Young children's appreciation of the mental impact of their communicative signals

This work addresses whether 30-month-olds appreciate that their communicative signals are being understood (or not) by another person. Infants produce a range of behaviors, such as repairing their failed signals, that have been construed as evidence that they have an implicit theory of mind. Such behavior could be interpreted as attempts to obtain some desired goal rather than as attempts to gain listener understanding. This study was designed to separate listener comprehension from obtaining a material goal. In 4 conditions, children either did or did not get what they wanted and the experimenter understood or misunderstood their request. As predicted, children clarified their signal more when the experimenter misunderstood compared to when she understood. Regardless of whether young children achieved their overt goal, they engaged in behaviors to ensure their communicative act had been understood.     

Young children's awareness of the origins of their mental representations.

A series of studies addressed preschool-age children's ability to identify and remember the epistemic and imaginal origins of their mental representations. Study 1 revealed that children as young as 3 were able to differentiate imaginal from perceptual origins. Study 2 explored children's ability to differentiate representations formed through inference from those formed through imagination and seeing. Results revealed that 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds differed significantly in their ability to identify and remember the sources of their mental representations. Identifying and remembering inference was the most difficult for all age groups. Results from Study 3 rule out the possibility that incorrect performance in Studies 1 and 2 resulted from an inability to remember the objects used in the tasks. Results from these studies indicate that children as young as 3 are able to differentiate mental representations based on fiction from those based on fact, but that this ability continues to develop throughout the preschool years. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Family processes as pathways from income to young children's development.

A variety of family processes have been hypothesized to mediate associations between income and young children's development. Maternal emotional distress, parental authoritative and authoritarian behavior (videotaped mother-child interactions), and provision of cognitively stimulating activities (Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment [HOME] scales) were examined as possible mediators in a sample of 493 White and African American low-birth-weight premature infants who were followed from birth through age 5. Cognitive ability was assessed by standardized test, and child behavior problems by maternal report, when the children were 3 and 5 years of age. As expected, family income was associated with child outcomes. The provision of stimulating experiences in the home mediated the relation between family income and both children's outcomes; maternal emotional distress and parenting practices mediated the relation between income and children's behavior problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Factors affecting development of rifampicin resistance in biofilm-producing Staphylococcus epidermidis

BACKGROUND: Solitary rectal ulcer syndrome (SRUS) is often resistant to medical and surgical treatment. AIM: To determine whether biofeedback retraining is a useful treatment for this condition. PATIENTS: Thirteen consecutive patients with SRUS (three men, median age 34 years, median duration of symptoms three years) underwent treatment. Previous surgical treatment had failed in five. METHODS: Patients were evaluated prospectively. Anorectal physiological studies were performed in 11 patients before treatment. A standardised questionnaire was used before and after treatment, and all but two patients were examined after treatment. RESULTS: Median follow up was nine months (range 3-22 months). After treatment four patients were asymptomatic, and four felt improved. Symptom improvement or elimination occurred in: need to strain (7/13 patients), digitation (7/11), laxative use (5/9). Time in the toilet (median 30 v 10 minutes, before v after treatment) and number of visits to toilet (6 v 3/day) were also improved. Three patients were able to maintain employment before treatment compared with eight after treatment. The solitary ulcer did not heal completely in any of the nine patients examined after treatment, but improved in four. Previous surgery, the macroscopic appearance of the ulcer, the presence of pelvic floor paradox, and other physiological parameters did not predict outcome. CONCLUSION: Biofeedback retraining is a useful treatment for this condition. Long term studies are now required.     

Advances in children's mental health.

Comments on articles addressing children's mental health (MH) in the October 1988 issue of American Psychologist, including articles by D. Dougherty, D. K. Inouye, and L. Saxe et al (see PA, Vol 76:9682, 9693, and 9717). The articles overlooked recent advances toward improving services for troubled children: A 4-pronged effort has been embarked on to advance child MH. Progress is apparent in defining the system of care needed by children with MH problems and in support for state- and community-wide changes in interagency system development. The 3rd and 4th areas are the development of a national movement of parents of emotionally disturbed youth and advances in the area of minority group concerns. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sanctification of parenting, moral socialization, and young children's conscience development.

