The Quality of Mother-Toddler Communication Predicts Language and Early Literacy in Mexican-American Children from Low-Income Households

This longitudinal study documents the key role of early joint engagement in the language and early literacy development of Mexican-American children from low-income households. This rapidly growing population often faces challenges as sequential Spanish-English language learners. Videos of 121 mothers and their 2.5-year-old children interacting in Spanish for 15 min were recorded in 2009-2011 in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. Researchers reliably rated general dyadic features of joint engagement-symbol-infused joint engagement, shared routines and rituals, and fluency and connectedness-that have been found to facilitate language development in young English-speaking children. The construct respeto, a valued aspect of traditional Latino parenting, was also rated using two culturally specific items-the parent's calm authority and the child's affiliative obedience. In addition, three individual contributions-maternal sensitivity, quality of maternal language input, and quality of child language production-were assessed. General features of joint engagement at 2.5 years predicted expressive and receptive language at 3.6 years and receptive language and early literacy at 7.3 years, accounting for unique variance over and above individual contributions at 2.5 years, with some effects being stronger in girls than boys. The level of culturally specific joint engagement did not alter predictions made by general features of joint engagement. These findings highlight the importance of the quality of early communication for language and literacy success of Mexican-American children from low-income households and demonstrate that culturally specific aspects of early interactions can align well with general features of joint engagement.

Children's use of everyday artifacts: Learning the hidden affordance of zipping

The everyday world is populated with artifacts that require specific motor actions to use objects as their designers intended. But researchers know little about how children learn to use everyday artifacts. We encouraged forty-four 12- to 60-month-old children to unzip a vinyl pouch during a single 60-s trial. Although unzipping a pouch may seem simple, it is not. Unzipping requires precise role-differentiated bimanual actions-one hand must stabilize the pouch while the other hand applies a pulling force on the tab. Moreover, kinematic data from six adults showed that the tolerance limits for applying the forces are relatively narrow (pulling the tab within 63° of the zipper teeth while stabilizing the pouch within 4 cm of the slider). Children showed an age-related progression for the unzipping action. The youngest children did not display the designed pulling action; children at intermediate ages pulled the tab but applied forces outside the tolerance limits (pulled in the wrong direction, failed to stabilize the pouch in the correct location), and the oldest children successfully implemented the designed action. Findings highlight the perceptual-motor requirements in children's discovery and implementation of the hidden affordances of everyday artifacts.

Stabilities of Infant Behaviors and Maternal Responses to Them

Consistency in the order of individuals in a group across substantial lengths of time-stability-is a central concept in developmental science for several reasons. Stability underscores the meaningfulness of individual differences in psychological phenomena; stability informs about the origins, nature, and overall developmental course of psychological phenomena; stability signals individual status and so affects the environment, experience, and development; stability has both theoretical and clinical implications for individual functioning; and stability helps to establish that a measure constitutes a consequential individual-differences metric. In this three-wave prospective longitudinal study (Ns = 40 infants and mothers), we examined stabilities of individual variation in multiple infant behaviors and maternal responses to them across infant ages 10, 14, and 21 months. Medium to large effect size stabilities in infant behaviors and maternal responses emerged, but both betray substantial amounts of unshared variance. Documenting the ontogenetic trajectories of infant behaviors and maternal responses helps to elucidate the nature and structure of early human development.

Advancing Transparency and Openness in Child Development Research: Opportunities

Transparency and openness are basic scientific values. They lie at the heart of practices that accelerate discovery and broaden access to scientific knowledge. In this article, we argue that these values are essential to ensure the enduring influence of research on child development. They are also critical for the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) to accomplish its mission to benefit diverse global stakeholders and constituents. A companion article in this issue (Gilmore, Cole, Verma, van Aken, Worthman) discusses the challenges in realizing SRCD's vision for a science of child development that is open, transparent, robust, impactful, and conducted with the highest integrity. Here, we discuss opportunities for the society to set standards that ensure the full integration of transparency and openness into developmental science.

