{"title":"Positive Future Expectancies: When Hopeful Thinking Contributes to Happiness in Children","authors":"S. P. Nguyen, Catherine H McDermott","doi":"10.1080/15248372.2022.2159962","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2022.2159962","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This research investigates positive future expectancies, particularly hope in children, which is comprised of agency thinking, perceiving oneself as capable of achieving goals, and pathways thinking, perceiving oneself as capable of discovering methods toward the desired goals. Two studies (n = 82) were conducted in the United States to examine the role of agency and pathways thinking in children’s trait and state happiness based on children’s self-reports and their parents reports of their children. In Study 1, dyads of typically developing children (Mage = 10.21 years) and their parents (Mage = 43.84 years) completed measures of hope and happiness. Study 2 extended Study 1 to include a diverse sample of children with chronic health conditions (Mage = 11.14 years) and their parents (Mage = 43.48 years). In Study 1, regression analyses revealed that children’s self-reports of agency thinking predict children’s trait and state happiness, p’s < .05. Contrastingly, in Study 2, regression analyses revealed that children’s self-reports of pathways thinking predict children’s self-reports of trait happiness, p < .001. Also, collectively, pathways thinking, agency thinking, and children’s age predict children’s state happiness, p = .025. In both studies, parents’ reports of their children’s hope were not significant predictors of children’s happiness. There also was not an association between parents’ perceptions of their children’s hope and happiness and their children’s self-reported levels. These findings elucidate the cognitive aspects of hope that promote happiness in childhood and advance understanding of the determinants of children’s happiness in the U.S.","PeriodicalId":47680,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46489326","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Why doesn't executive function training improve academic achievement? Rethinking individual differences, relevance, and engagement from a contextual framework.","authors":"Jesse C Niebaum, Yuko Munakata","doi":"10.1080/15248372.2022.2160723","DOIUrl":"10.1080/15248372.2022.2160723","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Performance on lab assessments of executive functions predicts academic achievement and other positive life outcomes. A primary goal of research on executive functions has been to design interventions that improve outcomes like academic achievement by improving executive functions. These interventions typically involve extensive practice on abstract lab-based tasks and lead to improvements on these practiced tasks. However, interventions rarely improve performance on non-practiced tasks and rarely benefit outcomes like academic achievement. Contemporary frameworks of executive function development suggest that executive functions develop and are engaged within personal, social, historical, and cultural contexts. Abstract lab-based tasks do not well-capture the real-world contexts that require executive functions and should not be expected to provide generalized benefits outside of the lab. We propose a perspective for understanding individual differences in performance on executive function assessments that focuses on contextual influences on executive functions. We extend this contextual approach to training executive function engagement, rather than training executive functions directly. First, interventions should incorporate task content that is contextually relevant to the targeted outcome. Second, interventions should encourage engaging executive functions through reinforcement and contextual relevance, which may better translate to real-world outcomes than training executive functions directly. While such individualized executive functions interventions do not address systemic factors that greatly impact outcomes like academic achievement, given the extensive resources devoted to improving executive functions, we hypothesize that interventions designed to encourage children's engagement of executive functions hold more promise for impacting real-world outcomes than interventions designed to improve executive function capacities.</p>","PeriodicalId":47680,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10348702/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9830916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Culture and gender influence self-construal in mother-preschooler reminiscing.","authors":"Sirada Rochanavibhata, Viorica Marian","doi":"10.1080/15248372.2023.2239920","DOIUrl":"10.1080/15248372.2023.2239920","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The present study examined how culture and gender influence the self-construal of mothers and their four-year-olds during dyadic reminiscing. Participants were 21 Thai (11 girls, 10 boys) and 21 American (10 girls, 11 boys) mother-child dyads. Thai dyads exhibited a more interdependent self-construal, whereas American dyads exhibited a more independent self-construal, as measured by personal and group pronoun usage and discussions of behavioral expectations, thoughts and feelings, and personal attributes. Girls and boys differed in the extent to which their self-construal was defined in relation to others in their social groups, for example girls mentioned teachers and classmates more than boys. Culture and gender also interacted in influencing self-construal, with Thai girls (but not boys) mentioning family members more than American counterparts. These findings suggest that the development of children's self-construal, particularly the extent to which children are socialized to view and express themselves independently of others or interdependently with others, differs depending on culture and gender. This work contributes to our understanding of the relationship between autobiographical memory and self during the formative years. Starting as early as preschool, our social environment influences the way we remember our experiences, which in turn shapes our self-construal.</p>","PeriodicalId":47680,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10746166/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44777108","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Helen Branyan, Elisheva Fridman, Samuel Shaki, Koleen McCrink
