Julia A. Leonard’s research while affiliated with Yale University and other places

When children encounter new challenges, parents often ask themselves: should I let my child figure it out, or should I step in and do it for them? How parents resolve this dilemma is linked to various child developmental outcomes, yet we know little about the cognitive computations that underlie parents’ decision to intervene. Here, we model parenting decisions as a Bayesian solution to a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) and qualitatively compare predictions with behavioral data from real-time parent-child interactions. Empirically, we find that parents are more likely to take over when they believe children are less skilled and when tasks are challenging, and more likely to step back when they believe their child can learn from doing the task on their own. The model captures the fine-grained ways in which these factors shape parent decision-making and, alongside the empirical data, uncovers the cognitive computations that drive parental intervention.

Students often receive encouragement but do not always find it motivating. Whose encouragement motivates students and what cognitive mechanisms underlie this process? We propose that students’ responses to positive feedback (e.g., encouragement) hinge on mental state representations, specifically what the speaker knows. Across three studies, we find that U.S. adolescents (n = 581–759 11- to 19-year-olds per study, preregistered; >80% racial/ethnic minorities; >36% low income) report being more motivated by, more confident in, and more likely to seek out encouragement from hypothetical and real-world speakers (e.g., parents, teachers, peers) who are knowledgeable about both their abilities (e.g., students’ math skills) and the task at hand (e.g., math). To make feedback most effective, our findings suggest that students should seek and receive encouragement from those who know them and their activities well.

Overparenting—taking over and completing developmentally appropriate tasks for children—is pervasive and hurts children's motivation. Can overparenting in early childhood be reduced by simply framing tasks as learning opportunities? In Study 1 ( N = 77; 62% female; 74% White; collected 4/2022), US parents of 4‐to‐5‐year‐olds reported taking over less on tasks they perceived as greater learning opportunities, which was most often the case on academic tasks. Studies 2 and 3 ( N = 140; 67% female; 52% White; collected 7/2022–9/2023) showed that framing the everyday, non‐academic task of getting dressed as a learning opportunity—whether big or small—reduced parents' taking over by nearly half ( r = −.39). These findings suggest that highlighting learning opportunities helps parents give children more autonomy.

Perseverance, above and beyond IQ, predicts academicoutcomes in school age children, however, little is knownabout what factors affect persistence in early childhood. Here,we propose a formal Bayesian model of how children mightlearn how to calibrate effort from observing adult models andthen explore this idea behaviorally across two experiments inchildren and infants. Results from Experiment 1 show thatpreschoolers persist more after watching an adult persist, butonly if the adult is successful at reaching their goal.Experiment 2 and a pre-registered replication extend thesefindings, showing that even infants use adult models tomodulate their persistence, and can generalize this inferenceto novel situations. These results suggest that bothpreschoolers and infants are sensitive to adult persistence anduse it to calibrate their own effort in far-reaching ways.

Children vary in how sensitive they are to experiences, with consequences for their developmental outcomes. In the current study, we investigated how behavioral sensitivity at age 3 years predicts mental health in middle childhood. Using a novel repeated measures design, we calculated child sensitivity to multiple psychological and social influences: parent praise, parent stress, child mood, and child sleep. We conceptualized sensitivity as the strength and direction of the relationship between psychosocial influences and child behavior, operationalized as toothbrushing time, at age 3 years. When children were 5–7 years old ( n = 60), parents reported on children's internalizing and externalizing problems. Children who were more sensitive to their parents’ praise at age 3 had fewer internalizing ( r = −0.37, p = 0.016, p FDR = 0.042) and externalizing ( r = −0.35, p = 0.021, p FDR = 0.042) problems in middle childhood. Higher average parent praise also marginally predicted fewer externalizing problems ( r = −0.33, p = 0.006, p FDR = 0.057). Child sensitivity to mood predicted fewer internalizing ( r = −0.32, p = 0.013, p FDR = 0.042) and externalizing ( r = −0.38, p = 0.003, p FDR = 0.026) problems. By capturing variability in how children respond to daily fluctuations in their environment, we can contribute to the early prediction of mental health problems and improve access to early intervention services for children and families who need them most. Research Highlights Children differ in how strongly their behavior depends on psychosocial factors including parent praise, child mood, child sleep, and parent stress. Children who are more sensitive to their parents’ praise at age 3 have fewer internalizing and externalizing problems at age 5–7 years. Child sensitivity to mood also predicts fewer internalizing and externalizing problems.