Children's Block-Building Skills and Mother-Child Block-Building Interactions Across Four U.S. Ethnic Groups

Play offers an unparalleled opportunity for young children to gain cognitive skills in informal settings. Block play in particular—including interactions with parents around block constructions—teaches children about intrinsic spatial features of objects (size, shape) and extrinsic spatial relations. In turn, early spatial cognition paves the way for later competencies in math and science. We assessed 4- and 5-year-old children’s spatial skill on a set of block-building constructions and examined mother-child block building interactions in 167 U.S. dyads from African American, Dominican, Mexican, and Chinese backgrounds. At both ages, children were instructed to copy several 3D block constructions, followed by a “break” during which mothers and children were left alone with the blocks. A form that contained pictures of test items was left on the table. Video-recordings of mother-child interactions during the break were coded for two types of building behaviors – test-specific construction (building structures on the test form) or free-form construction (building structures not on the test form). Chinese children outperformed Mexican, African American, and Dominican children on the block-building assessment. Further, Chinese and Mexican mother-child dyads spent more time building test-specific constructions than did African American and Dominican dyads. At an individual level, mothers’ time spent building test-specific constructions at the 4-year (but not 5-year) assessment, but not mothers’ initiation of block building interactions or verbal instructions, related to children’s performance, when controlling for ethnicity. Ethnic differences in children’s block-building performance and experiences emerge prior to formal schooling and provide a valuable window into sources of individual differences in early spatial cognition.

The cultural context of infant development: Variability, specificity, and universality

Researchers in developmental science often examine parenting and child development by ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups, frequently highlighting group differences in parent and infant behaviors. A sole focus on differences, however, obscures notable variability that exists within each community. Moreover, categories such as ethnicity and race are often assumed to encompass shared cultural backgrounds, which risks conflating race, ethnicity, and culture in psychological research. In this chapter, we examine cultural specificity and within-group heterogeneity that characterizes parenting and child development across socio-economic, ethnic, and racial groups. Drawing upon our work on ethnically and socioeconomically diverse parents and infants, we document the between-group differences, within-group variation, and universal processes in the form and content of parent-infant interactions. Most centrally, we highlight the role of family economic, human, and social capital in explaining the variability in parent-infant interactions across racial, ethnic, and cultural groups.

Learning the designed actions of everyday objects

How do young children learn to use everyday artifacts-doorknobs, zippers, and so on-in the ways they were designed to be used? Although the designed actions of such objects seem obvious to adults, little is known about how young children learn the "hidden affordances" of everyday objects. We encouraged 115 11- to 37-month-old children to open 2 types of containers: circular jars with twist-off lids (Experiment 1) and rectangular Tupperware-style containers with pull-off lids (Experiment 2). We varied container size to examine effects of the body-environment fit on display of the designed action and successful implementation of the designed action. Results showed a developmental progression from nondesigned actions to performance of the designed twisting or pulling actions to successful implementation of the designed action. Nondesigned actions decreased with age as performance of the designed action increased. Successful implementation lagged behind performance of the designed action. That is, even after children appeared to know what to do, they were still unsuccessful in opening the container. Why? For twist-offs, very large lids were difficult to manipulate, and younger children often twisted to the right, or in both directions, and did not persist in consecutive turns to the left. Larger pull-off containers required new strategies to stabilize the base, such as holding the container against the tabletop or the chest. Findings provide insights into the body-environment factors that facilitate children's learning and implementation of the hidden affordances inherent in everyday artifacts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Language Matters: Denying the Existence of the 30-Million-Word Gap Has Serious Consequences

Sperry, Sperry, and Miller (2018) aim to debunk what is called the 30-million-word gap by claiming that children from lower income households hear more speech than Hart and Risley () reported. We address why the 30-million-word gap should not be abandoned, and the importance of retaining focus on the vital ingredient to language learning-quality speech directed to children rather than overheard speech, the focus of Sperry et al.'s argument. Three issues are addressed: Whether there is a language gap; the characteristics of speech that promote language development; and the importance of language in school achievement. There are serious risks to claims that low-income children, on average, hear sufficient, high-quality language relative to peers from higher income homes.

