Child Development

This pre‐registered randomized clinical trial examined the efficacy of a prevention program on parenting of siblings and sibling relationships among Latinxs. Participants were 272 sibling dyads (82.9% Mexican) with 5th graders (Mage = 10.63; SD = 0.38; 51.8% female), their younger siblings in 1st to 4th grades (Mage = 8.18; SD = 1.06; 54.8% female), and their caregivers. Families were randomized to Siblings Are Special (SIBS; n = 161) or an alternative academic skills program (n = 111). Data were collected pre‐ and post‐program (2018–2022). Significant effects were detected for sibling‐focused parenting in the expected direction for authoritarian control and non‐intervention in sibling conflicts, but there were no effects for sibling relationship quality. Implications of COVID‐19 and future directions are discussed.

This study examined school outness, school climate, and country inclusivity to assess their associations with bias‐based bullying and cyberbullying among sexual and gender minority youth (SGMY) in Europe in 2020–2021 (N = 12,764; Mage = 16.07; 69% female; 43% cisgender girls; 31% bisexual). Outness was positively related to bias‐based bullying (β = 0.10, R² = 0.21) and cyberbullying (β = 0.04, R² = 0.15). Interaction results indicate that in less inclusive countries, outness remained significantly associated with both forms of bullying. However, effect sizes were lower when school safety and peer support were high compared to when they were low. In less inclusive countries, school efforts to promote safety and peer support can reduce bullying experiences for out SGMY.

Racial and ethnic disparities in children's diets are prevalent. Little is known about how fathers' food parenting practices may contribute to these disparities. We examined racial and ethnic variations in food parenting practices and their associations with 2–6‐year‐old children's diets in a cross‐sectional sample of U.S. fathers surveyed in 2021–2023 (N = 1015; 16% Asian, 9% Black, 6% Hispanic, 70% White; Mage = 37 years) using path analysis. Fathers' food parenting practices were significantly associated with children's diets, yet little evidence emerged that fathers' food parenting practices explained racial and ethnic disparities in children's diets. These findings suggest the potential importance of structural constraints on healthy eating (e.g., access to healthy food) among minoritized children beyond fathers' food parenting practices.

Using three‐wave data from 962 Chinese adolescents (45.1% boys, Mage = 12.369, SD = 0.699 at T1, September 2022), this study examined the link between parental social comparison shaming and adolescents' life meaning, with adolescents' satisfaction of need for competence tested as a mediator and filial piety tested as a moderator. Parental social comparison shaming (T1) was negatively associated with adolescents' presence of life meaning (T3, September 2023, controlling for baseline) through a negative association with adolescents' satisfaction of competence need (T2, March 2023, controlling for baseline). The link between social comparison shaming and satisfaction of competence need was more pronounced among adolescents with higher (versus lower) reciprocal filial piety. The identified indirect effect was also stronger among adolescents with higher (versus lower) reciprocal filial piety.

Aperiodic electroencephalography (EEG) activity is hypothesized to index biological mechanisms that underpin brain functioning. This longitudinal study characterized the developmental trajectories of the aperiodic slope (i.e., aperiodic exponent) and offset from infancy to 7 years of age in a US community sample (N = 391, 46.5% female, predominantly White; data collection 2013‐2023). The study further examined whether differential developmental trajectories resulted in differential associations between child aperiodic activity and maternal anxiety symptoms. Developmental trajectories for slope and offset were nonlinear and characterized by relative increases in early childhood and a subsequent decrease or stabilization by Age 7, with variation by brain region and sex. Maternal anxiety was negatively associated with slope at 3 years and positively associated with slope at 7 years. Implications for child brain development are discussed.

Need for cognition (NFC) reflects the tendency to enjoy and engage in cognitive challenges. This study examines the relations between NFC and academic interest among 922 German secondary school students (academic track) assessed four times in Grades 5–7 (initial age M = 10.63, SD = 0.55; 41% female; 90% first language German) in mathematics, German, and English. Data were collected between 2008 and 2012 and were analyzed using autoregressive cross‐lagged panel models. In all domains, NFC positively predicted subsequent academic interest (β = 0.03 to β = 0.17) but interest did not positively predict subsequent NFC. Findings were comparable after controlling for students' achievement, gender, socioeconomic status, and class type. They suggest that NFC is a potential facilitator of the development of academic interest in school.

