Developmental Psychology

McCartney, Kathleen; Burchinal, Margaret; Clarke-Stewart, Alison; Bub, Kristen L.; Owen, Margaret T.; Belsky, Jay; ,

doi: 10.1037/a0017886pmid: 20053002

Prior research has documented associations between hours in child care and children’s externalizing behavior. A series of longitudinal analyses were conducted to address 5 propositions, each testing the hypothesis that child care hours causes externalizing behavior. Data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development were used in this investigation because they include repeated measures of child care experiences, externalizing behavior, and family characteristics. There were 3 main findings. First, the evidence linking child care hours with externalizing behavior was equivocal in that results varied across model specifications. Second, the association between child care hours and externalizing behavior was not due to a child effect. Third, child care quality and proportion of time spent with a large group of peers moderated the effects of child care hours on externalizing behavior. The number of hours spent in child care was more strongly related to externalizing behavior when children were in low-quality child care and when children spent a greater proportion of time with a large group of peers. The magnitude of associations between child care hours and externalizing behavior was modest. Implications are that parents and policymakers must take into account that externalizing behavior is predicted from a constellation of variables in multiple contexts.

Katz-Wise, Sabra L.; Priess, Heather A.; Hyde, Janet S.

doi: 10.1037/a0017820pmid: 20053003

On the basis of social structural theory and identity theory, the current study examined changes in gender-role attitudes and behavior across the first-time transition to parenthood and following the birth of a second child for experienced mothers and fathers. Data were analyzed from the ongoing longitudinal Wisconsin Study of Families and Work. Gender-role attitudes, work and family identity salience, and division of household labor were measured for 205 first-time and 198 experienced mothers and fathers across 4 time points from 5 months pregnant to 12 months postpartum. Multilevel latent growth curve analysis was used to analyze the data. In general, parents became more traditional in their gender-role attitudes and behavior following the birth of a child, women changed more than men, and first-time parents changed more than experienced parents. Findings suggest that changes in gender-role attitudes and behavior following the birth of a child may be attributed to both the process of transitioning to parenthood for the first time and that of negotiating the demands of having a new baby in the family.

Geiser, Christian; Eid, Michael; Nussbeck, Fridtjof W.; Courvoisier, Delphine S.; Cole, David A.

doi: 10.1037/a0017888pmid: 20053004

The authors show how structural equation modeling can be applied to analyze change in longitudinal multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) studies. For this purpose, an extension of latent difference models (McArdle, 1988; Steyer, Eid, & Schwenkmezger, 1997) to multiple constructs and multiple methods is presented. The model allows investigators to separate true change from measurement error and to analyze change simultaneously for different methods. The authors also show how Campbell and Fiske’s (1959) guidelines for analyzing convergent and discriminant validity can be applied to the measurement of latent change. The practical application of the multimethod change model is illustrated in a reanalysis of child depression and anxiety scores (N = 906 American children) that were assessed by self- and parent reports on three measurement occasions. The analyses revealed that (a) the convergent validity of change was low for both constructs and (b) sex was a significant predictor of self-reported, but not of parent reported, anxiety states. Finally, the authors discuss advantages and limitations and compare the model with other approaches for analyzing longitudinal MTMM data.

Mikami, Amori Yee; Szwedo, David E.; Allen, Joseph P.; Evans, Meredyth A.; Hare, Amanda L.

doi: 10.1037/a0017420pmid: 20053005

This study examined online communication on social networking web pages in a longitudinal sample of 92 youths (39 male, 53 female). Participants’ social and behavioral adjustment was assessed when they were ages 13–14 years and again at ages 20–22 years. At ages 20–22 years, participants’ social networking website use and indicators of friendship quality on their web pages were coded by observers. Results suggested that youths who had been better adjusted at ages 13–14 years were more likely to be using social networking web pages at ages 20–22 years, after statistically controlling for age, gender, ethnicity, and parental income. Overall, youths’ patterns of peer relationships, friendship quality, and behavioral adjustment at ages 13–14 years and at ages 20–22 years predicted similar qualities of interaction and problem behavior on their social networking websites at ages 20–22 years. Findings are consistent with developmental theory asserting that youths display cross-situational continuity in their social behaviors and suggest that the conceptualization of continuity may be extended into the online domain.

Williamson, Rebecca A.; Jaswal, Vikram K.; Meltzoff, Andrew N.

doi: 10.1037/a0017473pmid: 20053006

Two experiments were used to investigate the scope of imitation by testing whether 36-month-olds can learn to produce a categorization strategy through observation. After witnessing an adult sort a set of objects by a visible property (their color; Experiment 1) or a nonvisible property (the particular sounds produced when the objects were shaken; Experiment 2), children showed significantly more sorting by those dimensions relative to children in control groups, including a control in which children saw the sorted endstate but not the intentional sorting demonstration. The results show that 36-month-olds can do more than imitate the literal behaviors they see; they also abstract and imitate rules that they see another person use.