Religion is important to most U.S. families, but is often overlooked in research on children's development. This study examined parental religious beliefs about the sanctification of parenting, parental disciplinary strategies, and the development of young children's conscience in a sample of 58 two-parent families with a preschool child. Fathers were more punitive and used less induction when disciplining their children than did mothers. Maternal and paternal reports of the sanctification of parenting were positively related to positive socialization/praise and the use of induction. When mothers and fathers in the family were both using induction, children had higher scores on moral conduct. Parents' use of positive socialization combined with a belief in the sanctification of parenting predicted children's conscience development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A story told and some lessons learned in studying young children's development of language.

Reviews the book, Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children by Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley (1996). This volume, the first booklength report of a large-scale longitudinal study conducted by the authors at the Juniper Gardens Children's Project of the University of Kansas, describes language development, and the factors associated with this development, for young children living in different socioeconomic situations. Hart and Risley's book describes the methodology and initial results of their investigation, with a strong focus on the developmental outcomes and experiences of children from 12 to 36 months of age. Why should school psychologists, with a predominant and (in many ways) appropriate focus on school-aged children, turn to this volume? The answer, I think, lies in the story that these authors tell, and in the lessons that we can learn from the way this story is told. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of young children's phonological and orthographic knowledge as revealed by their spellings.

Investigated the development of young children's phonological and orthographic knowledge by obtaining nonword spellings from a total of 187 children (45 each from kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grade, and 52 from 3rd grade). Results indicated that young children's nonword spellings reflect the joint influences of linguistic knowledge (orthographic and phonological) and psychological processes (working memory limitations) and that these influences vary developmentally. Limited working memory constrains the spelling performance of younger children but not that of older children. For younger children, individual differences in phonological awareness and in working memory account for nearly all of the shared variance between spelling and word decoding; for older children, additional factors are also implicated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Factors affecting the development of para-articular ossification in total hip replacement

The authors evaluated the prevalence of paraarticular ossifications in three groups of patients after a minimum interval of one year following the administration of a total prosthesis. For evaluation they used Brooker's classification. The first group comprised 40 patients who during the first six weeks after administration of a cemented prosthesis of the hip joint took 75 mg of Indomethacin per day in three doses. The second control group comprised 50 patients, i.e. 61 operated hip joints (11 bilateral prostheses) to whom Indomethacin was not administered during the postoperative period, nor any other antiphlogistic preparations. The third group comprised 40 patients to whom a non-cemented prosthesis of the hip joint was implanted and who did not use any antiphlogistic preparations after operation. In the first group, i.e. patients after total endoprostheses of the hip joint with preventive administration of Indomethacin, ectopic ossifications were recorded in 32.5% of the operated patients. In the second group, i.e. without preventive Indomethacin administration, ectopic ossifications of various grades were recorded in 51%. In patients with non-cemented prostheses of the hip joint the prevalence of ectopic ossifications was only 18%. The authors selected from the control group a sub-group with bilateral prostheses of the hip joint where an ectopic bone was found. This sub-group comprised 9 operated patients and bilateral ectopic ossifications developed only in 33.3%. From the results ensues that Indomethacin administration is an expedient prevention of development of paraarticular ossifications. Marked reduction of development of ectopic bone formation occurs when bone cement is not used as a fixation medium.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

Structure, stability, and development of young children's self-concepts: a multicohort-multioccasion study

A new, individual administration procedure for assessing multiple dimensions of self-concept for young children 5-8 years of age (Marsh, Craven, & Debus) was the basis of this study. We expanded this application in a multicohort-multioccasion (MCMO) study that provides simultaneous multicohort comparisons (cross-sectional comparisons of different age cohorts) and longitudinal comparisons of the same children on multiple occasions. There was reasonable support for predictions that reliability, stability, factor structure, and the distinctiveness of the SDQ factors would improve with age (a between-group age cohort comparison) and from 1 year to the next (a longitudinal comparison), and that small gender differences were reasonably stable over age. Consistent with the proposal that children's self-perceptions become more realistic with age, Time 1 (T1) teacher ratings were more highly correlated with student self-ratings at T2 than T1 and contributed to the prediction of T2 self-concept beyond effects mediated by T1 self-concepts. The results support and expand the surprisingly good support for the multidimensionality of self-concept responses for very young children using this procedure.     

