Developmental Psychology

Lane, Sean P.; Kelleher, Bridgette L.

doi: 10.1037/dev0001459pmid: 36066871

Recruiting participants for studies of early-life longitudinal development is challenging, often resulting in practical upper bounds in sample size and missing data due to attrition. These factors pose risks for the statistical power of such studies depending on the intended analytic model. One mitigation strategy is to increase measurement precision by conducting assessments of children as close to a fixed chronological age as possible. We present analyses that illustrate how such practices are only sometimes useful, focusing on cases where temporal trajectories are analyzed using multilevel modeling approaches. Simulations were conducted using results from two studies of longitudinal development. Data were generated according to both continuous and discrete developmental processes and factorially analyzed treating time on either interval, ordinal, or categorical scales. The power to detect continuously generated developmental processes was robust to, and even benefited from, increased variability around target ages. For discrete processes, power was unaffected when modeled ordinally/categorically, but declined steadily if modeled using exact chronological age on an interval scale. Our results suggest that in many circumstances, researchers may be unnecessarily devoting resources toward minimizing age sampling variability when studying functional patterns across time. In fact, when the theoretical developmental process is continuous, increasing the age sampling variability of assessments and utilizing multilevel models in favor of latent growth curve alternatives can be associated with substantial gains rather than reductions in power. Such considerations also extend to limited equivalent formulations of other common developmental models, such as panel analysis.

Wan, Sirui; Brick, Timothy R.; Alvarez-Vargas, Daniela; Bailey, Drew H.

doi: 10.1037/dev0001490pmid: 36395046

Plausible competing developmental models show similar or identical structural equation modeling model fit indices, despite making very different causal predictions. One way to help address this problem is incorporating outside information into selecting among models. This study attempted to select among developmental models of children’s early mathematical skills by incorporating information about the extent to which models forecast the longitudinal pattern of causal impacts of early math interventions. We tested for the usefulness and validity of the approach by applying it to data from three randomized controlled trials of early math interventions with longitudinal follow-up assessments in the United States (Ns = 1,375, 591, 744; baseline age 4.3, 6.5, 4.4; 17%–69% Black). We found that, across data sets, (a) some models consistently outperformed other models at forecasting later experimental impacts, (b) traditional statistical fit indices were not strongly related to causal fit as indexed by models’ accuracy at forecasting later experimental impacts, and (c) models showed consistent patterns of similarity and discrepancy between statistical fit and models’ effectiveness at forecasting experimental impacts. We highlight the importance of triangulation and call for more comparisons of experimental and nonexperimental estimates for choosing among developmental models.

Margoni, Francesco; Block, Katharina; Hamlin, Kiley; Zmyj, Norbert; Schmader, Toni

doi: 10.1037/dev0001421pmid: 36107660

Can well-documented gender differences in evaluations of prosocial versus antisocial actions found in childhood and adulthood be traced to sex differences in basic sociomoral preferences in infancy? We provide an answer to this question by meta-analyzing sex differences in preference for prosocial over antisocial agents in a set of 53 samples of American and European infants and toddlers aged between 4 and 32 months (N = 1,094). Although the original studies were agnostic to sex differences, we were able to retrieve the original data sets and estimate the effect of infants’ and toddlers’ sex on sociomoral preferences. Employing both a standard frequentist and a Bayesian approach to meta-analysis, we found strong evidence supporting the absence of sex differences in sociomoral preferences among infants and toddlers. We discuss the relevance of this finding for theories and descriptions of the emergence and developmental trajectory of gender differences in morality.

Deneault, Audrey-Ann; Hammond, Stuart I.; Madigan, Sheri

doi: 10.1037/dev0001484pmid: 36395047

Although numerous individual studies have attempted to link child–parent attachment and prosociality, a systematic picture of that relationship requires a meta-analytic approach that considers different dimensions of prosociality and potential moderators. The current meta-analysis examined 41 studies drawn primarily from North America and Europe and published between 1978 to 2020. Child age ranged from 12 to 53 months at the assessment of child–parent attachment and 12 to 108 months at the assessment of prosociality. Across 35 studies (100 effect sizes, N = 4,611), child–mother attachment security and child prosociality were significantly associated (r = .19, 95% CI [.14, .23]). No moderators were identified. Exploratory estimates were also derived for subtypes of child–mother attachment insecurity. Across six studies (eight effect sizes, N = 402), child–father attachment security was significantly associated with prosociality (r = .11, 95% CI [.02, .23]). The magnitude of effect sizes did not differ based on parent gender. The discussion considers areas of growth for attachment and prosociality research.

