Children's perceptions and comforting strategies to infant crying: relations to age, sex, and empathy-related responding

Promoting 21st Century Health and Wellness Skills in Elementary School Children: a Group Randomized Trial

In a group randomized trial of 45 elementary schools, a whole-child health and wellness curriculum introduced as a regular part of the educational programming was compared to education as usual over 2 years with a 2-year follow-up. The curriculum focused on integrating multiple SEL skills-mindfulness, compassion, and physical awareness-with the intent to advantage developmental patterns for these skills, academic engagement, personal well-being, and student behavior. The program design and trial implementation were launched with end-use delivery and long-term sustainability as integral considerations. Effects were shown for several SEL skills and behavioral indicators previously robustly correlated to long-term outcomes. Effects were demonstrated more broadly in schools serving high-poverty communities, suggesting the impact was stronger where the need was greater. Results are interpreted regarding supporting school-based SEL, the potential of applying group randomized trials with end-use conditions of implementation, and the value of fitting innovation efforts to school system operations, mandates, and priorities for promoting sustainability.

Empathy in Preschoolers: Exploring Profiles and Age- and Gender-Related Differences

Empathy is a key skill in the daily life of preschoolers, and it is important to understand how it evolves during this crucial period of development. This paper includes two studies. The first study, which had a cross-sectional design, examined affective, cognitive, and behavioral empathy in 354 children (aged from 3 to 6 years) through a performance-based measure and questionnaires completed by their mothers. Although girls tended to have better affective empathy than boys on the performance-based task, no difference was noted in the mothers' perceptions of their children's empathy. Empathy dimensions varied depending on the age of the children. The hierarchical cluster analyses of the cases identified differentiated subgroups of children, according to their empathic skills in the three dimensions. The second study, which was longitudinal, used the same measures and investigated the developmental trajectory of empathy in 69 preschoolers over one year. The results showed that each empathic dimension predicted itself one year later, but did not predict the two others. The implications for potential interventions are emphasized in this study.

Sex and gender differences in the development of empathy

The topic of typical sex and gender difference in empathy is examined in both a developmental and neuroscientific perspective. Empathy is construed as a multi-layered phenomenon with various degrees of complexity unfolding in ontogeny. The different components of empathy (i.e., affective, cognitive, and prosocial motivation) will be discussed as they interact and are expressed behaviorally. Significant sex/gender differences in empathy are discussed in relation to putative bottom-up or top-down processes underlying empathetic responses. The early onset and the pervasive presence of such sex/gender differences throughout the lifespan are further discussed in light of social and neurobiological modeling factors, including early socialization, brain's structural/functional variances, as well as genetics and hormonal factors.

Empathy, Theory of Mind, and Prosocial Behaviors in Autistic Children

BACKGROUND

Previous research has suggested that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) display fewer prosocial behaviors, and the role of empathy or Theory of Mind (ToM) in prosocial behaviors of autistic children remains unclear.

METHODS

Data were obtained from an ongoing longitudinal study in Guangzhou, China. A total of 96 autistic children and 167 typically developing (TD) children were enrolled. Prosocial behaviors were assessed using a subscale of the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire and Dictator Game (DG) paradigm with stickers as incentives. Empathic traits and ToM ability were measured using the children's Empathy Quotient and the Chinese version of ToM toolkit. Generalized linear models were used to assess the differences of prosocial behaviors and empathic traits, ToM ability between the two groups and the associations between empathic traits, ToM ability and prosocial behaviors in autistic children.

RESULTS

Compared with TD children, autistic children exhibited worse ToM ability and performed less pro-socially in the DG paradigm, while there were no differences regarding empathic traits. In autistic children, empathic traits especially affective empathy, were positively associated with parent-reported prosocial behaviors [β = 0.17, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.07-0.27; β = 0.47, 95%CI: 0.33-0.60]. ToM ability was associated with DG paradigm (β = 1.03, 95%CI: 0.16-1.89).

CONCLUSION

Autistic children showed less pro-sociality and ToM ability than TD children. In autistic children, empathic trait was associated with parent-reported prosocial behaviors while their ToM ability was associated with prosocial behaviors in experimental condition. Our findings indicated that better ToM ability and empathic trait might promote prosocial behaviors in autistic children.