Answering young children's questions as a determinant of their subsequent question-asking behavior.

Investigated whether answering preschool children's questions increases the frequency with which they ask questions. Data suggest that answers serve a dual function as a discriminative cue and as a reinforcer to elicit and maintain well-established inquiry behavior patterns among young children interacting with an informative adult. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Concomitant effects of visual, motor, and verbal experiences in young children's concept development.

Studied young children's concept development under 5 experimental conditions consisting of visual experience, visual plus motor training, visual plus verbal-orienting instruction, visual plus motor plus verbal, and a control. The stimuli were geometric blocks differentiated according to shape, color, size, and thickness. 50 3- and 50 5-yr-olds were tested on a variety of assessment and transfer measures based on discriminating and remembering positive concept instances and classifying concept instances. The verbal- and motor-training variables had the most facilitating effect. In addition, combined treatments had a relatively greater effect on the 5-yr-olds' performances at the higher level of concept attainment than at lower levels, as compared with the 3-yr-olds' performances. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Validity of young children's self-reports of their emotion in response to structured laboratory tasks.

Can young children report coherently on their emotions, and how do their reports contribute to our understanding of emotional development? Two-hundred six children ages 3 to 6 years participated in structured laboratory tasks designed to elicit a range of positive and negative emotions and indicated their emotional state following each task. Children's reports of their emotions meaningfully varied along with the nature of the different tasks during which they were collected (i.e., reports of negative and positive emotions differed across tasks designed to elicit those states). There were no sex differences on reports of any emotion and only small age differences. Multilevel modeling analyses demonstrated that children's self-reports of each emotion converged significantly with objective coding of expressions of those emotions across laboratory tasks; higher convergence for some emotions was associated with older age, higher verbal intelligence, and greater emotion-recognition abilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Factors affecting the development of spontaneous recurrence of methamphetamine psychosis

The process triggering spontaneous recurrences of methamphetamine (MAP) psychosis (i.e. flashbacks) was studied in 41 flashbackers, along with 84 non-flashbackers with a history of MAP psychosis. Plasma monoamine metabolite levels were assayed in 25 of the 41 flashbackers, 16 of the 84 non-flashbackers, 9 subjects with persistent MAP psychosis and 28 control subjects. All flashbackers had experienced threatening events or frightening paranoid-hallucinatory states during previous MAP use. The dominant factor triggering flashbacks was a mild fear of other people. Plasma norepinephrine levels were elevated during flashbacks. The results suggest that a mild fear of other people may have elicited memories of MAP psychosis associated with threatening experiences through increased sensitivity to psychosocial stressors. As a result the flashbacks occurred, including an increase in peripheral noradrenergic activity.     

Factors affecting children's reading of rimes: Reading ability, word frequency, and rime-neighborhood size.

Beginning readers were studied in 2 experiments to examine the influence of reading ability, word frequency, and rime-neighborhood size (the number of single syllable words with the same rime) on word and nonword recognition. Forty 1st and 2nd graders read 53 words and 27 nonwords containing rimes from different-size neighborhoods. Children reading at or below a 2nd-grade level were less affected by rime-neighborhoods than children reading at or above a 3rd-grade level. Rimes from large neighborhoods were read correctly more often in lists and stories than rimes from moderate or small neighborhoods, particularly in low-frequency words. As children learn to read, they become increasingly sensitive to rime-neighborhood size. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of maltreatment on young children's socioemotional development: An attachment theory perspective.