Lange-Küttner, Christiane; Collins, Chenelle L.; Ahmed, Rahima K.; Fisher, Lauren E.

doi: 10.1037/dev0001483pmid: 36342440

The relation between perceptual and conceptual knowledge is a longstanding research question in developmental psychology. Here we tested children’s dependence on figurative information with a reaction time/accuracy task. A sample of 151 children from 5 to 10 years were assessed from two multicultural and multiracial schools in the London (UK) boroughs City of London and Harrow. A quarter of children in both schools were eligible for free school meals (national average 18.5%). The same 3 × 3 grid with nine individually colored places and a uniform black star as placeholder was tested in three different retrieval conditions: (a) same array as during presentation, (b) one place at a time with placeholder, and (c) one place at a time without placeholder. In a (d) control condition, individual shapes were of the same color as the colorful places. Bayes Factor analyses showed a more unified response toward figurative placeholders in 5- to 6-year-olds. Independently of age, colorful places without a placeholder were hardest to remember. Places were better remembered when a placeholder was added and still better when the spatial context of the entire array was available. Yet unique shapes with distinctive contours and colors as placeholders optimized place memory the most. While place memory accuracy increased with age, reaction times did not become faster. Instead, latencies were longer, the more visual information was available in the retrieval array. A larger perceptual effect was caused by the dynamic where-delay interference task, the sparser the amount of visual information in the retrieval array.

Rousselle, Manon; Abadie, Marlène; Blaye, Agnès; Camos, Valérie

doi: 10.1037/dev0001476pmid: 36174181

False memories are well established episodic memory phenomena. Recent research in young adults has shown that semantically related associates can be falsely remembered as studied items in working memory (WM) tasks for lists of only a few items when a short 4-second interval was given between study and test. The present study reported two experiments yielding similar effects in 4- (n = 32 and 33, 18 and 14 females, respectively) and 8-year-old children (n = 33 and 34, respectively, 19 females in both). Short lists of semantically related items specifically tailored for young children were retained over a brief interval. Whether or not the interval was filled with a concurrent task that impeded or not WM maintenance, younger children were as prone to falsely recognize related distractors as their older counterparts in an immediate recognition test, and also in a delayed test. In addition, using the conjoint recognition model of the fuzzy-trace theory, we demonstrated that the retrieval of gist traces of the list themes was responsible for the occurrence of short-term false memories in 4- and 8-year-old children. Gist memory also underpinned the occurrence of false recognition in the delayed test. These findings suggest that young children are as likely to make gist-based false memories as older children in working memory tasks.

Slonecker, Emily M.; Klemfuss, J. Zoe

doi: 10.1037/dev0001500pmid: 36455019

The extant literature on the use of autonomy support during caregiver–child conversations has focused primarily on conversations about fun, shared experiences, with limited consideration of unshared experiences or attention toward the role of conversation context. The present study examined how autonomy support, conversation context, and child age interact to predict 3-to-5-year-old children’s disclosure of accurate information when discussing an unshared past event with their caregiver and an experimenter. Dyads (N = 111) were recruited from two locations (Miami, Florida and Orange County, California) by research recruitment firms. Children completed a standardized activity alone and then discussed the activity with their caregiver. The context of the discussion was manipulated so that dyads focused on either accumulating facts (Fact condition) or having fun (Fun condition). Afterward, children discussed the activity with a neutral interviewer. Caregivers in the fact condition were less autonomy supportive when discussing the activity than those in the fun condition. During the caregiver–child interview, caregiver autonomy support was negatively associated with children’s disclosure of correct event details for those in the fun condition only. Caregiver autonomy support was negatively associated with children’s correct details during the experiment–child interview across both context conditions. While older children provided more correct details during both interviews, there were no other age-related effects. These results demonstrate that conversation context moderates the link between autonomy support and children’s autobiographical memory performance. Past contradictory findings in the field are discussed in light of these results.