Bilingualism Enhances Reported Perspective Taking in Men, but Not in Women

Bilingual speakers have often been found to be superior in taking the perspective of another person. Also, females are commonly found to have enhanced perspective taking (PT) abilities compared with males, with male PT being generally more easily affected by external factors. The present study investigated whether bilingualism improves PT in males more strongly than in females. In total, 108 bilingual and 108 matched monolingual adults, with equal numbers of males and females, filled in the PT subscale of the Interpersonal Reactivity index. While monolinguals showed the typical result of females scoring higher on PT than males, scores of male and female bilinguals did not differ, with both bilingual groups scoring as high as female monolinguals. Thus, bilingualism enhanced self-reported PT only in males, suggesting that male PT can be enhanced through socialization.

Early Gender Differences in Spatial and Social Skills and Their Relations to Play and Parental Socialization in Children from Hong Kong

Children's play preferences are highly gender-typed. At the same time, much research revolves around spatial and social skills that sometimes show male and female advantages, respectively. There is evidence that play with masculine toys is associated with better spatial skills and emerging evidence suggests that play with feminine toys is associated with better social skills. However, several research gaps limit current knowledge on these aspects of gender development. First, the study of childhood gender development has been largely Eurocentric; second, the link between gender-typed play and social skills development is not well supported. We tested 644 5-year-old Hong Kong Chinese children on five gender-typed skills, play preferences, and parental gender socialization. The pattern of gender differences was remarkably similar to those in the West. Boys preferred masculine toys more than girls and were better at mental transformation and targeting accuracy, while girls preferred feminine (and neutral) toys more than boys and were better at empathy and were less aggressive, although there was no significant gender difference in comforting skill. There was little evidence that these gender differences varied with socioeconomic status (parental income and education). Play correlated with some outcomes in expected ways. This is in contrast to parents' gender socialization, which showed some expected differences by child gender but minimally correlated with children's skills. These findings shed light on the generalizability of current knowledge on early gender differences and may facilitate gender developmental research outside the West. Although the study did not test the direction of effects, they substantiate the growing discourse on gender-typed play as an important learning mechanism.

Measuring connectedness to nature in preschool children in an urban setting and its relation to psychological functioning

BACKGROUND

The urban environment has been criticized for promoting 'nature-deficit' and 'child-nature disconnectedness'. Keeping in mind the importance of nature exposure and its extensive health benefits, many environmental programs around the world hope to (re)connect children with nature. To evaluate the effectiveness of such efforts, valid tools to measure Connectedness to Nature (CN) are needed but do not exist today, especially for use with pre-schoolers.

METHODS

The original CN Index was modified and tested among the Parents of Preschool Children (CNI-PPC) in an urban setting (Hong Kong) for its internal consistency (n = 299) and external validity (n = 194). The 'Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire' (SDQ) was chosen for divergent and convergent analysis. Conventional recommendations for test adaptation and translation were used.

RESULTS

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) revealed that the 16-item scale adequately captured four major dimensions: enjoyment of nature, empathy for nature, responsibility toward nature, and awareness of nature (Cronbach's α were respectively .86, .87, .75 and .80). When tested against the SDQ, a validated measure for child psychological functioning, and identification of children's problem behaviours, three CNI-PPC factors influenced the SDQ outcomes: (1) the more enjoyment of nature children displayed the less overall distress and impairment they exhibited (β = -.64); (2) greater responsibility toward nature in children was associated with less hyperactivity (β = -.50), fewer behavioural and peer difficulties (β = -.62 and β = -.65 respectively) and improved prosocial behaviour (β = .77); (3) the more aware children were of nature, the less emotional difficulties they exhibited (β = -.51). The variance explained was large (range R2 = .42 to .80).

CONCLUSIONS

Thus, CNI-PPC factors have meaningful and substantive associations with the strengths and difficulties parents perceive in their children. This indicates that the CNI-PPC is a valid and reliable instrument to measure CN at an age when children cannot respond for themselves. Further, this simple tool can help researchers/practitioners to better understand how connectedness to nature affects child psychological functioning and wellbeing.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02715544. Registered 8 March 2016.