The Roles of Self-Socialization and Parent Socialization in Toddlers' Gender-Typed Appearance

Children's gender-stereotypical dress and appearance might be one of the first representations of children's emerging sense of gender identity. Gender self-socialization theories posit that as children become more aware of gender categories, they become motivated to adhere to gender stereotypes, such as by expressing interest in dressing in feminine or masculine ways. Socialization theories predict that children's gender-typed appearance reflects parents' choices. For example, gender-traditional parents might dress their children in gender-stereotypical ways. At the same time, dressing in gender-stereotypical ways might contribute to children's growing awareness of gender categories. The current study investigated the factors associated with gender-typed appearance among 175 (87 girls, 88 boys) Mexican American, Dominican American, and African American 2-year-olds. We examined both child and parent contributions to early gender-typed appearance. To measure children's early conceptual understanding of gender categories, we assessed children's use and recognition of gender verbal labels. To examine the influence of parent socialization, we assessed mothers' gender-role attitudes. Children's gender-typed appearance was observed and coded during an assessment. Surprisingly, mothers' gender-role attitudes were not significantly associated with toddlers' gender-typed appearance. However, toddlers' gender labeling was associated with their gender-typed appearance, suggesting that self-socialization processes can be found as early as 24 months of age.

The ties that bind: Cradling in Tajikistan

A traditional childrearing practice—“gahvora” cradling—in Tajikistan and other parts of Central Asia purportedly restricts movement of infants’ body and limbs. However, the practice has been documented only informally in anecdotal reports. Thus, this study had two research questions: (1) To what extent are infants’ movements restricted in the gahvora? (2) How is time in the gahvora distributed over a 24-hour day in infants from 1–24 months of age? To answer these questions, we video-recorded 146 mothers cradling their infants and interviewed them using 24-hour time diaries to determine the distribution of time infants spent in the gahvora within a day and across age. Infants’ movements were indeed severely restricted. Although mothers showed striking uniformity in how they restricted infants’ movements, they showed large individual differences in amount and distribution of daily use. Machine learning algorithms yielded three patterns of use: day and nighttime cradling, mostly nighttime cradling, and mostly daytime cradling, suggesting multiple functions of the cradling practice. Across age, time in the gahvora decreased, yet 20% of 12- to 24-month-olds spent more than 15 hours bound in the gahvora. We discuss the challenges and benefits of cultural research, and how the discovery of new phenomena may defy Western assumptions about childrearing and development. Future work will determine whether the extent and timing of restriction impacts infants’ physical and psychological development.

Power in methods: language to infants in structured and naturalistic contexts

Methods can powerfully affect conclusions about infant experiences and learning. Data from naturalistic observations may paint a very different picture of learning and development from those based on structured tasks, as illustrated in studies of infant walking, object permanence, intention understanding, and so forth. Using language as a model system, we compared the speech of 40 mothers to their 13-month-old infants during structured play and naturalistic home routines. The contrasting methods yielded unique portrayals of infant language experiences, while simultaneously underscoring cross-situational correspondence at an individual level. Infants experienced substantially more total words and different words per minute during structured play than they did during naturalistic routines. Language input during structured play was consistently dense from minute to minute, whereas language during naturalistic routines showed striking fluctuations interspersed with silence. Despite these differences, infants' language experiences during structured play mirrored the peak language interactions infants experienced during naturalistic routines, and correlations between language inputs in the two conditions were strong. The implications of developmental methods for documenting the nature of experiences and individual differences are discussed.

