Child development

Recent success of mindfulness-based interventions in adult and clinical populations, as well as in classroom settings, has spurred the need for a more thorough understanding of mindfulness as a trait that can affect early development of self-regulatory characteristics. The current study used previously collected data on 4th and 5th graders to explore the relationships between trait mindfulness, self-regulation, and stress reactivity, measured using cortisol levels. Self-regulation was measured using effortful control (attention, inhibitory control, and activation control), conscientiousness, agreeableness, negative emotion regulation, and openness to experience. Cortisol findings were significant for negative emotion regulation. Results revealed several significant positive associations between trait mindfulness and several self-regulatory characteristics among people who did and did not respond to a stressor. Further research is necessary to tease apart the unique contribution of individual self-regulatory characteristics, including trait mindfulness, on stress reactivity.

A conceptualization of maternal attachment during
preadolescence was proposed, and a self-report instrument
designed to measure preadolescents' maternal attachment
style was developed. It was hypothesized that
preadolescents' attachment style is related to their social
adjustment with peers. Subjects were 229 third through
seventh graders. Results indicated that avoidant
preadolescent girls were seen by peers as demonstrating
externalizing behaviors with peers. Also, the more avoidant
the girls were, the more enemies they had. Preoccupied
preadolescent boys were viewed by peers as exhibiting
internalizing behaviors: These boys were seen as victimized,
immature, depressed, fearful, and physically weak. In
contrast, avoidant boys were perceived as aggressive,
dishonest, and physically strong.

From syllables to fluent speech, it is important for infants to quickly learn and decipher linguistic information. To do this, infants must not only use their auditory perception but also their visual perception to understand speech and language as a multisensory coherent event. Previous research by Lewkowicz and Hansen-Tift (2012) demonstrated that infants shift their allocation of visual attention from the eyes to the mouth of the speaker's face throughout development as they become interested in speech production. This project examined how infants, from 4-14-months of age, allocate their visual attention to increasingly complex speech tasks. In Experiment 1, infants were presented with upright and inverted faces vocalizing syllables and the results demonstrated that in response to the upright faces, 4-month-old infants attended to the eyes and 8- and 10-month-olds attended equally to the eyes and mouth. In response to the inverted face presentation, both the 4- and 10-month-olds attended equally to the eyes and mouth but the 8-month olds attended to the eyes. In Experiment 2, infants were presented with a phoneme matching task (Patterson & Werker, 1999, 2002, 2003) and the results demonstrated that the 4-month-old infants successfully matched the voice to the corresponding face, but that older infants did not. Measures of their selective attention to this task showed that the 4-month-old infants attended more to the eyes of the faces during the task, not attending to the redundant speech information at the mouth, but older infants attended equally to the eyes and mouth, although they did not match the voice to the face. Experiment 3 presented infants with a fluent speech matching task (Lewkowicz et al., 2015) which demonstrated that although the infants (12-14-months) did not systematically match the voice to the corresponding face, the infants attended more to the mouth region, which would have provided them with the neces sary redundant information. Overall, these studies demonstrate that there are developmental changes in how infants distribute their visual attention to faces as they learn about speech and that the complexity of the speech is a critical factor in how they allocate their visual attention.

The present study investigated the relation of children’s attentional behaviors to context, gender, and their language skills. Participants were 33 children and their parents. The following attentional behaviors were measured based on coding of video recordings of 30-minute free-play interactions at 30 months: time spent in engaged states (attending to an object, person, or event) and frequency of changes from one engagement state to another. Children’s productive vocabulary and language comprehension were measured using standardized tests at 30, 36, and 42 months. Males spent more time in joint engagement and switched engagement states less frequently. Children spent more time engaged during Animal and Picnic toy play than Book reading. Children attended longer to picnic-related objects than animal-related objects or books, and attended longer to animal- related objects than books. Longer sustained attention—measured as lower frequencies of state switches—was related to higher concurrent and future language comprehension scores.

Deontic reasoning is a domain of reasoning concerning permissions, obligations,
and prohibitions often utilizing conditional logic (Wason, 1968). Correct identification of
rule violations is bolstered by the addition of a social valence to the rule for both adults
(Tooby & Cosmides, 1992) and children (Harris & Nunez, 1996). This “deontic
advantage” for violation-detection is taken as evidence for evolved social-cognitive
mechanisms for reasoning about cheaters in the context of social contracts (Fiddick,
2004), and the early development of this advantage supports an evolutionary account of
such abilities (Cummins, 2013). The current research hypothesized that differential
attention to rule elements underlies the early emergence of the deontic advantage.
Accuracy to a change-detection paradigm was used to assess implicit attention to
various rule elements after children were told 4 different rules (2 social contracts, 2
epistemic statements). Thirteen 3-year-olds, twenty 4-year-olds, and sixteen 5-year-olds completed the experiment. Each participant completed 64 change-detection trials embedded within a scene depicting adherence to or violation of the rule. Results indicate that 4 and 5 year-olds consistently attend to the most relevant rule information for making decisions regarding violation (F(6, 124)=3.86, p<.01, ηp 2 = .144) and that they use observed compliance/non-compliance with the rule to further direct attention (F(6, 138)=3.27, p<.01, ηp 2 = .125). Furthermore, accuracy of change-detection to scenes of rule violation increases from ages 4 to 5, but not 3 to 4. However, a novel finding emerged suggesting that children use the absence of benefit to direct attention, suggesting possible “being-cheated” detection, rather than cheater-detection (F(9, 345) = 21.855, p<.001, ηp 2 = .322). This work is the first to investigate a deontic effect on attentional processes and opens a new avenue of inquiry to understanding the internal and external variables contributing to the development of deontic reasoning. Follow up studies are currently underway to clarify how children use these environmental cues and in/out group membership to direct attention to rule violations.