{"title":"Ordinality and Verbal Framing Influence Preschoolers' Memory for Spatial Structure.","authors":"Helen Branyan, Elisheva Fridman, Samuel Shaki, Koleen McCrink","doi":"10.1080/15248372.2022.2144318","DOIUrl":"10.1080/15248372.2022.2144318","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>During the preschool years, children are simultaneously undergoing a reshaping of their mental number line and becoming increasingly sensitive to the social norms expressed by those around them. In the current study, 4- and 5-year-old American and Israeli children were given a task in which an experimenter laid out chips with numbers (1-5), letters (A-E), or colors (Red-Blue, the first colors of the rainbow), and presented them with a specific order (initial through final) and direction (Left-to-right or Right-to-left). The experimenter either did not demonstrate the laying out of the chips (Control), emphasized the process of the left-to-right or right-to-left spatial layout (Process), or used general goal language (Generic). Children were then asked to recreate each sequence after a short delay. Children also completed a short numeracy task. The results indicate that attention to the spatial structuring of the environment was influenced by conventional framing; children exhibited better recall when the manner of layout was emphasized than when it was not. Both American and Israeli children were better able to recall numerical information relative to non-numerical information. Although children did not show an overall benefit for better recall of information related to the culture's dominant spatial direction, American children's tendency to recall numerical direction information predicted their early numeracy ability.</p>","PeriodicalId":47680,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10038218/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9252221","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Studying the Development of Navigation Using Virtual Environments.","authors":"Kim V Nguyen, Merve Tansan, Nora S Newcombe","doi":"10.1080/15248372.2022.2133123","DOIUrl":"10.1080/15248372.2022.2133123","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Research on spatial navigation is essential to understanding how mobile species adapt to their environments. Such research increasingly uses virtual environments (VEs) because, although VE has drawbacks, it allows for standardization of procedures, precision in measuring behaviors, ease in introducing variation, and cross-investigator comparability. Developmental researchers have used a wide range of VE testing methods, including desktop computers, gaming consoles, virtual reality, and phone applications. We survey the paradigms to guide researchers' choices, organizing them by their characteristics using a framework proposed by Girard (2022) in which navigation is reactive or deliberative, and may be tied to sensory input or not. This organization highlights what representations each paradigm indicates. VE tools have enriched our picture of the development of navigation, but much research remains to be done, e.g., determining retest reliability, comparing performance on different paradigms, validating performance against real-world behavior and open sharing. Reliable and valid assessments available on open-science repositories are essential for work on the development of navigation, its neural bases, and its implications for other cognitive domains.</p>","PeriodicalId":47680,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10445272/pdf/nihms-1918918.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10104452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Origins of Theory of Mind in Infant Social Cognition: Investigating Longitudinal Pathways from Intention Understanding and Joint Attention to Preschool Theory of Mind.","authors":"Amanda C Brandone, Wyntre Stout","doi":"10.1080/15248372.2022.2146117","DOIUrl":"10.1080/15248372.2022.2146117","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>A growing body of literature has established longitudinal associations between key social cognitive capacities emerging in infancy and children's subsequent theory of mind. However, existing work is limited by modest sample sizes, narrow infant measures, and theory of mind assessments with restricted variability and generalizability. The current study aimed to extend this literature by (a) recruiting a large sample of participants (<i>n</i> = 116; 53 boys; 63 girls; all U.S. residents; 88 White, 8 Hispanic or Latino, 2 Black or African American, 14 two or more races/ethnicities, 4 unknown; median family income: $74-122,000), (b) examining multiple measures of infant social cognition (intentional action understanding, responding to joint attention, initiating joint attention) at Time 1 (8-12 months), and (c) using an ecologically valid theory of mind assessment designed to capture individual differences in preschoolers' mental state understanding (the Children's Social Understanding Scale; Tahiroglu et al., 2014) at Time 2 (37-45 months). Measured variable path analysis revealed a significant longitudinal association between infants' initiating joint attention and later theory of mind: infants who engaged in more attempts to initiate joint attention with experimenters through gaze alternation or gestures went on to show better parent-reported mental state understanding as preschoolers. Notably, the paths from infants' responding to joint attention and intentional action understanding to later theory of mind did not emerge as significant. These findings bolster and clarify existing claims about how mental state reasoning is rooted in foundational social-cognitive capacities emerging in infancy.</p>","PeriodicalId":47680,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10348704/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9833712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Steven J. Holochwost, Deaven Winebrake, E. Brown, Keith R. Happeney, N. Wagner, W. R. Mills-Koonce