Childhood adversity takes a toll on lifelong health. However, investigations of unpredictability as a form of adversity are lacking. Environmental unpredictability across multiple developmental periods and ecological levels was examined using a multiethnic, longitudinal birth cohort (1998–2000) oversampled for unmarried parents. Data were from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 4898 youth at birth; 52% male; 48% Black, 27% Hispanic, 21% White) to examine unpredictability at ages 1, 3, 5, and 9 with later adolescent outcomes. An unpredictability index was associated with age 15 outcomes (N = 3595) including depressive symptoms (β = 0.11), anxiety symptoms (β = 0.08), delinquency (β = 0.13), impulsivity (β = 0.09), heavier weight categories (β = 0.09), and internalizing (β = 0.14), externalizing (β = 0.23), and attention problems (β = 0.16). Findings support unpredictability as a unique form of adversity.

What are the psychological consequences of receiving direct and indirect help in childhood? We conducted three preregistered experiments (N = 619, 7–9 years, 80% Dutch, 51% girls, 49% boys, mostly higher socioeconomic status) in the Netherlands (July 2020–July 2022). Children received direct help (correct answer), indirect help (hint), or no help. An internal meta‐analysis showed that children who received help felt less competent, liked the task less, and felt more in need of help. Children who received help also sought fewer challenges (Study 3). Effect sizes were modest. Direct and indirect help had largely similar effects, except that children disliked and misreported receiving direct help more. Thus, despite being well‐intentioned, direct and indirect help can be discouraging.

Observed parental sensitivity during a parent–child teaching task and free‐play task was tested as mediators of the association between family socioeconomic risk and child receptive language at 48 months, consistent with family investment theory. Parents (n = 881 mothers; 624 fathers, data collected between 2006‐2008) and their 5‐month‐old children (52% male) were recruited from public health clinics in Norway. Both maternal sensitivity (measured at 24 months) and paternal sensitivity (measured at 36 months) during the teaching task mediated the association between family socioeconomic risk and child language, controlling for sensitivity during free play, which was not significantly associated with child language. Results suggest that both mothers and fathers make meaningful contributions to early language development via sensitive parenting, particularly in the context of teaching‐based interactions.

Neural specialization for print can be indexed by the left‐lateralized N1 response as a tuning gradient to visual words, indicated by sensitivity (character vs. visual control) and selectivity (character vs. character‐like stimuli). Forty‐five Chinese children (20 boys) were recorded with EEG twice with a 2‐year interval during a character decision task (T1, 2016‐2017: 7–9 years old; T2, 2018‐2020: 9–11). Character N1 amplitude decreased faster with age (7–11 years) compared to non‐character N1, and character and character‐like N1 became less right‐lateralized. T1 better readers showed more longitudinal decrease of print sensitivity and more left‐lateralized T2 print sensitivity and selectivity. To conclude, reading skill drives functional neural efficiency for processing print, and the left hemisphere may be a linguistically universal neural mechanism for reading development.

Adjusting practice to different goals and characteristics is key to learning, but its development remains unclear. Across 2 preregistered experiments, 190 4‐to‐8‐year‐olds (106 female; mostly White; data collection: December 2021–September 2022) and 31 adults played an easy and a difficult game, then chose one to practice before a test on either the easy, difficult, or a randomly chosen game. All children adjusted their active practice choices to condition. When the test game was known, they practiced that game. However, when the test game was randomly chosen, only children 6+ and adults practiced the difficult game, while younger children only showed a trending effect. This suggests that the ability to prepare for uncertainty may develop between ages 4 and 6.

Eye‐tracking studies tested the understanding of two types of speech acts (questions and assertions) in 14‐, 18‐, and 30‐month‐olds (N = 280; 149 females; ethnicity data collection forbidden, testing in 2021–2024). Experiments involved objects either hidden or visible for a speaker. By 14 months, when the speaker asked questions, infants focused on hidden objects (rs > 0.31). Infants linked novel labels in interrogative sentences to hidden objects by 18 months and novel labels in declarative sentences to visible objects by 14 months (ds > 0.52). Thus, infants assume questions seek information one is lacking, while assertions share information one has access to. Furthermore, infants connect interrogative sentences to questions and declarative sentences to assertions, showing an understanding of communicative form–function relations.