The effects of maltreatment on early childhood development were examined in three domains suggested by attachment theory: relationships with novel adults, effectance motivation, and cognitive maturity. Three samples of children between 4 and 8 years of age were studied: 93 maltreated children, 67 demographically matched nonmaltreated children from families receiving welfare, and 30 nonmaltreated children from middle-class families. Children's scores on 10 dependent variables across the three domains of interest were factor analyzed, and two theoretically meaningful factors emerged. Maltreated children scored lower than welfare children, who in turn scored lower than middle-class children, on a factor measuring secure readiness to learn in the company of novel adults. Maltreated children and welfare children also scored higher than middle-class children, but did not significantly differ from each other, on a factor measuring outer-directedness. Results indicate that, during early childhood, maltreatment disrupts a dynamic balance between the motivation to establish safe, secure relationships with adults and the motivation to venture out to explore the world in a competency-promoting fashion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interference effects in young children's long-term retention.

Classical interference effects were examined in preschool and kindergarten children's paired-associate recall (Experiment 1) and free recall (Experiment 2). Children in the control conditions learned a single picture list, whereas children in the experimental conditions learned 2 picture lists in succession. After 24 hr, children recalled items from the one list they had learned (control conditions), items from only List 1 (retroactive interference conditions), or items from both lists (modified free-recall conditions). Analyses based on the trace-integrity framework indicated that (a) children were susceptible to interference, (b) the locus of interference effects was at storage, (c) both younger (preschool) and older (kindergarten) children experienced similar amounts of interference, and (d) variations in trace strength generally did not modulate the magnitude of interference effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gender and young children's expectations for performance in arithmetic.

Tracked the progress of approximately 1,100 children from the beginning of 1st grade to the end of 3rd grade. Ss included Whites at a suburban school and Blacks and Whites whose background was urban and lower class. Ss', their mothers', and their peers' expectations for their grades in reading, arithmetic, and conduct were assessed each semester. Ss' actual grades and achievement test scores were also obtained. Data suggest that the schooling experience in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades differed according to gender, even though the 2 sexes sat together in the same classrooms. Although boys' arithmetic marks and/or general aptitude did not exceed girls', data indicate that boys developed higher expectations for their own performance in arithmetic than did girls, apparently in response to differential expectations held by their parents. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Function morphemes in young children's speech perception and production.

Function morphemes or functors (e.g., articles and verb inflections) potentially provide children with cues for segmenting speech into constituents, as well as for labeling these constituents (e.g., noun phrase [NP] and verb phrase [VP]). However, the fact that young children often fail to produce functors may indicate that they ignore these cues in early language acquisition. Alternatively, children may be sensitive to functors in perception, but omit them in production. In 3 experiments, 2-year-olds imitated sentences that contained English or non-English functors and that were controlled for both suprasegmental and segmental factors. Children omitted English functors more frequently than non-English functors, indicating perceptual sensitivity to familiar vs unfamiliar elements. The results suggest that children may be able to use functors early in language acquisition to solve the segmentation and labeling problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What the stories children tell can tell about their memory: Narrative skill and young children's suggestibility.

The authors examined the relation between children's narrative ability, which has been identified as an important contributor to memory development, and suggestibility. Across 2 studies, a total of 112 preschool-aged children witnessed a staged event and were subsequently questioned suggestively. Results from Study 1 indicated that children's ability to provide a high-quality narrative of the event was related to resistance to suggestive questions, and narrative ability appeared to supersede age as a predictor of such resistance. In Study 2, children's general language and narrative abilities were measured in addition to their ability to produce a high-quality narrative about the target event. These results replicated Study 1's findings that children's ability to produce a high-quality narrative of a previously experienced event predicted resistance to suggestion. However, the quality of children's autobiographical memory narratives predicted shifting from denial to assent. Findings are considered in light of narrative's role in memory development and underlying mechanisms that may explain children's suggestibility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)