Cognitive and socioemotional caregiving in developing countries

Enriching caregiving practices foster the course and outcome of child development. This study examined 2 developmentally significant domains of positive caregiving-cognitive and socioemotional-in more than 127,000 families with under-5 year children from 28 developing countries. Mothers varied widely in cognitive and socioemotional caregiving and engaged in more socioemotional than cognitive activities. More than half of mothers played with their children and took them outside, but only a third or fewer read books and told stories to their children. The GDP of countries related to caregiving after controlling for life expectancy and education. The majority of mothers report that they do not leave their under-5s alone. Policy and intervention recommendations are elaborated.     

Modalities of Infant–Mother Interaction in Japanese,Japanese American Immigrant,and European American Dyads

Cultural variation in relations and moment‐to‐moment contingencies of infant–mother person‐oriented and object‐oriented interactions were compared in 118 Japanese, Japanese American immigrant, and European American dyads with 5.5‐month‐olds. Infant and mother person‐oriented behaviors were related in all cultural groups, but infant and mother object‐oriented behaviors were related only among European Americans. Infant and mother behaviors within each modality were mutually contingent in all groups. Culture moderated lead–lag relations: Japanese infants were more likely than their mothers to respond in object‐oriented interactions; European American mothers were more likely than their infants to respond in person‐oriented interactions. Japanese American dyads behaved like European American dyads. Interactions, infant effects, and parent socialization findings are set in cultural and accultural models of infant–mother transactions.     

Continuity in mental development from infancy

In this essay we document moderate continuity in mental development beginning in infancy and extending into childhood. Psychological opinion in the past has tended to favor discontinuity theories of cognitive development from infancy. In recent years, however, the foundations on which discontinuity positions were originally established have themselves come under question and new findings grounded in new assessment procedures have appeared, necessitating revision of opinion on this significant psychological and developmental issue. Our essay has several aims. We first review briefly the bases for contemporary discontinuity theories of mental development. Second, we present current findings that support the alternative proposition of continuity: Recent research demonstrates that infants who more efficiently encode visual stimuli or more efficiently recollect visual or auditory stimuli tend to perform more proficiently on traditional psychometric assessments of intelligence and language during childhood. Third, we scrutinize the assessment methods from which these continuity results derive. Fourth, we offer several models that help to explain the continuity findings. Fifth, we discuss critically the origins and the maintenance of continuity in mental development as it is coming to be conceptualized currently. Finally, we reflect on implications of continuity for the future of infant assessments specifically and for theories of early mental development generally.     

Cross-linguistic analysis of vocabulary in young children: spanish, dutch, French, hebrew, italian, korean, and american english

The composition of young children's vocabularies in 7 contrasting linguistic communities was investigated. Mothers of 269 twenty-month-olds in Argentina, Belgium, France, Israel, Italy, the Republic of Korea, and the United States completed comparable vocabulary checklists for their children. In each language and vocabulary size grouping (except for children just learning to talk), children's vocabularies contained relatively greater proportions of nouns than other word classes. Each word class was consistently positively correlated with every other class in each language and for children with smaller and larger vocabularies. Noun prevalence in the vocabularies of young children and the merits of several theories that may account for this pattern are discussed.     

Cross-Cultural Associations of Four Parenting Behaviors With Child Flourishing: Examining Cultural Specificity and Commonality in Cultural Normativeness and Intergenerational Transmission Processes