Crying babies, empathic toddlers, responsive mothers and fathers: Exploring parent-toddler interactions in an empathy paradigm

The ability to display caring responses to another child's distress is a key aspect of early empathy that is facilitated by parental socialization. However, existing studies typically involve lab settings and focus on toddlers' unsupported responses to adult simulations of distress, raising questions about their ecological validity. Framed within the New Fathers and Mothers Study, the current study involved 156 British toddlers (M_age = 24.35 months, SD = 0.73) who were filmed at home with either their mother or father (87 mothers and 69 fathers) in a novel paradigm involving a lifelike crying baby doll. Capitalizing on the inclusion of both fathers and mothers, a key question concerned effects of parent-toddler dyad gender composition on both global ratings of toddlers' displays of empathic concern and more specific indicators, including toddlers' attentional, emotional, and behavioral responses. Whereas parental responses did not differ by either child or parent gender and appeared to be closely attuned to child behavior, toddlers' responses showed effects of both (a) child gender, evident in higher rates of emotion labeling in girls than in boys (even when controlling for language ability), and (b) parent gender, evident in higher levels of empathic concern for girls observed with fathers than for those observed with mothers. These findings are discussed within the context of empathy development and parental socialization.

Children's Empathy and Their Perception and Evaluation of Facial Pain Expression: An Eye Tracking Study

The function of empathic concern to process pain is a product of evolutionary adaptation. Focusing on 5- to 6-year old children, the current study employed eye-tracking in an odd-one-out task (searching for the emotional facial expression among neutral expressions, N = 47) and a pain evaluation task (evaluating the pain intensity of a facial expression, N = 42) to investigate the relationship between children’s empathy and their behavioral and perceptual response to facial pain expression. We found children detected painful expression faster than others (angry, sad, and happy), children high in empathy performed better on searching facial expression of pain, and gave higher evaluation of pain intensity; and rating for pain in painful expressions was best predicted by a self-reported empathy score. As for eye-tracking in pain detection, children fixated on pain more quickly, less frequently and for shorter times. Of facial clues, children fixated on eyes and mouth more quickly, more frequently and for longer times. These results implied that painful facial expression was different from others in a cognitive sense, and children’s empathy might facilitate their search and make them perceive the intensity of observed pain on the higher side.

Children's prosocial behavioural intentions towards outgroup members

When will children decide to help outgroup peers? We examined how intergroup competition, social perspective taking (SPT), and empathy influence children's (5-10 years, N = 287) prosocial intentions towards outgroup members. Study 1 showed that, in a minimal group situation, prosociality was lower in an intergroup competitive than in a non-competitive or interpersonal context. Study 2 revealed that, in a real groups situation involving intergroup competition, prosociality was associated with higher empathy and lower competitive motivation. In a subsequent non-competitive context, there were age differences in the impact of SPT and competitive motivation. With age, relationships strengthened between SPT and prosociality (positively) and between competitiveness and prosociality (negatively). Among older children, there was a carry-over effect whereby feelings of intergroup competitiveness aroused by the intergroup competitive context suppressed outgroup prosociality in the following non-competitive context. Theoretical and practical implications for improving children's intergroup relationships are discussed.

Empathy as a "risky strength": a multilevel examination of empathy and risk for internalizing disorders

Learning to respond to others' distress with well-regulated empathy is an important developmental task linked to positive health outcomes and moral achievements. However, this important interpersonal skill set may also confer risk for depression and anxiety when present at extreme levels and in combination with certain individual characteristics or within particular contexts. The purpose of this review is to describe an empirically grounded theoretical rationale for the hypothesis that empathic tendencies can be "risky strengths." We propose a model in which typical development of affective and cognitive empathy can be influenced by complex interplay among intraindividual and interindividual moderators that increase risk for empathic personal distress and excessive interpersonal guilt. These intermediate states in turn precipitate internalizing problems that map onto empirically derived fear/arousal and anhedonia/misery subfactors of internalizing disorders. The intraindividual moderators include a genetically influenced propensity toward physiological hyperarousal, which is proposed to interact with genetic propensity to empathic sensitivity to contribute to neurobiological processes that underlie personal distress responses to others' pain or unhappiness. This empathic personal distress then increases risk for internalizing problems, particularly fear/arousal symptoms. In a similar fashion, interactions between genetic propensities toward negative thinking processes and empathic sensitivity are hypothesized to contribute to excess interpersonal guilt in response to others' distress. This interpersonal guilt then increases the risk for internalizing problems, especially anhedonia/misery symptoms. Interindividual moderators, such as maladaptive parenting or chronic exposure to parents' negative affect, further interact with these genetic liabilities to amplify risk for personal distress and interpersonal guilt as well as for consequent internalizing problems. Age-related increases in the heritability of depression, anxiety, and empathy-related constructs are consistent with developmental shifts toward greater influence of intraindividual moderators throughout childhood and adolescence, with interindividual moderators exerting their greatest influence during early childhood. Efforts to modulate neurobiological and behavioral expressions of genetic dysregulation liabilities and to promote adaptive empathic skills must thus begin early in development.

