Child Development

Despite the long‐standing debate over the assumed universality of maternal sensitivity predicting attachment security (i.e., sensitivity hypothesis), few long‐term longitudinal investigations on attachment have been conducted outside the Western context. We leveraged data from a prospective 9‐year longitudinal study of middle‐class families ( N = 356; female = 48.9%) in China to examine if early maternal sensitivity predicts attachment representations in middle childhood. Maternal sensitivity was assessed from lab‐based observed interactions at 14 and 24 months. At 10 years old, children completed the Chinese version of the Attachment Script Assessment. Maternal sensitivity positively predicted the child's attachment representations at age 10 years ( β = 0.20, p < 0.01). These results supported the view that maternal sensitivity is prospectively related to secure attachment across cultures.

Growing up with multiple siblings might negatively affect language development. This study examined the associations between birth order, sibling characteristics and parent‐reported vocabulary size in 6163 Norwegian 8‐ to 36‐month‐old children (51.4% female). Results confirmed that birth order was negatively associated with vocabulary, yet exhibited a U‐shaped pattern. A data‐driven measure of “child‐to‐caregiver ratio” in the household was developed, in which old‐enough siblings—females 1–3 years earlier than males—were considered caregivers for their younger siblings. This measure explained variance in vocabulary better than birth order, and indicates sex‐differences in the age at which older siblings contribute to, rather than deplete, available resources. A child‐to‐caregiver ratio might better capture the interplay between language‐learning resources and demands within households.

This meta‐analytic review explored the characteristics and effectiveness of combined language (e.g., vocabulary) and code (e.g., phonological awareness) interventions, including synergistic intervention effects for at‐risk preschoolers. Data from 29 randomized controlled trials, published before March 2023, reporting on 43 interventions, including 9333 children (4–6 years; 55% male, 45% African American, 30% Hispanic) were included in the meta‐analyses. Composite intervention effects were small: language ( g = 0.11) and code ( g = 0.23). Language and code outcomes were significantly related ( p = 0.032). Interventions equally targeting code and language subskills produced equivalent or greater code and language outcomes than those with an unequal emphasis. Implications for future combined intervention studies are discussed.

Empirical findings on the associations of positive and dysfunctional parent–child relationship (PPCR/DPCR) characteristics with child shame, adaptive guilt, and maladaptive guilt were synthesized in six meta-analyses. The 65 included samples yielded 633 effect sizes (Ntotal = 19,144; Mage = 15.24 years; 59.0% female; 67.7% U.S. samples, n = 12,036 with 65% White, 12.3% Hispanic and Latinx, 10.8% Black, 6.3% mixed race, 5.6% Asian American, 0.3% Native American participants). Small positive correlations were found between DPCR and shame (r = .17), DPCR and maladaptive guilt (r = .15), and PPCR and adaptive guilt (r = .14). A small negative correlation was found between PPCR and shame ( r = −.12). Sample and study moderators and sources of bias are investigated and discussed.

This study examines associations between enrollment in high‐quality PreK and growth in children's ( N = 422; M age = 5.63 years; 47% female; 15% Asian, 19% Black, 30% White, 31% Hispanic; 5% other or mixed race) academic, executive functioning, and social–emotional skills across kindergarten (2017–2018) and first grade (2018–2019). Associations between PreK enrollment and language and math skills were sustained through first grade. More convergence between PreK enrollees and non‐enrollees in language skills occurred during first grade than kindergarten. Convergence patterns were stronger in math during kindergarten than in first grade. There were no associations between PreK enrollment and executive functioning by spring of first grade; most convergence occurred in first grade. All other associations were null by first grade.

Using latent profile analysis, the study examined distinct joint parenting styles among Chinese families with preschoolers (N = 300; 51.7% girls; M age = 55.97 months). This study incorporated maternal and paternal reports on multiple parenting dimensions that covered both Western-and Chinese-emphasized practices. Using data collected between 2017 and 2019 from Shanghai, four joint parenting styles emerged: authoritative (39.3%), moderately supportive (38.0%), strict-affectionate (14.3%), and authoritarian (8.4%). Authoritarian and moderately supportive parenting styles were linked to poorer child outcomes 1.5 years later compared to authoritative parenting. However, there were no significant differences in most child outcomes between authoritative and strict-affectionate parenting. These findings necessitate a reevaluation of the parenting typology and its effects on child development in the Chinese context.