Kurz, Eva-Maria; Zinke, Katharina; Born, Jan

doi: 10.1037/dev0001487pmid: 36395048

The architecture of sleep undergoes distinct changes during childhood and early adolescence. Slow wave sleep is involved in memory processing and may support active consolidation of newly encoded representations to support the formation of abstracted “gist” memories. Here, we examined sleep and overnight memory formation in German school children (n = 33) between 7 and 15 years of age, after the encoding phase of a verbal Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) task. Effects of age were analyzed on sleep electroencephalogram (EEG) signatures of memory processing during nonrapid eye movement (NonREM) sleep, and the overnight formation of veridical and gist-based memories. Increasing age decreases time spent in slow wave sleep, and slow wave activity, whereas density and amplitude of fast sleep spindles in NonREM sleep were increased. Moreover, fast spindles were more consistently and more closely coupled to the upstate of the slow oscillation in the older children. Also, veridical and gist-based recall of words after sleep increased with age. Notably, a closer slow oscillation upstate-fast spindle coupling predicted veridical recall of words, and this relationship was found independent of age. Memory performance in the sleeping children did not differ from that of an age-matched control group (n = 32) tested over a daytime wake retention interval, with adolescents even showing superior veridical recall after wake. Our findings suggest that slow oscillation-spindle coupling as a mechanism of sleep-dependent memory formation becomes increasingly relevant during childhood and early adolescence. However, wake-associated mechanisms similarly effective in forming medium-term memory exist in this age as well.

Zupan, Zorana; Blagrove, Elisabeth L.; Watson, Derrick G.

doi: 10.1037/dev0001462pmid: 36136786

By approximately 6 years of age, children can use time-based visual selection to ignore stationary stimuli, already in the visual field and prioritize the selection of newly arriving stimuli. This ability can be studied using preview search, a version of the visual search paradigm with an added temporal component, in which one set of distractors is presented (previewed) before a second set that contains the target item. Preview search is more efficient than if all items are presented simultaneously, suggesting that temporally “old” objects can be ignored (the preview benefit). In two experiments, we examined the developmental trajectory for time-based visual selection in a sample of 192 6-, 8-, and 12-year-old children (49% female, predominantly White), with adults as controls (75% female, predominantly White), in the United Kingdom. The results showed an absence of the ability to ignore previewed moving distractors in 6-year-olds and confirmed its presence from 8 years of age. However, full development of this ability, which includes maintaining inhibition of previewed items over extended periods, was only present from the age of 12. Individual differences in executive functions, namely inhibition, were associated with preview search efficiency in 6-year-olds and adults. Overall, the results suggest a developmental trajectory in the ability to ignore moving old objects that occurs in two stages and develops later than the ability to ignore previewed stationary objects. The results are discussed in terms of underlying inhibitory mechanisms, in addition to individual differences in the expression of this ability.

DeBolt, Michaela C.; Mitsven, Samantha G.; Pomaranski, Katherine I.; Cantrell, Lisa M.; Luck, Steven J.; Oakes, Lisa M.

doi: 10.1037/dev0001460pmid: 36355689

We tested 6- and 8-month-old White and non-White infants (N = 53 total, 28 girls) from Northern California in a visual search task to determine whether a unique item in an otherwise homogeneous display (a singleton) attracts attention because it is a unique singleton and “pops out” in a categorical manner, or whether attention instead varies in a graded manner on the basis of quantitative differences in physical salience. Infants viewed arrays of four or six items; one item was a singleton and the other items were identical distractors (e.g., a single cookie and three identical toy cars). At both ages, infants looked to the singletons first more often, were faster to look at singletons, and looked longer at singletons. However, when a computational model was used to quantify the relative salience of the singleton in each display—which varied widely among the different singleton-distractor combinations—we found a strong, graded effect of physical salience on attention and no evidence that singleton status per se influenced attention. In addition, consistent with other research on attention in infancy, the effect of salience was stronger for 6-month-old infants than for 8-month-old infants. Taken together, these results show that attention-getting and attention-holding in infancy vary continuously with quantitative variations in physical salience rather than depending in a categorical manner on whether an item is unique.