Developmental psychology

The purpose of the current study is to examine physiological and behavioral components of emotional regulation and the development of empathy in preschoolers. It also examines how the parents play a role in their child's development of emotional competence. Behavioral and physiological responses were assessed for the children during stories chosen for emotional content (one happy and one sad story for each parent). Maternal and paternal ratings of self-expressivity were collected using the Self- Expressiveness in Family Questionnaire (Halberstadt et al., 1995). Greater vagal suppression occurred during the sad conditions suggesting that negative emotions require more processing strategies. Greater attentional scores were related to the child's RSA and higher resting RSA was associated with great motor restriction. The mothers had higher SEFQ scores than the fathers. Higher maternal positive expressivity, lower maternal total expressivity, and lower paternal positive expressivity scores were related to the children's displays of empathy.

Although some research has suggested that very young children are "immune" to functional fixedness (FF), other work has shown that young children form robust associations between objects and their prescribed functions. Across two studies, I investigated (a) the developmental trajectory of FF and (b) its relationship with executive function components (inhibitory control and working memory) in 3- to 6-year old children. Both older and younger children experience FF, but older children use familiar tools more flexibly than younger children (3- and 4-year olds). Furthermore, inhibitory control was related to overcoming FF, indicating that it may be an important cognitive capacity for creative problem-solving. Finally, in a third study, children were instructed to use mental imagery to help them solve the functional fixedness problems. However, these instructions were ineffective at reducing FF compared to a control condition, underscoring the robust nature of object-function relationships in early childhood.

Object use is a ubiquitous characteristic of the human species, and learning how objects function is a fundamental part of human development. This research examines the role that intentionality plays in children's understanding of causal relationships during imitation learning of object use. In Studies 1, 2, and 3, 2- to 5-year-olds observed demonstrations in which causally irrelevant and causally relevant actions were performed to achieve a desired goal of retrieving toys from within containers. Irrelevant actions were performed either intentionally ("There!") or accidentally ("Whoops! I didn't mean to do that!"). Study 1 found that 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds, but not 2-year-olds, were less likely to imitate causally irrelevant actions performed accidentally than those performed intentionally. This suggests that older children used intentionality to guide causal inference, perceiving intentional actions as causally effective and accidental actions as causally ineffective. Study 2 foun d that the intentionality of the demonstrator's actions had an enduring effect - after watching a single demonstration, children persisted in performing intentional irrelevant actions and continued to ignore accidental irrelevant actions when given three successive opportunities to complete the task. Study 3 examined how lack of knowledge about the task goal prior to the demonstrations affected imitation and found that children without explicit verbal instruction of the toy-retrieval goal imitated irrelevant actions to a greater degree than children from Study 1, who were informed of the goal throughout the experiment. Study 4 progressed beyond irrelevant actions to investigate the effect of intentionality on 3- to 5-year-olds' imitation of relevant actions.

The present study examined developmental changes in the establishment of mother-infant tactile and visual communication within depressed and non-depressed breast- and bottlefeeding dyads. 113 (30 depressed, 83 non-depressed mothers) mother-infant dyads participated at the 1-month visit and 87 dyads returned at the 3-month lab visit. Maternal mood status was assessed. EEG recordings were taken from the infants at mid-frontal, central, parietal and occipital sites. Mothers and their infants were videotaped during a 5- minute feeding. The feeding session was coded for touch and gaze, utilizing coding scales similar to those of Polan and Ward (1994) and Moszkowski and Stack (2007). Infant self-touch significantly predicted infant EEG asymmetry scores. Non-depressed and depressed breast-feeding mothers displayed more affectionate touch while depressed bottle-feeding mothers displayed an absence of touch.

Empathy has been shown to have many positive outcomes in individuals at every stage throughout life. It promotes sociability, helping behaviors, and can protect against the development of psychopathology. Evolutionary theorists have hypothesized that humans have a biological predisposition for empathic response. Temperament, as well as parental interaction with children, account for individual differences in empathic response levels. Much research has also looked at maternal depression as a key factor in children's negative emotional responding. We used EEG to measure individual differences in children's empathic emotional responding, as well as parental interaction and its impact on empathy and prosocial development. Results show that children rated as being more sociable are more likely to show outward expressions of empathy. Also, those with greater right frontal asymmetry are more likely to assist others in a prosocial manner.

In the United States, an estimated 1.4 million children and adolescents, age 18 and under, provide daily unpaid physical, emotional and supportive care to a chronically ill or disabled family member (NAC & UHF). While the phenomenon of caregiving performed by adult children and spouses has been extensively explored by nursing, little is known about how Young Adolescent Caregivers manage being a caregiver while they attend school and mature socially as an adolescent. The purpose of this Grounded Theory study was to identify and describe the basic social psychological problem shared by young adolescent caregivers girls, (N=9), aged 11-14, and the basic social processes used to manage the shared problem. Using the constant comparative method of data analysis, from audio taped and transcribed, semi-structured interviews were reviewed. The Basic Social Psychological Process (BSPP) identified was Managing Complexities. Muddling Through (BSP) was the process identified through constant comparison of the data to create categories. The phases of Muddling Through are: Becoming a Caregiver, Choosing Family, Creating Structure and Maintaining Balance. Young adolescents experienced becoming a caregiver through three paths: Embracing the Challenge, Sharing the Load and Being Assigned. Awareness of the consequences of being a Young Adolescent Caregiver and strategies used by Young Adolescent Caregivers to manage their changing complexities has implications for nursing interventions. Nurses in a variety of settings that treat persons with chronic illnesses can modify their practice to make significant supportive interventions with these largely invisible caregivers. Implications for policy change, nursing education and practice and future research are explored.

Childhood aggression has captured media attention over recent years. Aggression and violence have permeated schools and affected many communities. There are policies and programs in place for young adults, teens and children in some high schools and elementary schools, but not in preschools or daycare centers. However, intervention programs need to be introduced at the preschool level. There is also a scarcity of nursing research on aggression among preschoolers and successful early intervention anti-aggression programs. This study evaluated the Second Stepª anti-aggression program, utilized as a nursing intervention tool, among 41 preschool children aged 3, 4, and 5 years of age. The 3-month long research study was based on King's 1981 general systems theory, which is classified as an interaction model. The research design was a randomized pre-test post-test, 2-group (control and experimental) experimental one, to test the hypothesis that children's aggression scores would be lower and their prosocial scores would be higher after the intervention program. It was also hypothesized that boys would have higher aggression scores than girls and that there would be differences in post aggression scores in the treatment group. Repeated measures ANOVA showed that there were no significant differences between the make-up of each group (p = .05). There was no statistically significant difference between pre- and post-test aggression scores (p = .14) or between genders (p = .13), with the exception that the preschool girls in both groups had slightly higher relational aggression scores than boys, pre- and post-test. The differences were statistically significant at p = <.05. The post-test relational aggression scores were not lower in either group. These findings are discussed in this paper.

Two and 3 year-old children's understanding of tool affordances was investigated by measuring their tool choice decisions and tool use behaviors. Children attempted six toy retrieval tasks of three different levels of structural complexity. Children were assigned to one of four conditions in which exposure to task materials varied according to the way in which the information was presented: no experience / no observation, experience only, observation only, and experience and observation. Three year- olds consistently made more correct choices and used more working tools successfully than 2-year-olds. Tool choice was affected primarily by task difficulty and age. Tool use was influenced by task difficulty, order of task difficulty, age, and condition. The observation condition was most beneficial to children, while experience was least helpful, particularly for tasks at the hard level of difficulty.

Jealousy