Families from nine countries (N = 1,338) were interviewed annually seven times (M_age child = 7–15) to test specificity and commonality in parenting behaviors associated with child flourishing and moderation of associations by normativeness of parenting. Participants included 1,338 children (M = 8.59 years, SD = 0.68, range = 7–11 years; 50% girls), their mothers (N = 1,283, M = 37.04 years, SD = 6.51, range = 19–70 years), and their fathers (N = 1,170, M = 40.19 years, SD = 6.75, range = 22–76 years) at Wave 1 of 7 annual waves collected between 2008 and 2017. Families were recruited from 12 ethnocultural groups in nine countries including: Shanghai, China (n = 123); Medellín, Colombia (n = 108); Naples (n = 102) and Rome (n = 111), Italy; Zarqa, Jordan (n = 114); Kisumu, Kenya (n = 100); Manila, Philippines (n = 120); Trollhättan & Vänersborg, Sweden (n = 129); Chiang Mai, Thailand (n = 120); and Durham, NC, United States (n = 110 White, n = 102 Black, n = 99 Latinx). Intergenerational parenting (parenting passed from Generation 1 to Generation 2) demonstrated specificity. Children from cultures with above-average G2 parent warmth experienced the most benefit from the intergenerational transmission of warmth, whereas children from cultures with below-average G2 hostility, neglect, and rejection were best protected from deleterious intergenerational effects of parenting behaviors on flourishing. Single-generation parenting (Generation 2 parenting directly associated with Generation 3 flourishing) demonstrated commonality. Parent warmth promoted, and parent hostility, neglect, and rejection impeded the development of child flourishing largely regardless of parenting norms.     

Longitudinal Trajectories of Four Domains of Parenting in Relation to Adolescent Age and Puberty in Nine Countries

Children, mothers, and fathers in 12 ethnic and regional groups in nine countries (N = 1,338 families) were interviewed annually for 8 years (M_age child = 8–16 years) to model four domains of parenting as a function of child age, puberty, or both. Latent growth curve models revealed that for boys and girls, parents decrease their warmth, behavioral control, rules/limit-setting, and knowledge solicitation in conjunction with children’s age and pubertal status as children develop from ages 8 to 16 across a range of diverse contexts, with steeper declines after age 11 or 12 in three of the four parenting domains. National, ethnic, and regional differences and similarities in the trajectories as a function of age and puberty are discussed.     

Attributions and Attitudes of Mothers and Fathers in the United States

OBJECTIVE.: The present study examined mean level similarities and differences as well as correlations between U.S. mothers' and fathers' attributions regarding successes and failures in caregiving situations and progressive versus authoritarian attitudes. DESIGN.: Interviews were conducted with both mothers and fathers in 139 European American, Latin American, and African American families. RESULTS.: Interactions between parent gender and ethnicity emerged for adult-controlled failure and perceived control over failure. Fathers reported higher adult-controlled failure and child-controlled failure attributions than did mothers, whereas mothers reported attitudes that were more progressive and modern than did fathers; these differences remained significant after controlling for parents' age, education, and possible social desirability bias. Ethnic differences emerged for five of the seven attributions and attitudes examined; four remained significant after controlling for parents' age, education, and possible social desirability bias. Medium effect sizes were found for concordance between parents in the same family for attributions regarding uncontrollable success, child-controlled failure, progressive attitudes, authoritarian attitudes, and modernity of attitudes after controlling for parents' age, education, and possible social desirability bias. CONCLUSIONS.: This work elucidates ways that parent gender and ethnicity relate to attributions regarding U.S. parents' successes and failures in caregiving situations and to their progressive versus authoritarian parenting attitudes.     

The credibility of recovered memory testimony: exploring the effects of alleged victim and perpetrator gender.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose was to explore the effects of victim/complainant and perpetrator/defendant gender on the impact of recovered memory testimony in criminal sexual abuse trials. METHOD: A jury simulation methodology was used. Two hundred forty-six participants read a summary of a sexual abuse trial in which the following three variables were manipulated: the complainant's gender, the defendant's gender, and whether the complainant's memory of the alleged abuse had been "recovered" or remembered all along. Participants reached a verdict and rated the culpability and credibility of the parties. RESULTS: Compared to a case where the memory of the abuse had always been remembered, recovered memory testimony led to lower perceptions of the defendant's culpability and higher perceptions of the defendant's credibility. In addition, the complainant with recovered memory was viewed as less credible and less likely to be telling the truth. These effects of testimony type (i.e., recovered vs. remembered) were qualified by an interaction with complainant and defendant gender, such that testimony type exerted an effect in cases of alleged heterosexual but not homosexual abuse. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that mock jurors' judgments in sexual abuse cases reflect their stereotypes about sexual abuse and expectations regarding the relative likelihood of repression in various circumstances.