Infant and Child Development

Widespread failures of replication and generalization are, ironically, a scientific triumph, in that they confirm the fundamental metascientific theory that underlies our field. Generalizable and replicable findings require testing large numbers of subjects from a wide range of demographics with a large, randomly-sampled stimulus set, and using a variety of experimental parameters. Because few studies accomplish any of this, meta-scientists predict that findings will frequently fail to replicate or generalize...

Open science practices, such as pre-registration and data sharing, increase transparency and may improve the replicability of developmental science. However, developmental science has lagged behind other fields in implementing open science practices. This lag may arise from unique challenges and considerations of longitudinal research. In this paper, preliminary guidelines are provided for adapting open science practices to longitudinal research to facilitate researchers' use of these practices. The guidelines propose a serial and modular approach to registration that includes an initial pre-registration of the methods and focal hypotheses of the longitudinal study, along with subsequent pre- or co-registered questions, hypotheses, and analysis plans associated with specific papers...

Developmental scientists have adopted numerous biomarkers in their research to better understand the biological underpinnings of development, environmental exposures, and variation in long-term health. Yet, adoption patterns merit investigation given the substantial resources used to collect, analyse, and train to use biomarkers in research with infants and children. We document trends in use of 90 biomarkers between 2000 and 2020 from approximately 430,000 publications indexed by the Web of Science. We provide a tool for researchers to examine each of these biomarkers individually using a data-driven approach to estimate the biomarker growth trajectory based on yearly publication number, publication growth rate, number of author affiliations, National Institutes of Health dedicated funding resources, journal impact factor, and years since the first publication...

Descriptive developmental research seeks to document, describe, and analyze the conditions under which infants and children live and learn. Here, we articulate how open-science practices can be incorporated into descriptive research to increase its transparency, reliability, and replicability. To date, most open-science practices have been oriented toward experimental rather than descriptive studies, and it can be confusing to figure out how to translate open-science practices (e.g., preregistration) for research that is more descriptive in nature...

UNLABELLED: This study explores the cognitive development of children born to adolescent mothers within South Africa compared to existing reference data, and explores development by child age bands to examine relative levels of development. Cross-sectional analyses present data from 954 adolescents (10-19 years) and their first-born children (0-68 months). All adolescents completed questionnaires relating to themselves and their children, and standardized child cognitive assessments (Mullen Scales of Early Learning) were undertaken...

Joint attention (JA) is the purposeful coordination of an individual's focus of attention with that of another and begins to develop within the first year of life. Delayed, or atypically developing, JA is an early behavioral sign of many developmental disabilities and so assessing JA in infancy can improve our understanding of trajectories of typical and atypical development. This scoping review identified the most common methods for assessing JA in the first year of life. Methods of JA were divided into qualitative and quantitative categories...

Children's daily contexts shape their experiences. In this study we assessed whether variations in infant placement (e.g., held, bouncy seat) are associated with infants' exposure to adult speech. Using repeated survey sampling of mothers and continuous audio recordings, we tested whether use of independence-supporting placements was associated with adult speech exposure in a Southeastern U.S. sample of 60 4- to 6- month- old infants (38% male, predominately White, not Hispanic/Latinx, from higher SES households)...

Mindfulness training programmes have shown to encourage prosocial behaviours and reduce antisocial tendencies in adolescents. However, less is known about whether training affects susceptibility to prosocial and antisocial influence. The current study investigated the effect of mindfulness training (compared with an active control) on self-reported prosocial and antisocial tendencies and susceptibility to prosocial and antisocial influence. 465 adolescents aged 11-16 years were randomly allocated to one of two training programmes...

How infants are held or contained throughout the day shape infants' experiences, particularly around movement and exploration. In Tajikistan, caregivers use "gahvora" cradles, which severely restrict the body and limbs. The present study explored the variability and use of containment devices in U.S. and Tajik infants. Using time diaries, we compared 12-month-olds in the U.S. and Tajikistan on the types of containments used and time spent in them throughout the day. During the day, Tajik infants accumulated more time in gahvoras than infants in the U...

This study examined bidirectional relations between television exposure and effortful control accounting for the effects of family contextual risk factors. Methods: Data were from a sample (N=306) of parents and their preschool-age children (T1 M = 36 mos. in 2008-2010) assessed four times, once every 9 mos. Results: At T1, adolescent parent status predicted lower child delay ability (DA), and maternal depression predicted higher TV time. Above these effects, higher T1 and T2 child executive control (EC) prospectively predicted lower T2 and T3 TV time, while higher T1 TV time predicted lower T2 EC...