School success is associated with parent- and peer-relationships. To study the connection between these alliances and school success, 30 African-American and 30 European-American 6th graders were given the Relationship Closeness Inventory, Network of Relationships Inventory, Self-Perception Profile, Revised Class Play, and Youth Self-Report. A parent and best friend also completed surveys. Results show parent and peer support relates to the social competence of youth. Father support is associated with female aggressive-disruptive behavior, and best friend support is associated with sensitive-isolated behavior in boys. African-American parents do more social events with their children than European-American parents do with their children. European-Americans and males have higher socioeconomic status than African-Americans and females.

This thesis examined the possibility of meaningful associations between children's attachment styles in middle childhood and children's perceptions of the parent. Participants were 199 students (94 males, 105 females) in grades three through eight (mean age = 11.03 years) from a Florida university school. The children were administered self-report measures and peer-report nomination measures. Five attachment coping strategies (preoccupied, indecisive, avoidant, coercive, and caregiving) and four aspects of perceived maternal behavior (reliable support, overprotection, harassment, and fear induction) were assessed and numerous and meaningful associations were found. For example, perceived maternal overprotection was positively associated with preoccupied coping. Significant associations were also found between our avoidant, coercive, indecisive, and caregiving coping measures and perceived maternal reliable support, harassment, and fear induction. Our numerous and significant findings lend further support for the usefulness and value of our concurrent correlational self-report measures and to justify future longitudinal research to compare alternative models.

This longitudinal study examined the likely direction of influence between perceived parenting and attachment style in middle childhood. In each of two successive years, measures of perceived parenting behaviors and of attachment style were administered to 164 children (mean age 10.2 in Year 1). Avoidant (but not preoccupied) attachment predicted change in perceived parenting over time, in that avoidant children perceived their mothers as increasingly overprotective, as less monitoring, as less affectionate, and as providing less reliable support over time. There was little evidence that perceived parenting led to change in attachment style over time, although low perceived maternal support in Year 1 predicted increases in preoccupied attachment. Results provide new insights into the direction of effects between attachment and perceived parenting during middle childhood.

The present dissertation introduces three new measures of gender identity and examines their relations to psychosocial adjustment (i.e., self-concept and peer acceptance) in preadolescence. The sample consisted of 182 4th- through 8th-grade children. The three measures assessed (a) feelings of overall similarity to and compatibility with one's gender (goodness-of-fit), (b) feelings of pressure to conform to sex-role stereotypes (felt pressure), and (c) belief that one's sex is superior to the other sex (intergroup bias). Both concurrent and short-term longitudinal analyses indicated that goodness-of-fit was beneficial to psychosocial adjustment, whereas both felt pressure and intergroup bias undermined psychosocial adjustment. Furthermore, goodness-of-fit mediated many of the relations of domain-specific sex-typing measures (e.g., traits) to adjustment. The present dissertation helps identify some of the inherent limitations in previous work on gender identity, provides new insight into the relation of children's gender identity and psychosocial development, and raises suggestions for future inquiry.

This concurrent correlational study examined the relations among perceived parenting, child coping/attachment style, and adjustment outcomes in middle childhood. Instruments measuring children's perceptions of their parents, their style of coping, and their adjustment were administered to 199 children in the third through eighth grades (mean age 11 years). This study tested newly developed self-report scales measuring aspects of disorganized attachment in middle childhood, identified perceived parenting correlates of five child coping styles, investigated how the five coping styles relate to adjustment outcomes, and explored the possibility of indecision interacting with other child coping styles to influence adjustment outcomes. The new measures of indecision, caregiving, and coercive coping styles proved to be reliable and related to perceived parenting and adjustment in meaningful ways. Perceptions of parents as being harassing and low in reliable support were linked with avoidant behaviors in children, whereas perceptions of parents as low in harassment and high in overprotectiveness were linked with preoccupied behaviors. Low reliable support and high levels of fear induction were associated with high levels of indecision, whereas high reliable support was correlated with caregiving behaviors and low reliable support was correlated with coercion. In regards to children's adjustment being affected by their coping style, evidence was found linking externalizing behaviors to coercive coping style and internalizing behaviors to caregiving coping style. When investigating interactions among coping styles predicting adjustment, indecision was found to interact with low levels of preoccupied coping in girls to predict externalizing behaviors, whereas indecision interacted with avoidant coping for both boys and girls to predict greater externalizing behaviors. Caregiving was found to weaken the link between indecision and externalizing and indecision was found to magnify the effects of coercion on externalizing behaviors. Finally, girls who were high in caregiving and low in indecision were found to exhibit increased internalizing behaviors.