Gender Attitudes in Early Childhood: Behavioral Consequences and Cognitive Antecedents

This study examined factors that predicted children's gender intergroup attitudes at age 5 and the implications of these attitudes for intergroup behavior. Ethnically diverse children from low-income backgrounds (N = 246; Mexican-, Chinese-, Dominican-, and African American) were assessed at ages 4 and 5. On average, children reported positive same-gender and negative other-gender attitudes. Positive same-gender attitudes were associated with knowledge of gender stereotypes. In contrast, positive other-gender attitudes were associated with flexibility in gender cognitions (stereotype flexibility, gender consistency). Other-gender attitudes predicted gender-biased behavior. These patterns were observed in all ethnic groups. These findings suggest that early learning about gender categories shape young children's gender attitudes and that these gender attitudes already have consequences for children's intergroup behavior at age 5.

Parenting and globalization in western countries: explaining differences in parent-child interactions

We review research on intra-cultural differences in parenting, and the sources of those differences. Ethnic-minority parents differ from majority parents in parenting values, childrearing goals and resources-differences that affect parenting practices and children's development. Within-country comparisons indicate less sensitivity, more authoritarian discipline, less child-focused communications, and less engagement in learning activities in ethnic-minority compared to ethnic-majority parents, which help account for disparities in children. Despite group differences in parenting, associations between parenting and child development generalize across cultures, with rare exceptions. However, a focus on intra-cultural differences is based on comparisons of group 'averages', which masks the enormous variation within ethnic-minority samples. Within-group variation can be partly explained by stressors associated with low socioeconomic status (SES), acculturation and discrimination.

Immigrant Chinese Mothers' Socialization of Achievement in Children: A Strategic Adaptation to the Host Society

Academic socialization by low-income immigrant mothers from Mainland China was investigated in two studies. Immigrant Chinese mothers of first graders (n = 52; M_age  = 38.69) in the United States (Study 1) and kindergartners (n = 86; M_age  = 36.81) in Hong Kong (Study 2) tell stories that emphasized achieving the best grade through effort more than did African American (n = 39; M_age  = 31.44) and native Hong Kong (n = 76; M_age  = 36.64) mothers, respectively. The emphasis on achievement was associated with mothers' heightened discussion on discrimination (Study 1) and beliefs that education promotes upward mobility (Study 2), as well as children's expectations that a story protagonist would receive maternal criticism for being nonpersistent in learning (Study 2).

Language and Play at One Year: A Comparison of Toddlers and Mothers in the United States and Japan

The present study compared American and Japanese toddlers and their mothers on dimensions of language and play when the toddlers were 13 months of age. In both cultures and in both domains, individual variation in toddlers was associated with individual variation in mothers. In general, the frequency and variance of language and play activities were similar in the two groups. However, two notable cultural differences emerged. American toddlers were more advanced in both their productive and receptive vocabularies, and this cultural difference was matched by the tendency for American mothers to label and desciibe properties, objects, and events in the environment more frequently. In contrast, Japanese toddlers were more advanced on symbolic play, and their advanced play was matched by more advanced play in Japanese mothers, particularly for "other-directed" acts of pretence. These findings suggest that during this early period of symbolic development, as expressed through language and play, American and Japanese dyads emphasise different modes of representation and do so in ways that accord with traditional cultural concerns.

Ideas about Parenting in Argentina, France, and the United States

Central to a concept of culture is the expectation that different peoples possess different ideas and behave in different ways with respect to child rearing. In this study, we investigated ideas that Argentine, French, and US American mothers hold about their own and their husbands' actual child rearing, as well as what they consider to be ideal child rearing, in three parenting domains: social, didactic, and limit setting. For each domain, we analysed mothers' reports of their actual behaviours and of their husbands' actual behaviours; mothers' ideal expectations of their own and their husbands' behaviours; and mothers' dissonance with respect to parenting (i.e. the extent to which mothers' actual and their husbands' actual behaviours each agrees with mothers' ideal expectations for themselves and for their husbands). The results showed consistent parent, country, as well as parent-by-country effects, interpretable in terms of overarching cultural beliefs. The study of parents' ideas contributes to understanding why and how parents behave the way they do toward children, and provides insights into the broader social context of child development.