Adjusting practice to different goals and task characteristics is pivotal for learning, but it is unclear how this essential skill develops. Across 2 preregistered experiments, 190 children aged 4-8 years (106 female) and 31 adults played an easy and a difficult game and were informed that they would later be tested on either the easy, the difficult, or a randomly chosen game. Before the test, they could practice one of the two games. We found that children and adults selectively chose to practice whichever game they will be tested on. Critically, in the Random condition children and adults chose to practice the difficult game to minimize losses, suggesting that even 4-year-olds understand how to prepare for an unknown future.

Over-parenting––taking over and completing tasks for children––is pervasive and negatively impacts children’s motivation. Can simply pointing out how much children can learn from their actions reduce over-parenting in early childhood? In Study 1, U.S. parents of 4-5-year-old children (N = 77; 62% female; 74% White) reported taking over less on tasks they view as greater learning opportunities, which was most often the case on academic tasks. Studies 2 and 3 (N = 140; 67% female; 52% White) show that framing the everyday, non-academic task of getting dressed as a learning opportunity – whether big or small – reduces parents’ taking over by nearly half. These findings suggest that merely pointing out learning opportunities boosts autonomy-supportive parenting in early childhood.

Human childhood is characterized by dramatic changes in the mind and brain. However, little is known about the large-scale intrinsic cortical network changes that occur during childhood due to methodological challenges in scanning young children. Here, we overcome this barrier by using sophisticated acquisition and analysis tools to investigate functional network development in children between the ages of 4 and 10 years (n = 92; 50 female, 42 male). At multiple spatial scales, age is positively associated with brain network segregation. At the system level, age was associated with segregation of systems involved in attention from those involved in abstract cognition, and with integration among attentional and perceptual systems. Associations between age and functional connectivity are most pronounced in visual and medial prefrontal cortex, the two ends of a gradient from perceptual, externally oriented cortex to abstract, internally oriented cortex. These findings suggest that both ends of the sensory-association gradient may develop early, in contrast to the classical theories that cortical maturation proceeds from back to front, with sensory areas developing first and association areas developing last. More mature patterns of brain network architecture, controlling for age, were associated with better visuospatial reasoning abilities. Our results suggest that as cortical architecture becomes more specialized, children become more able to reason about the world and their place in it.SIGNIFICANCEAnthropologists have called the transition from early to middle childhood the "age of reason", when children across cultures become more independent. We employ cutting-edge neuroimaging acquisition and analysis approaches to investigate associations between age and functional brain architecture in childhood. Age was positively associated with segregation between cortical systems that process the external world, and those that process abstract phenomena like the past, future, and minds of others. Surprisingly, we observed pronounced development at both ends of the sensory-association gradient, challenging the theory that sensory areas develop first and association areas develop last. Our results open new directions for research into how brains reorganize to support rapid gains in cognitive and socioemotional skills as children reach the age of reason.

Learning requires effort, but children cannot try hard at everything. Here, we evaluated whether children use their improvement over time to decide whether to stick with a challenge. To eliminate the effect of individual differences in ability or prior knowledge, we created a novel paradigm that allowed us to surreptitiously control children's performance. Across three preregistered experiments (N = 319, ages 4 to 6 in the United States), we found that children who were given evidence that their performance was improving were more likely to persist on a challenging task than children who were given evidence that their performance was constant, even when final performance was matched. This effect was robust to differing reward contingencies, across in-person and online testing contexts, and was driven by the demotivating effect of constant performance. Our results suggest that young children will be more persistent if they are guided away from too-difficult tasks and toward opportunities that enable steady growth. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

How do children’s experiences relate to their naturalistic emotional and social processing? Because children can struggle with tasks in the scanner, we collected fMRI data while 4-to-11-year-olds watched a short film with positive and negative emotional events, and rich parent-child interactions (n = 70). We captured broad, normative stressful experiences by examining socioeconomic status (SES) and stressful life events, as well as children’s more proximal experiences with their parents. For a sub-sample (n = 30), parenting behaviors were measured during a parent-child interaction, consisting of a picture book, a challenging puzzle, and free play with novel toys. We characterized positive parenting behaviors (e.g., warmth, praise) and negative parenting behaviors (e.g., harsh tone, physical control). We found that higher SES was related to greater activity in medial orbitofrontal cortex during parent-child interaction movie events. Negative parenting behaviors were associated with less activation of the ventral tegmental area and cerebellum during positive emotional events. In a region-of-interest analysis, we found that stressful life events and negative parenting behaviors were associated with less activation of the amygdala during positive emotional events. These exploratory results demonstrate the promise of using movie fMRI to study how early experiences may shape emotional, social, and motivational processes.