This study examined bidirectional changes in adolescents' awareness of inequality and race consciousness between 2017 and 2018 in the USA and whether discriminatory experiences informed developmental pathways. The sample ( N = 2645; M age = 14.6, SD = 2.14; 56.5% female; > 0.01% transgender and gender diverse) was White (35.8%), Latinx (31.4%), multiple racial and ethnic groups (13.5%), Black (7.3%), and Asian (5.2%). Race consciousness predicted changes in awareness of inequality ( B = 0.31, p < 0.001); awareness of inequality did not predict changes in race consciousness. Social locations and experiences of gender and racial discrimination informed pathways. Providing adolescents with opportunities to explore race and racism may help them reflect on how society is organized in systemically inequitable ways.

Primal world beliefs (“primals”) capture understanding of general characteristics of the world, such as whether the world is Good and Enticing. Children (N=1215, 50% girls), mothers, and fathers from Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and United States reported neighborhood danger, socioeconomic status, parental warmth, harsh parenting, psychological control, and autonomy granting from ages 8 to 16 years. At age 22 years, original child participants reported their primal world beliefs. Parental warmth during childhood and adolescence significantly predicted Good, Safe, and Enticing world beliefs, but other experiences were only weakly related to primals. We did not find that primals are strongly related to intuitive aspects of the materiality of childhood experiences, which suggests future directions for understanding the origins of primals.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are highly impactful stressors that increase individuals' risk for a plethora of negative developmental and health outcomes. Furthermore, minoritized groups and under‐resourced individuals are at higher risk for ACEs, positioning these stressors as possible mechanisms driving health disparities. Given this fact, a strong methodological foundation is necessary to ensure maximal clinical value. As emphasized by Jensen et al. (https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14050), this foundation must begin with rigorous ACEs measurement—a goal that requires careful matching between ACEs measures and the scoring procedures used. To amplify their message while advocating for an alternative approach that may better reflect the conceptualization of ACEs, we write this commentary to highlight the merits of causal indicator models as a better match between theory and methodology.

Do children and adults recognize the value of disagreement for learning? Across two preregistered studies (data collected 2023), 4‐ to 8‐year‐old children ( N = 200, 101 females, mixed ethnicities) and adults ( N = 200, 99 females, mixed ethnicities) were asked whether a protagonist would learn more by talking to someone who agrees or disagrees with them about different beliefs. Across studies, participants more often endorsed learning from someone who disagreed with the protagonist when no “correct” answer existed, that is, when beliefs concerned preferences or ambiguous situations, or when the protagonist did not hold the typically “correct” belief. Adults endorsed learning from disagreement and articulated why disagreement is helpful for learning more often than children.

A series of experiments conducted in Central Europe (Hungary, Austria) and East Asia (Japan) probed whether 5- to 10-year-old children (n = 436, 213 female) and adults (n = 71, 43 female; all data collected between July 2020 and May 2023) would infer traits and choose partners accordingly, in a novel touchscreen game. The participants observed third-party actions and interactions of animated agents whose behavior varied in prosociality and skill, and subsequently selected whom to play with in potentially cooperative endeavors. Overall, the results indicate (1) that trait inference may not naturally follow from action understanding but relies on learning and experimental task framing, and (2) that by 7 years of age, children begin to capitalize on such inferences in partner choice.

This research with two studies examined whether young children's moral judgments of honesty and dishonesty predict their actual cheating behavior. Participants were 200 children aged 3–6 years (2021–2022. Study 1: N = 80, M age = 4.96, 40 girls; Study 2: N = 120, M age = 4.98, 60 girls; all middle‐class Han Chinese). Children completed a temptation resistance paradigm assessing honest or cheating behaviors. They also made moral judgments about story characters who cheated or acted honestly on school tests. Results showed that the more negatively children judged cheating, the less likely they were to cheat. This finding indicates a knowledge–behavior link regarding cheating behavior. It underscores the importance of studying the connection between moral cognition and action in early childhood.

