at intake (24-to-31 months), were compared to a group of 14 typically developing children similar at intake on age, SES, and nonverbal ability. Late talkers had significantly poorer vocabulary, grammar, reading/spelling, and verbal memory skills at age 13, although as a group, they generally performed in the average range on most language and academic tasks. The findings suggest that slow early language development reflects a predisposition for slower acquisition and lower asymptotic performance in a wide range of language-related skills into adolescence.     

Maternal Personality: Longitudinal Associations to Parenting Behavior and Maternal Emotional Expressions toward Toddlers

OBJECTIVE: Longitudinal associations among maternal personality, emotional expressions, and parenting were examined. DESIGN: Maternal parenting (sensitivity and intrusiveness) and positive emotional expressions were observed during a free-play session with toddlers at 18 (T1, n = 246) and 30 (T3, n = 216) months. Mothers completed a personality measure at T1 and a questionnaire measuring their emotional expressiveness (positive and negative) when toddlers were 24 months old (T2, n = 213). RESULTS: Dimensions of maternal personality and maternal emotional expressiveness were related to individual differences in maternal parenting behaviors, in particular to maternal sensitivity. Conscientiousness and Agreeableness at T1 were positively associated with observed positive emotional expressions at T1. Agreeableness, Openness to Experience, and Extraversion at T1 also were positively related to positive emotional expressions reported by mothers at T2. Maternal positive emotional expressions (T1 and T2), in turn, were associated with more sensitive behavior observed with toddlers at T3. CONCLUSION: In addition to direct effects of maternal personality on maternal parenting, mothers' emotional expressiveness was found to be a possible pathway for explaining relations of maternal personality and parenting.     

The play and language behavior of mothers with and without dyslexia and its association to their toddlers' language development

The play and language behavior of mothers with (n = 49) and without (n = 49) specific reading disabilities (RD) was investigated during play with their 14-month-old children. The contribution of maternal behavior to the language development of their children was examined. The children's receptive and expressive language skills were assessed longitudinally at 14, 18, and 30 months, using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories and the Reynell Developmental Language Scales. Children with and without familial risk for RD did not differ from each other in any play or language measures at these ages. No group differences were found for mothers' manifestations of nonsymbolic play and language. However, the typically reading (TR) mothers produced significantly more symbolic play and language in play interactions with their child than did the mothers with RD. The correspondence between mother-child symbolic play and maternal play-related language was also higher for the TR group than it was for the RD group. The mothers' symbolic play did not show any relation to their children's language development, but their expressions of symbolic language did show a relationship. The mothers' child-directed symbolic language contributed significantly toward the comprehension skills of 14- and 18-month-olds in the RD group. This association, however, was lower at 30 months, at which point it was reliably present for the first time in the TR group.     

The effect of context and age on social referencing

The present study investigated social referencing in 2 settings, familiar child-care centers and an unfamiliar university laboratory. 48 children from 6 to 40 months, divided into 3 age groups (6-12, 13-23, and 24-40 months), participated with 1 parent. Looking at parents varied with age and setting. Younger children looked more often when parents expressed positive reactions, whereas middle children looked more at fearful expressions, and the oldest children looked equally at positive and fearful expressions. Children looked at their parents sooner and were more involved with parents in the child-care setting. Behavioral regulation--less play with the fearful-message than the positive-message toy--was observed in both settings. Affect was not influenced by setting and showed regulation only for the oldest children. These results indicate that some effects of social referencing, such as behavior regulation, may be generalizable across some settings, but that parent proximity and looking at parents are sensitive to the context in which referencing occurs.     

Coping, Stress, and the Psychological Symptoms of Children of Divorce: A Cross-sectional and Longitudinal Study

The authors conducted a cross-sectional and prospective longitudinal study of stress, coping, and psychological symptoms in children of divorce. The sample consisted of 258 children (mean age = 10.1; SD = 1.2), of whom 196 were successfully followed 5.5 months later. A 4-dimensional model of coping was found using confirmatory factor analysis, with the factors being active coping, avoidance, distraction, and support. In the cross-sectional model avoidance coping partially mediated the relations between negative events and symptoms while active coping moderated the relations between negative events and conduct problems. In the longitudinal model significant negative paths were found from active coping and distraction Time 1 to internalizing symptoms Time 2, while Time 1 support coping had a positive path coefficient to Time 2 depression. Positive paths were found between negative events at Time 1 and anxiety at Time 2, and between all symptoms at Time 1 and negative events at Time 2.     

Nonstandard maternal work schedules: Implications for African American children's early language outcomes

In this study, observed maternal positive engagement and perception of work–family spillover were examined as mediators of the association between maternal nonstandard work schedules and children's expressive language outcomes in 231 African American families living in rural households. Mothers reported their work schedules when their child was 24 months of age and children's expressive language development was assessed during a picture book task at 24 months and with a standardized assessment at 36 months. After controlling for family demographics, child, and maternal characteristics, maternal employment in nonstandard schedules at the 24-month timepoint was associated with lower expressive language ability among African American children concurrently and at 36 months of age. Importantly, the negative association between nonstandard schedules and children's expressive language ability at 24 months of age was mediated by maternal positive engagement and negative work–family spillover, while at 36 months of age, the association was mediated only by negative work–family spillover. These findings suggest complex links between mothers’ work environments and African American children's developmental outcomes.