Delay of gratification tasks seem to have an impressive predictive value for several outcomes and are supposed to measure self-regulation. Since many behavioural and psychological problems in children are related to limitations in self-regulation, the extent to which delay tasks can be used as a screening to detect psychopathology is examined. Children (N= 1498; 51% girls) participated in Delay tasks at the age of 3 and 5. Parents rated ADHD and conduct problems at the children‘s age of 5 and 6, which we classified according to cut-offs. Delay at age 3 was related to ADHD at age 5 (OR = 1.84) and conduct at age 6 (OR = 2.61). The results showed high specificity (77-78%) and negative predictive values (95-98%), correctly identifying children below the SDQ cut-off, but low sensitivity (27-42%), deeming the task unsuitable as screening for children at risk. These results were aggravated when considering only the first 20 seconds.

The development of early numeracy skills takes place within the home and school environments. Parental engagement in daily activities that incorporate numerical concepts plays a pivotal role in maximizing learning opportunities. In this study, we developed and implemented a family intervention program designed to promote numerical activities in the home setting. Our goal was to promote the use of mathematical concepts and enhance children’s mathematical performance. Employing a pre-post intervention design, we conducted individual cognitive assessments on 115 Uruguayan children (mean age: 5.0 years; standard deviation: 0.5) across various domains, including mathematics, vocabulary, and general intelligence. We then organized three distinct groups: one focused on numeracy, another on literacy, and the third continued with their regular routines (business as usual). Parents assigned to the first two groups were extended invitations to participate in three workshops, during which they were introduced to both theoretical and practical tools to promote the respective academic domains. While our intervention suggested parental interest in participating in math workshops and in promoting academic skills at home, the results indicated that it did not produce the anticipated effect on mathematical skills. Practical and policy: This study presents an intervention on engaging parents in mathematical activities at home for promoting mathematical skills in Latin America, and it highlights challenges for designing effective interventions in the future.

This study explored the relationships among teacher-child relationship (TCR), self-regulation (SR), social emotions (SE), and children’s learning of mathematics and vocabulary while considering the influence of gender and age. Two hundred seventy children (boys = 154, girls = 116) aged 3-6 years (Mage = 59.44 months) participated across 18 classes in three preschools. The results from multi-group structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed significant gender differences of TCR when predicting SR and SE. However, no significant gender differences were observed when SR predicted mathematics and vocabulary, or SE predicted these two. SR emerged as the most potent predictor of mathematics for all children. Furthermore, significant age variations were identified in TCR when predicting SR and SE and when SR and SE predicted mathematics and vocabulary. Finally, the research discusses implications for teachers, emphasizing the importance of tailored support for children of different genders and age groups to enhance TCR, SR, and SE.

Sibling relationships’ effects on social–emotional competence were investigated among elementary school children experiencing changing family structures. The study involved 965 students (ages 10–12 years; 472 boys, 503 girls; N5th grades = 510, N6th grades = 465) in a developed province in China. Sibling relationships and social–emotional competence showed a significant positive association. Sibling rivalry, conflict, and power contrast hindered children’s self-awareness, decision making, and interpersonal skills. Positive sibling relationships (e.g., sibling intimacy) were positively correlated with and predictive of social–emotional competence in children from multi-child families. Sibling intimacy best explained children’s social–emotional competence and predicted the development of social–emotional competence dimensions. Sibling intimacy aspects—pro-sociality, affect, companionship, and admiration—primarily predicted social–emotional competence.

We used a unique panel dataset of 1682 children from villages in Northwest China. Our objective was to estimate the impact of parenting practices and family adjustment on early childhood development among infants aged 5 to 24 months. Within this cohort, an alarming 53.58% of children exhibited susceptibility to cognitive development delays. Additionally, 60.02%, 36.24%, and 40.11% were at risk of language, motor, and social-emotional delays, respectively. Moreover, parental consistency, coercive parenting and the parental adjustment of caregivers were relatively poor. Multivariate analysis revealed that total parenting practices and family adjustment had significant positive effects on all dimensions of early childhood development, including the cognitive, language, motor, and social-emotional dimensions; parenting practices had the strongest relationship with all dimensions of child development; and family adjustment had a significant positive predictive function only for social-emotional development.

Previous studies have demonstrated the negative impacts of ostracism on primary needs and moods, particularly children and adolescents. Given children’s early exposure to the Internet, online ostracism could potentially affect their primary needs and moods at an earlier age. To investigate this, the present study utilized the Cyberball paradigm to manipulate the exclusion and re-inclusion and examined the threats to primary needs (sense of belonging, self-esteem, control, meaningful existence) and emotions (happiness, sadness, anger) in school-aged children (163 children aged 6-8, 8-10, and 10-11) following social exclusion and subsequent inclusion. The findings revealed that the threats to the four primary needs due to ostracism began to emerge around the age of 8-10 years and persisted until the age of 10-12 years. Regarding moods, the negative effects of ostracism appeared from the age of 6-8 years and worsened with age. This suggests the existence of a critical period during which ostracism poses a threat to children’s primary needs and has adverse effects on their moods. Moreover, the study demonstrated that brief inclusion following exclusion effectively restores the primary needs and moods of ostracized children. These findings provide insights into how to support children in recovering from the negative effects of ostracism.