Empathy: gender effects in brain and behavior

Evidence suggests that there are differences in the capacity for empathy between males and females. However, how deep do these differences go? Stereotypically, females are portrayed as more nurturing and empathetic, while males are portrayed as less emotional and more cognitive. Some authors suggest that observed gender differences might be largely due to cultural expectations about gender roles. However, empathy has both evolutionary and developmental precursors, and can be studied using implicit measures, aspects that can help elucidate the respective roles of culture and biology. This article reviews evidence from ethology, social psychology, economics, and neuroscience to show that there are fundamental differences in implicit measures of empathy, with parallels in development and evolution. Studies in nonhuman animals and younger human populations (infants/children) offer converging evidence that sex differences in empathy have phylogenetic and ontogenetic roots in biology and are not merely cultural byproducts driven by socialization. We review how these differences may have arisen in response to males' and females' different roles throughout evolution. Examinations of the neurobiological underpinnings of empathy reveal important quantitative gender differences in the basic networks involved in affective and cognitive forms of empathy, as well as a qualitative divergence between the sexes in how emotional information is integrated to support decision making processes. Finally, the study of gender differences in empathy can be improved by designing studies with greater statistical power and considering variables implicit in gender (e.g., sexual preference, prenatal hormone exposure). These improvements may also help uncover the nature of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders in which one sex is more vulnerable to compromised social competence associated with impaired empathy.

Children's giving: moral reasoning and moral emotions in the development of donation behaviors

This study investigated the role of moral reasoning and moral emotions (i.e., sympathy and guilt) in the development of young children’s donating behavior (N = 160 4- and 8-year-old children). Donating was measured through children’s allocation of resources (i.e., stickers) to needy peers and was framed as a donation to “World Vision.” Children’s sympathy was measured with both self- and primary caregiver-reports and participants reported their anticipation of guilt feelings following actions that violated prosocial moral norms, specifically the failure to help or share. Participants also provided justifications for their anticipated emotions, which were coded as representing moral or non-moral reasoning processes. Children’s moral reasoning emerged as a significant predictor of donating behavior. In addition, results demonstrated significant developmental and gender effects, with 8-year-olds donating significantly more than 4-year-olds and 4-year-old girls making higher value donations than boys of the same age. We discuss donation behaviors within the broader context of giving and highlight the moral developmental antecedents of giving behaviors in childhood.

Neurological and biological foundations of children's social and emotional development: an integrated literature review

This article provides an integrated review of the expert literature on developmental processes that combine social, biological, and neurological pathways, and the mechanisms through which these pathways may influence school success and health. It begins with a historical overview of the current understanding of how attachment relationships and social environments influence brain development and plasticity and are, therefore, central to the physical and mental health of individuals and populations. It then expands on the effect of plasticity in relation to behavior and learning at school. This article concludes with a discussion of the role the school nurse may play in supporting health and learning by recognizing signs of relational stress and by advocating for prevention strategies.

Children's social/emotional characteristics at entry to school: implications for school nurses

Children entering school need to build healthy peer relationships; school, however, is the central place for bullying. School nurses have a growing focus on providing care for students with social, emotional and behavioural problems. We examined the relational development of children at school entry in regard to aggression and empathy, showing that teacher-reported aggression decreased between Pre-primary and Year One, while empathy increased between Year One and Year Two classes. No gender difference was found in teacher-reported total, or covert aggression. Understanding how development of empathy can be supported in children at school entry is important, thereby supporting development of pro-social behaviour and decreasing bullying. School nurses must understand the importance of surrounding children with safety in relationships as they begin school.