Recent studies have established that even preverbal infants can monitor and regulate their mental states, raising the question of the variables involved in this early metacognitive development. Here, the metacognition of fifty‐five 18‐month‐old (27 females; mostly White; data collection: 2023) was assessed using an eye‐tracking paradigm designed to capture children's ability to seek information (i.e., a cue) under uncertainty. Moreover, the relations between toddlers' metacognition and parental (52 mothers) metacognitive talk during a 10‐min play session were also examined. Beyond replicating previous data showing metacognitive accuracy in toddlerhood, our results indicated that the frequency of parental utterances referring to metacognitive monitoring—but not metacognitive regulation—was related to toddlers' metacognition (OR = 1.3). Implications for sociocultural models of metacognitive development are discussed.

The Covid‐19 pandemic underscored the significance of early childhood education and care (ECEC) for children's development. We investigated the impact of attendance at ECEC programs following a closure period due to the pandemic. We used linear regression with a lagged dependent variable to examine assessments of children's cognitive and receptive language based on a sample of Chilean children ( N = 809; age = 41.3 months in 2021). Results show that children who attended center‐based care for more than 20 h a week demonstrated higher cognitive and receptive language levels than those who did not attend (3.2 and 2.9 points higher, respectively). Furthermore, our results highlight the importance of the intensity of attendance at ECEC programs for children's development.

This study, involving 120 children (M age = 4.25; SD = 0.83; 53% Female, 49% White, 23% multiracial, 16% Black, 9% Asian American, and 3% Latine) and their parents, examined parent talk constructs and their relation to children's early academic skills in 2021. Parents' talk was best represented as a three‐factor structure (general, number, and mathematical language), suggesting that mathematical language use is distinct from general and number talk. Parent talk factors were related to children's numeracy skills but not their vocabulary or mathematical language knowledge. Children with higher numeracy skills had parents who used more general talk, children with lower numeracy skills had parents who used more mathematical language, but parent number talk was not related to children's numeracy skills.

Children's evaluations of empathizers were examined using vignette‐based tasks ( N = 159 4‐ to 7‐year‐old U.S. children, 82 girls, 52% White) between March 2023 and March 2024. Children typically evaluated empathizers positively compared to less empathic others. They rated empathic responses as more appropriate, selected empathizers as nicer, and inferred more positive relationships between empathizers and the targets of empathy. However, when empathy was contrasted with helping behavior, or directed toward an immoral actor, evaluations of empathy were more negative. Older children weighed helping and empathy more equally and shifted their evaluations more when considering responses to immoral acts. These results show children use empathy in their social evaluations, and contextual influences on these evaluations strengthen with age.

Children rely on their Approximate Number System to intuitively perceive number. Such adaptations often exhibit sensitivity to real‐world statistics. This study investigates a potential manifestation of the ANS's sensitivity to real‐world statistics: a negative power‐law distribution of objects in natural scenes should be reflected in children's expectations about number, or in more Bayesian terms, a low number prior distribution. Five‐ to eight‐year‐old children ( n = 80; 39 girls, 41 boys) and adults ( n = 20) in 2022 completed a number discrimination task in which one side was corrupted by perceptual noise. Children and adults demonstrate a low number prior. No age‐related differences were observed, suggesting that the prior is formed by age five and does not strengthen with age.

DNA‐methylation profile scores (MPSs) index biology relevant for lifelong physical and cognitive health, but information on their longitudinal stability in childhood is lacking. Using two waves of data collected from 2014 to 2022 ( M lag between waves = 2.41 years) from N = 407 participants ( M age = 12.05 years, 51% female, 60% White), test–retest correlations were estimated for four salivary MPSs related to aging (PhenoAgeAccel, GrimAgeAccel, DunedinPACE), and cognitive function (Epigenetic‐ g ). MPSs varied in longitudinal stability (test–retest r s = 0.38 to 0.76). MPSs did not differ in children exposed to the COVID‐19 pandemic, but race‐ethnic and sex differences were apparent. Further research is necessary to understand which environmental perturbations impact DNA‐methylation trajectories and when children are most sensitive to those impacts.

Learning takes time: Performance usually starts poorly and improves with practice. Do children intuit this basic phenomenon of skill learning? In preregistered Experiment 1 ( n = 125; 54% female; 48% White; collected 2022–2023), US 7‐ to 8‐year‐old children predicted improved performance, 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children predicted flat performance, and 4‐year‐old children predicted near‐instant success followed by worse performance on a novel skill learning task. In preregistered Experiment 2 ( n = 75; 47% female; 69% White; collected 2023), on a task with lowered cognitive demands, US 4‐ to 6‐year‐old children predicted improved performance. Thus, although children expect to improve on novel tasks, younger children need scaffolding to form these predictions and grasp this fundamental aspect of learning.