This study investigated the potential influences of administration context on the measurement of child skills over time. The BOSCC was administered to preschool-aged children with autism at two time points at school by trained research staff and at home by the parent. Children showed improvements across all subscales and the total score over time. The Social-communication and Core total scores yield similar information in both contexts, but Restricted and Repetitive Behavior and Other Abnormal Behavior subscales scores were not related. Further, subscale and total scores are correlated between contexts at individual time points but not over time. These results underscore the importance of purposeful selection of measures and their administration context.

Different components of emotional responding may be affected by using specific emotion regulation strategies that enable children’s volitional self-regulation. This study examined the affective, cognitive, and physiological effects of experimentally instructing children to deploy distraction and reappraisal to regulate negative emotion during an evocative film clip. One-hundred eighty-four 4- to 11-year-old children (M = 7.66 years; SD = 2.33 years; 94 girls) participated. Neither strategy affected observed distress or self-reported negative emotion. Relative to a control condition, children instructed to use reappraisal reported marginally less happiness after the emotional film and attenuated rumination. Distraction also predicted attenuated rumination, as well as a pattern of parasympathetic reactivity indicative of disengagement that correlated with parents’ reported use of minimizing and punitive emotion socialization practices. Findings underscore the utility of multi-method approaches that examine parasympathetic activity in conjunction with volitional measures of self-regulation.

Heart rate variability (HRV) theoretically provides a biomarker for self-regulation, although studies with young children offer mixed findings regarding the relevance of emotional demands in this link. We aimed to describe variation in children’s HRV during tasks with relatively high and low emotional load, and to determine the relation of HRV during these tasks to different behavioral measures of children’s self-regulation. Electrocardiograms were recorded in 80 3 - 5-year-olds (M = 57 months; 54% male, 47% female) while they completed a Go/No-go task with low emotional load and an emotionally challenging Delay Frustration task. Mean HRV was similar across these tasks, although it increased during a between-task rest interval. Accounting for age, gender, and caregiver education, higher HRV during both tasks, but not during rest, correlated with children’s executive function task performance. HRV during Delay Frustration correlated with caregiver-reported self-regulation, whereas greater HRV withdrawal during tasks correlated with children’s task-related negative frustration. Children’s maintenance of HRV during emotional and cognitive challenge may support their effective self-regulation.

Background Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia Reactivity (RSA-R) correlates both positively and negatively with externalizing behavior in autistic individuals. These inconsistencies may result from task-based differences. Furthermore, RSA-R is understudied in young autistic children, despite particular challenges with externalizing behavior. This pilot study measured RSA-R in 4-to 6-year-olds, across two time-points, using four validated tasks with matched baseline and challenge periods. Methods RSA and parent-reported externalizing behavior were collected from 17 children (Mage=5.57 years). RSA-R was measured by the difference score of the challenge task minus its corresponding comparison task. Correlations were computed to evaluate relationships between RSA-R and behavior. Results RSA was reliably measured for 3/4 tasks (.694 ≤ ICCs ≤ .896). Only RSA-R during a social task correlated with externalizing behavior. These results support using a battery that measures a range of challenges, differing in social demands, to characterize how arousal contributes to emotion regulation demands among young autistic children.

This study examines the impact of the deviation between parents' educational expectations and children's parent--child educational expectations on children's health based on the data from Chinese family tracking surveys conducted in 2018 and 2020. We found that when parents' educational expectations are higher than their children's educational expectations, they have a negative impact on children's health status. According to the influence mechanism, the higher the parents' expectations of education are, the greater children's remedial behavior will be, the less leisure time will be, which will adversely affect children's health. Furthermore, we found that a good parent-child relationship moderated the negative impact of the deviation in parent-child educational expectations on children's health. Therefore, in order to ensure the healthy development of children, it is necessary to resolve the adverse effects of the deviation in parent--child educational expectations by arranging tutoring and leisure time rationally and establishing a good parent-child relationship.

The home environment is one of the most proximal and impactful settings for young children. Little research has examined the nature of variability in the home environment for children from low-income homes, even as more recent work suggests heterogeneity within economically disadvantaged households. Using a subsample from a larger, longitudinal study, we examined the extent to which differential profiles of the home environment of infants from low-income backgrounds could be identified. A latent profile analysis (LPA) suggested three profiles of the home environment: low home environment, average home environment, and high involvement. These three groups did not differ on family characteristics such as parental education, income, or marital status but did differ with respect to maternal stress and material support. Specifically, maternal stress and material support were lower in the group with high involvement.