Lewkowicz, David J.

doi: 10.1037/a0015579pmid: 20053007

Three experiments investigated perception of audio-visual (A-V) speech synchrony in 4- to 10-month-old infants. Experiments 1 and 2 used a convergent-operations approach by habituating infants to an audiovisually synchronous syllable (Experiment 1) and then testing for detection of increasing degrees of A-V asynchrony (366, 500, and 666 ms) or by habituating infants to a detectably asynchronous syllable (666 ms; Experiment 2) and then testing for detection of decreasing degrees of asynchrony (500, 366, and 0 ms). Following habituation to the synchronous syllable, infants detected only the largest A-V asynchrony (0 ms vs. 666 ms), whereas following habituation to the asynchronous syllable, infants detected the largest asynchrony (666 ms vs. 0 ms) as well as a smaller one (666 ms vs. 366 ms). Experiment 3 investigated the underlying mechanism of A-V asynchrony detection and indicated that responsiveness was based on a sensitivity to stimulus-energy onsets rather than the dynamic correlation between acoustic and visible utterance attributes. These findings demonstrated that infant perception of A-V speech synchrony is subject to the effects of short-term experience and that it is driven by a low-level, domain-general mechanism.

Bamford, Christi; Lagattuta, Kristin Hansen

doi: 10.1037/a0016694pmid: 20053008

Multiple methods were used to examine children’s awareness of connections between emotion and prayer. Four-, 6-, and 8-year-olds and adults (N = 100) predicted whether people would pray when feeling different emotions, explained why characters in different situations decided to pray, and predicted whether characters’ emotions would change after praying. Four- and 6-year-olds exclusively judged that positive emotions motivate prayer, whereas 8-year-olds and adults most often predicted that negative emotions would cause people to pray and that praying could improve emotions. There was also a significant increase between 4 and 8 years in explaining prayer as motivated by need for assistance, for thanksgiving, and for conversation, as well as for explaining postprayer emotions in relation to God or prayer. Religious background predicted individual differences in reasoning only for 4-year-olds.

Bialystok, Ellen

doi: 10.1037/a0015466pmid: 20053009

In 3 experiments, a total of 151 monolingual and bilingual 6-year-old children performed similarly on measures of language and cognitive ability; however, bilinguals solved the global–local and trail-making tasks more rapidly than monolinguals. This bilingual advantage was found not only for the traditionally demanding conditions (incongruent global–local trials and Trails B) but also for the conditions not usually considered to be cognitively demanding (congruent global–local trials and Trails A). All the children performed similarly when congruent trials were presented in a single block or when perceptually simple stimuli were used, ruling out speed differences between the groups. The results demonstrate a bilingual advantage in processing complex stimuli in tasks that require executive processing components for conflict resolution, including switching and updating, even when no inhibition appears to be involved. They also suggest that simple conditions of the trail-making and global–local tasks involve some level of effortful processing for young children. Finally, the bilingual advantage in the trail-making task suggests that the interpretation of standardized measures of executive control needs to be reconsidered for children with specific experiences, such as bilingualism.

Sato, Yutaka; Sogabe, Yuko; Mazuka, Reiko

doi: 10.1037/a0016718pmid: 20053010

Japanese has a vowel duration contrast as one component of its language-specific phonemic repertory to distinguish word meanings. It is not clear, however, how a sensitivity to vowel duration can develop in a linguistic context. In the present study, using the visual habituation–dishabituation method, the authors evaluated infants’ abilities to discriminate Japanese long and short vowels embedded in two-syllable words (/mana/ vs. /ma:na/). The results revealed that 4-month-old Japanese infants (n = 32) failed to discriminate the contrast (p = .676), whereas 9.5-month-olds (n = 33) showed the discrimination ability (p = .014). The 7.5-month-olds did not show positive evidence to discriminate the contrast either when the edited stimuli were used (n = 33; p = .275) or when naturally uttered stimuli were used (n = 33; p = .189). By contrast, the 4-month-olds (n = 24) showed sensitivity to a vowel quality change (/mana/ vs. /mina/; p = .034). These results indicate that Japanese infants acquire sensitivity to long–short vowel contrasts between 7.5 and 9.5 months of age and that the developmental course of the phonemic category by the durational changes is different from that by the quality change.

Belsky, Jay; Steinberg, Laurence; Houts, Renate M.; Halpern-Felsher, Bonnie L.; ,

doi: 10.1037/a0015549pmid: 20053011

To test a proposition central to J. Belsky, L. Steinberg, and P. Draper’s (1991) evolutionary theory of socialization—that pubertal maturation plays a role in linking early rearing experience with adolescent sexual risk taking (i.e., frequency of sexual behavior) and, perhaps, other risk taking (e.g., alcohol, drugs, delinquency)—the authors subjected longitudinal data on 433 White, 62 Black, and 31 Hispanic females to path analysis. Results showed (a) that greater maternal harshness at 54 months predicted earlier age of menarche; (b) that earlier age of menarche predicted greater sexual (but not other) risk taking; and (c) that maternal harshness exerted a significant indirect effect, via earlier menarche, on sexual risk taking (i.e., greater harshness → earlier menarche → greater sexual risk taking) but only a direct effect on other risk taking. Results are discussed in terms of evolutionary perspectives on human development and reproductive strategy, and future directions for research are outlined.