This study investigated the development of educational aspirations (EAs) among Chinese youth ( n = 2228, 48.61% female, 87.66% Han, M age_2010 = 11.48 years) for 6 years. Five latent classes of EA trajectories were identified. They varied greatly during early adolescence but converged around an associate degree in middle adolescence and beyond and demonstrated high rank‐order stability across the period of study. High academic performance and academic competence (adolescent‐reported) and educational involvement, academic expectations, and family socioeconomic status (parent‐reported) predicted loftier EA trajectories. Consistent EA beyond an associate degree predicted a greater probability of college enrollment in emerging adulthood. Findings are interpreted with respect to China's sociocultural context, a society characterized by high collectivism and regard for academic achievements.

We investigated the role of children's conflict monitoring skills in revising an intuitive scientific theory. Children aged 5 to 9 ( N = 177; 53% girls, data collected in Germany from 2019‐2023) completed computer‐based tasks on water displacement, a concept prone to misconceptions. Children predicted which of two objects would displace more water before receiving feedback. With increasing age, children showed slower response times for incorrect predictions ( β = −0.04) and greater pupil dilation to unexpected outcomes ( β = −0.04), indicating better conflict monitoring. Better conflict monitoring, in turn, predicted faster belief revision ( β = 0.07). These findings suggest that conflict monitoring is crucial for learning in discovery‐based activities.

This study examined the impact of the Head Start Research‐based, Developmentally Informed (REDI) preschool intervention on high school outcomes and explored longitudinal mediation. 356 children (58% White, 25% Black, 17% Latinx; 54% female, 46% male; M age = 4.49 years) were recruited from Head Start classrooms which were randomized to intervention ( N = 192) or “usual practice” ( N = 164). REDI effects emerged on high school emotional symptoms (teacher ratings, d = 0.71) and behavior problems (composite of teacher, parent, youth ratings, d = 0.23) with the latter benefits mediated by earlier intervention boosts to social–emotional learning, social adjustment, and parent involvement. REDI had no direct impact on GPA or on‐time graduation but promoted these outcomes indirectly mediated by earlier intervention effects.

What do children do when they do not want to obey but cannot afford to disobey? Might they, like adults, feign misunderstanding and seek out loopholes? Across four studies ( N = 723; 44% female; USA; majority White; data collected 2020–2023), we find that loophole behavior emerges around ages 5 to 6 (Study 1, 3–18 years), that children think loopholes will get them into less trouble than non‐compliance (Study 2, 4–10 years), predict that other children will be more likely to exploit loopholes when goals conflict (Study 3, 5–10 years), and are increasingly able to generate loopholes themselves (Study 4, 5–10 years). This work provides new insights on how children navigate the gray area between compliance and defiance and the development of loophole behavior across early and middle childhood.

Research with Western samples has uncovered the rapid development of infants' visual attention. This study evaluated spatial attention in 6‐ to 9‐month‐old infants living in rural Malawi ( N = 511; = 255, = 427) or suburban California, United States ( N = 57, = 29, = 37) in 2018–2019. Using the Infant Orienting With Attention (IOWA) task, results showed that infants were faster and more accurate to fixate a target when a cue validly predicted the target location and were slower and less accurate when the cue was invalid. However, compared to US infants, Malawian infants took longer to fixate the target and were more accurate. These results both provide information about the development of spatial attention in an underrepresented population and demonstrate differences in spatial attention in infants with different lived experiences.

Joint attention (JA) has been found to correlate with many developmental outcomes. However, little is known about how naturalistic JA is established and develops during early infancy. In this study, free‐flowing tabletop toy play between infants at 5 and 15 months and their mothers ( N = 48 dyads; 65% white) was observed to (1) examine changes in JA, (2) investigate whether infants become better leaders or followers of JA, and (3) explore the role of intentionally mediated forms of communication. JA episodes increased in frequency and duration, and initiations of JA became more evenly distributed between members of the dyad. Older infants became better at leading as well as following their mothers' attention behaviors and more frequently directed their attention towards their partner, though this had minimal impact on the organization of episodes of JA.