Both maternal substance use and unpredictability of her sensory signals may affect child development, but no studies have examined them together. We explored the unpredictability, frequency, and duration of maternal sensory signals in 59 mother-child dyads, 34 with and 25 without maternal substance use. We also examined the association between unpredictability of maternal signals and children's cognitive development. Maternal sensory signals were evaluated with videorecorded dyadic free-play interactions at child age of 24 months. Children's cognitive development was evaluated with Bayley-III at 24 months and with WPPSI-III at 48 months. We found no differences in sensory signals between substance-using and non-using mothers. Higher unpredictability of maternal sensory signals was associated with poorer child cognitive and language development at 24 months and with poorer nonverbal reasoning at 48 months. Unpredictability of maternal sensory signals may be a vital parenting aspect shaping children's development, but more research is needed in high-risk groups.

Aims: Previous research showed that short-term second language training modulates children’s brain responses. However, little is known about how well young children’s brains process second language-related information acquired from short-term usage of language-immersive apps. Methodology: To examine this, we compared the auditory event-related potential (ERP) to non-native language words learnt via language-immersive applications (apps), as compared to those learnt via digital flash cards, in 3-5-year-old children. We also compared their auditory ERPs to known and unknown words. Data analysis: Thirty-two participants have completed the (audio) word-picture pair experiment while their electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. We compared the auditory ERPs in the 200-300ms window and the 400-600ms window between the apps group and the flash-card group, and the response to the known and unknown words. Results: We found that the early positive potential (of the whole group) to the known words was significantly larger than that to the unknown words. Further, the early negative potential of the language immersed group was significantly larger than that of the flash card group. Conclusions: Short-term training from language-immersive apps has a positive impact on the developing brain.

The present study sought to evaluate the reproducibility of prominent findings stated by Fehr et al. (2008) in their developmental resource allocation experiment. The experiment involved children making decisions about distributing sweets between themselves and either an in-group or an out-group recipient. Fehr et al. found that (1) inequity aversion develops with age; (2) 3- to 4-year-old children are inclined toward self-advantageous allocations, whereas 7- to 8-year-olds distribute sweets more evenly in divisions, and (3) the influence of group status increases as children age. In our attempts to reproduce Fehr et al.’s original analyses and reanalyse the raw data set, we found that one of the key variables was miscoded. After rectifying the miscoded variable, the reproduction results revealed only one ambiguously irreproducible result regarding a group status main effect in the sharing mini-game—with three other tests exhibiting either strong reproducibility or ambiguous reproducibility following the classifications suggested by Artner et al. (2021). Reanalysis results indicated that Fehr et al.’s conclusions are robust when tested with alternative analytical tests.

Object retrieval skills requiring means-end exploration are delayed or impaired in infants with Down Syndrome (DS). The current study examined the role of ecological constraints, i.e., task difficulty and environmental context on the object retrieval skills of young children with DS. Thirteen children with DS (31.55 ± 4.14 months) and 13 mental-age matched Typically Developing (TD) children (17.31 ± 1.64 months) completed three tasks involving retrieving a toy from a transparent box (task 1), an opaque box (task 2), and a transparent box hidden inside an opaque box (task 3). Both DS and TD group performed similarly for the simpler task 1; but for task 2 and task 3, the DS group had less success rate, fewer use of complex asymmetric hand actions, and/or longer planning and execution times compared to TD group. Future studies should examine the developmental trends and specificity of means-ends exploratory behaviors in children with DS.

Generic descriptions (e.g., “girls are emotional”) are argued to play a major role in the development of essentialist reasoning about social categories (Rhodes et al., 2018). However, studies have been conducted dominantly in English-speaking communities and among Western samples. This is a significant limitation given that a number of theories focus on the linguistic form of generic statements and distinguish between form and content in leading to essentialism. In this study, we plan to extend the research on generics and social essentialism beyond English-speaking, Western samples. We aim to explore how generic statements with different content (biological or cultural) about a novel social category may lead to essentialist beliefs among children and adults in Iran, a Persian-speaking community that is underrepresented in the literature. Using a design similar to Noyes & Keil (2020), we plan to expose 4 to 9-year-old children (N = 104) and adults (N = 104) to generic or specific statements (between subjects) ascribing biological or cultural features to a novel social category. We will measure the degree to which exposure to these statements leads to essentialist reasoning in terms of inheritability and “kindhood”. This work contributes to diversifying the field and informs theories of social essentialism.

This article analyzes the visual, auditory, vocal, and motor advantages among autistic people with speech onset delay (A-SOD) compared with autistic people without speech delay (A-NoSOD) and sometimes non-autistic people. Importantly, their intelligence and communication skills are often underestimated. In addition, this paper provides suggestions to leverage strengths and address weaknesses from a sensory-motor perspective. Visual strengths are applied to IQ testing, reading and writing, and interpreting facial expressions. Auditory applications range from pain to music to speech development. Implications include suggestions for both production and perception of speech. The recommendations address both language’s relationship to motor development and the role of general language learning. Paradoxically, strengths in auditory perception may contribute to speech delay but also help A-SOD catch up to A-NoSOD, and continue to help A-SOD develop. Understanding A-SOD’s strengths may help to recognize how they make developmental gains in speech and language, and build from their strengths.