Mother and Infant Activity and Interaction in France and in the United States: A Comparative Study

Infants experiences are often thought to influence social and intellectual development in the individual, and on a societal level they are sometimes credited for some of the distinctiveness that typifies cultural style. To compare and contrast the experiences of French and U.S. American infants, mother-infant dyads in Paris and in New York City were observed interacting in the natural setting of their homes. This report focuses on infants' visual attention, tactual exploration, and vocalisation and on mothers' mediated and unmediated stimulation and speech to infants. The study had two main goals: One was to identify and describe activities and interaction patterns that may be similar and different in these two Western cultures, and the other was to test the cross-cultural validity of a hypothesis that states that specific mother and infant activities relate to one another in dyadic interaction. Mothers and infants in the two cultures showed some similarities and some different emphases in their activities, and patterns of mother-infant interaction in the two cultures tended to correspond.

Decisions at the Brink: Locomotor Experience Affects Infants' Use of Social Information on an Adjustable Drop-off

How do infants decide what to do at the brink of a precipice? Infants could use two sources of information to guide their actions: perceptual information generated by their own exploratory activity and social information offered by their caregivers. The current study investigated the role of locomotor experience in using social information-both encouragement and discouragement-for descending drop-offs. Mothers of 30 infants (experienced 12-month-old crawlers, novice 12-month-old walkers, and experienced 18-month-old walkers) encouraged and discouraged descent on a gradation of drop-offs (safe "steps" and risky "cliffs"). Novice walkers descended more frequently than experienced crawlers and walkers and fell while attempting to walk over impossibly high cliffs. All infants showed evidence of integrating perceptual and social information, but locomotor experience affected infants' use of social messages, especially on risky drop-offs. Experienced crawlers and walkers selectively deferred to social information when perceptual information is ambiguous. In contrast, novice walkers took mothers' advice inconsistently and only at extreme drop-offs.

Places and postures: A cross-cultural comparison of sitting in 5-month-olds

Motor development-traditionally described in terms of age-related stages-is typically studied in the laboratory with participants of Western European descent. Cross-cultural studies typically focus on group differences in age-related stages relative to Western norms. We adopted a less traditional approach: We observed 5-month-olds and their mothers from six cultural groups around the world during one hour at home while they engaged in natural daily activities. We examined group differences in infants' sitting proficiency, everyday opportunities to practice sitting, the surfaces on which sitting took place, and mothers' proximity to sitting infants. Infants had opportunities to practice sitting in varied contexts-including ground, infant chairs, and raised surfaces. Proficiency varied considerably within and between cultural groups: 64% of the sample sat only with support from mother or furniture and 36% sat independently. Some infants sat unsupported for 20+ minutes, in some cases so securely that mothers moved beyond arms' reach of their infants even while infants sat on raised surfaces. Our observations of infant sitting across cultures provide new insights into the striking range of ability, varied opportunities for practice, and contextual factors that influence the proficiency of infant motor skills.

The Costs and Benefits of Development: The Transition From Crawling to Walking

The transition from crawling to walking requires infants to relinquish their status as experienced, highly skilled crawlers in favor of being inexperienced, lowskilled walkers. Yet infants willingly undergo this developmental transition, despite incurring costs of shaky steps, frequent falls, and inability to gauge affordances for action in their new upright posture. Why do infants persist with walking when crawling serves the purpose of independent mobility? In this article, we present an integrative analysis of the costs and benefits associated with crawling and walking that challenges prior assumptions, and reveals deficits of crawling and benefits of upright locomotion that were previously overlooked. Inquiry into multiple domains of development reveals that the benefits of persisting with walking outweigh the costs: Compared to crawlers, walking infants cover more space more quickly, experience richer visual input, access and play more with distant objects, and interact in qualitatively new ways with caregivers.