The present study assessed both concurrent and early influences of the maternal caregiving environment to examine unique contributions of each to variation in children's emotional responses to COVID‐19 pandemic. Preschoolers (3–5 years; M = 4.12, SD = 0.49) previously assessed in infancy, several years prior to pandemic outbreak, were re‐assessed during pandemic‐related nationwide lockdown (N = 200; 50% female; 63.5% secular Jews; 2016; 2021). Maternal stress during lockdown significantly moderated (β = 0.13, p < 0.05) and mediated (β = 0.08, p < 0.05) concurrent associations between preschoolers' dose of exposure (DOE) to COVID‐19 psychosocial stressors and symptoms. Furthermore, maternal sensitive care observed in infancy significantly moderated future associations between preschoolers' DOE and symptoms (β = −0.16, p < 0.05). Longitudinal protective effects of infant care remained significant after controlling for caregiver stress and behavior during the lockdown.

Cross‐site comparisons indicate that East Asian children typically excel on tests of executive function (EF), but interpreting this contrast is made difficult by both the heavy reliance on testing in school settings and by the scarcity of studies that assess across‐site measurement invariance. Addressing these gaps, our study included remote home‐based assessments of EF for 1002 children (Mage = 5.19 years, SD = 0.51; 49% male) from England, Hong Kong, and mainland China, as well as parental ratings of externalizing and internalizing adjustment problems (data collected between June 2021 and December 2022). The models established partial scalar invariance but did not show clear site differences. Supporting the universal importance of EF for behavioral self‐regulation, EF task performance and parent‐rated externalizing problems showed similar inverse associations across sites.

Children with disabilities often receive accommodations, but teachers rarely explain them to typically‐developing (TD) classmates. How do TD students reason about these accommodations and evaluate their fairness? Five‐, seven‐, and nine‐year‐olds from the United States (N = 122; 50% female; 87.7% white; data collected April 2022 ‐ September 2023) heard stories where a child character with a cognitive or physical disability engaged with a cognitive or physical accommodation. Participants explained why the child engaged in the accommodation and evaluated the accommodation's fairness. Nine‐year‐olds judged accommodations to be significantly fairer than 5‐year‐olds. In their explanations, the oldest children mentioned characters' needs significantly more, whereas the youngest children mentioned characters' motives significantly more. Mentioning characters' needs predicted evaluating accommodations as fairer, and mentioning characters' motives predicted evaluating accommodations as less fair.

Music appears universally in human infancy with self‐evident effects: as many parents know intuitively, infants love to be sung to. The long‐term effects of parental singing remain unclear, however. In an offset‐design exploratory 10‐week randomized trial conducted in 2023 (110 families of young infants, Mage = 3.67 months, 53% female, 73% White), the study manipulated the frequency of infant‐directed singing via a music enrichment intervention. Results, measured by smartphone‐based ecological momentary assessment (EMA), show that infant‐directed singing causes general post‐intervention improvements to infant mood, but not to caregiver mood. The findings show the feasibility of longitudinal EMA (retention: 92%; EMA response rate: 74%) of infants and the potential of longer‐term and higher‐intensity music enrichment interventions to improve health in infancy.

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.

This longitudinal study (data collected from 2019 to 2023) examines the relation between Spanish‐English bilingual Latino toddlers' (n=46; F=22; M=24) early gesture production ( Mage =18.67 months; SDage =1.02) and later language skills ( Mage =36.87 months; SDage =0.81). Video recordings at child‐age 18‐months yielded counts of children's speech and gesture production; the latter included gesture words (different meanings) and gesture sentences (gestures‐plus‐speech combinations). Multiple regression analyses revealed that gesture words and sentences at 18 months of age positively predicted word‐ and sentence‐level skills at 36 months of age, respectively, but only in English. These relations held despite controlling for children's speech production. These findings, that early gesture production selectively predicts language outcomes in bilingual children, suggest that gesture production may facilitate language‐specific learning rather than reflecting a global communicative skill.

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.

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.

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.