International Journal of Behavioral Development

Previous research has demonstrated that adults are successful at visually tracking rigidly moving items, but experience great difficulties when tracking substance-like “pouring” items. Using a comparative approach, we investigated whether the presence/absence of the grammatical count–mass distinction influences adults and children’s ability to attentively track objects versus substances. More specifically, we aimed to explore whether the higher success at tracking rigid over substance-like items appears universally or whether speakers of classifier languages (like Japanese, not marking the object–substance distinction) are advantaged at tracking substances as compared to speakers of non-classifier languages (like Swiss German, marking the object–substance distinction). Our results supported the idea that language has no effect on low-level cognitive processes such as the attentive visual processing of objects and substances. We concluded arguing that the tendency to prioritize objects is universal and independent of specific characteristics of the language spoken.

Chinese children (N = 185, aged 3–7 years) were assessed on their abilities to freely label facial expressions and emotional situations. Results indicated that the overall accuracy of free-labeling facial expressions increased relatively quickly in children aged 3–5 years, but slowed down in children aged 5–7 years. In contrast, the overall accuracy of free-labeling emotional situations increased continuously in children aged 3–7 years. In the free-labeling facial expression tasks, children produced labels for happiness, anger, and sadness more easily than fear, surprise, and disgust; in the free-labeling of emotional situation tasks, children produced labels for happiness and sadness more easily than fear, anger, surprise, and disgust. Children performed better on free-labeling emotional situations than on free-labeling facial expressions, especially for happiness, sadness, fear, surprise, and disgust, which confirmed the Face Inferiority Effect. Moreover, the Face Inferiority Effect could be obviously observed in children aged 4 years and became more pronounced with age. Additionally, Bullock & Russell’s model was partly supported in the present study.

This study examines community service effects on adolescents’ prosocial behaviors as mediated through experiences made during service. Based on theoretical assumptions by Youniss and Yates, we suggest that personal agency experiences and being confronted with situations that can challenge the own world views (ideology experiences) serve as mediators. The data were collected in a two-wave longitudinal study surveying 2,408 German adolescents aged between 14 and 15 years. Based on true intraindividual change models, the results support the expected mediation of service effects on prosocial behaviors through agency, but not ideology experiences. The findings suggest that community service affects prosocial behaviors through a behavioral pathway.

Parenting research is frequently conducted without a thorough examination of socio-economic characteristics. In this study, longitudinal observations of positive parenting were conducted across six time points. Participants were 219 mothers of children with and without developmental delays. Mothers’ positive parenting increased during early and middle childhood in children with and without developmental delays. Mothers who reported more education had significantly higher levels of positive parenting when their children were 3 years old. Mothers who reported more family income grew at a significantly faster rate in positive parenting. There was preliminary support that mothers with more income were more likely to be members of a class that started off and remained at a higher level of positive parenting over time. Implications are discussed.

Whereas US-based data have contributed to our understanding of family composition changes over the last decades, data on Canadian families are limited, and previous studies have stressed the need for in depth, longitudinal investigations. This article begins to fill this gap in the literature by providing a current and detailed portrait of family composition changes from 1996 to 2008 (Study 1). Additionally, we performed an analysis of the role of specific child, parent and family characteristics, in interaction with family composition and family transition, in predicting pre-school children’s behavioral outcomes (Study 2). Using nationally-representative Canadian data collected from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY), we focus our inquiry on a mean sample for 0–5-year-olds of 2,866 children at cycle 8 (2008). Results show increases in non-traditional family households over time, as well as significant relationships between child characteristics, household characteristics, and family processes in predicting three behavioral outcomes: emotional problems, hyperactivity/impulsivity, and physical aggression.

Infants’ preference for faces was investigated in a cross-sectional sample of 75 children, aged 3 to 11 months, and 23 adults. A visual preference paradigm was used where pairs of faces and toys were presented side-by-side while eye gaze was recorded. In addition, motor activity was assessed via parent report and the relation between motor activity and face preference was examined. Face preference scores followed an inverted U-shaped developmental trajectory with no face preference in 3-month-olds, a strong face preference in 5- and 9-month-olds, and a weaker face preference in 11-month-olds. Adults showed no reliable face preference. Motor activity was a significant predictor of face preference in 3-month-old infants, supporting the presence of motor-social connections in early infancy.

The ability to infer the emotional states of others is central to our everyday interactions. These inferences can be drawn from several different sources of information occurring simultaneously in the communication situation. Based on previous studies revealing that children pay more heed to situational context than to emotional prosody when inferring the emotional states of others, we decided to focus on this issue, broadening the investigation to find out whether the natural combination of emotional prosody and faces (that is, paralinguistic cues) can overcome the dominance of situational context (that is, extralinguistic cues), and if so, at what age? In Experiment 1, children aged 3–9 years played a computer game in which they had to judge the emotional state of a character, based on two sources of information (that is, extralinguistic and paralinguistic) that were either congruent or conflicting. In Condition 1, situational context was compared with emotional prosody; in Condition 2, situational context was compared with emotional prosody combined with emotional faces. In a complementary study (Experiment 2) the same 3-year-olds performed recognition tasks with the three cues presented in isolation. Results highlighted the fundamental role of both cues, as a) situational context dominated prosody in all age groups, but b) the combination of emotional facial expression and prosody overcame this dominance, especially among the youngest and oldest children. We discuss our findings in the light of previous research and theories of both language and emotional development.

The current study examined whether adolescent–parent discrepancies in the perception of psychological control are associated with adolescent maladjustment. The sample consisted of 552 Turkish adolescents attending high school and their parents. Half of the adolescents had similar scores to their parents, while the remaining half thought differently. The results of the polynomial regression with response surface analysis showed that the incongruence between reports was positively associated with having deviant friends for males, and feelings of loneliness for females. Results suggested that reports of low levels of psychological control for father–adolescent pairs were associated with fewer deviant friends for males and lower levels of loneliness for females. Moreover, the possibility of having deviant friends was higher when males and their mothers were congruent in reporting high levels of psychological control. These findings highlight the importance of consideration of perceptual differences in parental practices in relation to adolescent maladjustment.

Personal recollections constitute autobiographical memory that develops intensively during the preschool years. The two-wave longitudinal study focuses on gender differences in preschool children’s independent recollections. The same children (N = 275; 140 boys, 135 girls) were asked to talk about their previous birthday and the past weekend at the ages of 4 and 6. Interactions were coded for content. Boys talked more about themselves and about different nonsocial aspects of the events. Girls talked more about the other people with whom they had jointly experienced the past event. It seems that gender differences in children’s recollections appear early and increase during the preschool period.

Dysregulated cortisol is a risk factor for poor health outcomes. Children of distressed mothers exhibit dysregulated cortisol, yet it is unclear whether maternal distress predicts cortisol activity in later developmental stages. This longitudinal study examined the prospective relation between maternal distress during late childhood (9–12 years) and adolescence (15–19 years) and cortisol response in offspring in young adulthood (24–28 years). Data were collected from 51 recently divorced mothers and their children across 15 years. Higher maternal distress during late childhood was associated with lower total cortisol independent of levels of maternal distress in adolescence or young adulthood. Maternal distress during adolescence marginally predicted blunted cortisol when distress in childhood was low. Findings suggest that blunted cortisol activity in young adulthood may be a long-term consequence of exposure to maternal distress earlier in development.