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unexpected and major global event, with the potential to have many and varied impacts on child development. However, the implications of the pandemic for maternal depressive symptoms, early childhood temperament dimensions, and their associations, remain largely unknown. To investigate this, questionnaires were completed by mothers ( N  = 175) before and during the pandemic when their child was 10- and 16-months old (Study 1), and by an extended group of mothers with young children (6-48 months; 66 additional mothers) during the first and second national lockdowns in the United Kingdom in 2020 (Study 2)...

Low inhibitory control (IC) is sometimes associated with enhanced problem-solving amongst adults, yet for young children high IC is primarily framed as inherently better than low IC. Here, we explore associations between IC and performance on a novel problem-solving task, amongst 102 English 2- and 3-year-olds (Study 1) and 84 Swedish children, seen at 18-months and 4-years (Study 2). Generativity during problem-solving was negatively associated with IC, as measured by prohibition-compliance (Study 1, both ages, Study 2 longitudinally from 18-months)...

The current study examines if perceived negative changes due to COVID-19 are related to adolescent loneliness, stress and depressive symptoms and whether friendship factors (online friend communication, friend support) serve a protective role in these associations. In total, 993 adolescents ( M age  = 16.09, SD  = 1.24) from ethnically diverse backgrounds (49% White, 18% Asian/Asian-American, 14% Latinx, 9% Black/African-American, 10% Other) in the United States completed an online survey. Adolescents who perceived more negative changes due to COVID-19 reported more loneliness, stress and depressive symptoms...

Using data from the Applied Problems subtest of the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement (Woodcock & Johnson, 1989/1990, Woodcock-Johnson psycho-educational battery-revised. Allen, TX: DLM Teaching Resources ) administered to 1,364 children from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Childcare and Youth Development (SECCYD), this study measures children's mastery of three numeric competencies (counting, concrete representational arithmetic and abstract arithmetic operations) at 54 months of age...

In May 2021, a reauthorization of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) was introduced in the U.S. Senate. This reauthorization substantially amends provisions concerning infants affected by prenatal substance exposure and decidedly shifts the policy from a child safety- to a public health-focused approach to achieve the larger goals of healthy and safe child development and caregiver recovery from substance use disorder. Despite its honorable aspirations, no research has tested whether CAPTA "works"...

Structural equation modeling (SEM) with longitudinal survey data was used to test a proposed developmental model of the association of family income (with children aged 6-9) to parent behaviors (for children at 10 years of age) and adolescent cognitive achievement and behavior problems (at age 15). Data from the Child Development Supplement (CDS) and Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) provided a representative US sample ( n = 953). The SEM measurement model of parent behaviors showed two robust latent variables representing parent distress (based on two measures) and parent support (composed of four measures of parent investment, cognitive stimulation, emotional warmth, and educational expectations for the child)...

UNLABELLED: In their methodological article, "Six solutions for more reliable infant research", Byers-Heinlein, Bergmann and Savalei (2021) present compelling arguments for why developmental researchers should report and consider measures of reliability more frequently in their work. They also provide useful guidance on solutions to this "reliability crisis". In this commentary, I highlight a further methodological aspect that I think is key to successful and robust infancy research, that of construct validity...

The field of development needs more reliable infant work - improving our measures and methods is at the heart of accurately understanding why children do what they do! However, as scientists, we cannot stop with reliability but must also include measures of validity in our studies. In this commentary, we clarify and expand upon discussions of reliability and measurement error. We also argue for the importance of assessing the validity of our measures and tasks. Indeed, careful considerations of both reliability and validity are necessary for improving infant research...

Although the field of developmental psychopathology has traditionally focused on mental health, there has been increasing interest in exploring how psychological and developmental factors are associated with physical health. I argue that the principles of developmental psychopathology may be particularly useful for understanding physical health across development. I discuss how researchers can apply the following developmental psychopathology principles to the study of physical health: 1) dimensional measurement of stress exposure, 2) the multifaceted nature of risk and resilience, 3) focus on processes and pathways, and 4) lifespan development and intergenerational effects...

Word learning is a crucial aspect of early social and cognitive development, and previous research indicates that children's word learning is influenced by the context in which the word is spoken. However, the role of emotions as contextual cues to word learning remains less clear. The present study investigated word learning among 2.5-year-old children in angry, happy, sad, and variable emotional contexts. Fifty-six children (30 female; Mean age=2.49 years) participated in a novel noun generalization task in which children observed an experimenter labeling objects in either a consistently angry, consistently happy, consistently sad, or variable (one exemplar per emotion) context...