{"title":"An Ecological Systems Perspective on Individual Differences in Children’s Performance on Measures of Executive Function","authors":"Steven J. Holochwost, Deaven Winebrake, E. Brown, Keith R. Happeney, N. Wagner, W. R. Mills-Koonce","doi":"10.1080/15248372.2022.2160721","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2022.2160721","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The predictive validity of performance on cognitive-behavioral measures of executive function (EF) suggests that these measures index children’s underlying capacity for self-regulation. In this paper, we apply ecological systems theory to critically evaluate this assertion. We argue that as typically administered, standard measures of EF do not index children’s underlying, trait-like capacity for EF, but rather assess their state-like EF performance at a given point in time and in a particular (and often quite peculiar) context. This underscores the importance of disentangling intra-individual (i.e., state-like) and inter-individual (trait-like) differences in performance on these measures and understanding how factors at various levels of organization may contribute to both. To this end, we offer an approach that combines the collection of repeated measures of EF with a multilevel modeling framework, and conclude by discussing the application of this approach to the study of educational interventions designed to foster children’s EF.","PeriodicalId":47680,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45971223","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A First Theoretical Model of Self-Directed Cognitive Control Development","authors":"Aurélien Frick, N. Chevalier","doi":"10.1080/15248372.2022.2160720","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2022.2160720","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Cognitive control (also referred to as executive functions) corresponds to a set of cognitive processes that support the goal-directed regulation of thoughts and actions. It plays a major role in complex activities and predicts later academic achievement. Importantly, while growing up, children are progressively transitioning from engaging cognitive control in an externally driven fashion, i.e., relying on external guidance, to exerting it self-directedly, i.e., autonomously determining when and how to engage it. Although growing self-directedness in cognitive control engagement is critical to autonomy gains during childhood, relatively little is known about the underlying cognitive mechanisms. Incorporating previous main proposals in cognitive control development, we propose that self-directed control development is driven by the ability to identify relevant goals, facilitated through accumulated knowledge on how to engage cognitive control with age. Importantly, we argue that there are two key processes that are part of successful goal identification: context-tracking and goal selection. We argue that most developmental changes are linked to context-tracking as the demands on this process are particularly high in self-directed situations. We then derived main predictions from this theoretical model as well as promising future directions.","PeriodicalId":47680,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48460900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reconciling the Context-Dependency and Domain-Generality of Executive Function Skills from a Developmental Systems Perspective","authors":"P. Zelazo, S. M. Carlson","doi":"10.1080/15248372.2022.2156515","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2022.2156515","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Executive function (EF) skills are a set of attention-regulation skills involved in intentional, goal-directed behavior that include (but are not limited to) the cool EF skills of working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control, and also the hot EF skill of intentional reevaluation. These skills are inevitably expressed in goal- and context-dependent ways, leading some to view EF skills as specific adaptations to particular problems and reinforcing interest in the use of more ecologically contextualized assessments. Appreciation of the context-dependency of EF skills adds to our understanding of how EF skills develop as a consequence of particular experiences and how they contribute to key developmental outcomes. There are good reasons, however, to view EF skills as relatively domain-general neurocognitive skills. Measured using standardized direct behavioral assessments, these skills are associated reliably with well-defined but distinct neural networks; they predict long-term developmental outcomes; and they can be trained in ways that produce far transfer. We argue that developmental systems models of EF skills can reconcile views of EF skills as relatively domain-general and views that emphasize the context-dependency of these skills. Ecologically adapted measures of EF skills can complement standardized measures that capture important age-related and individual differences and should remain a cornerstone of research on the topic. We believe this type of model will facilitate a deeper understanding of how multiple, simultaneous, and interacting causal influences, operating at many levels of analysis (cultural, social, cognitive, neural, and molecular), work together to produce conscious control.","PeriodicalId":47680,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42460349","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Santiago Vernucci, Ana García-Coni, E. Zamora, Rosario Gelpi-Trudo, María Laura Andrés, L. Canet‐Juric
{"title":"Age-related Changes in Task Switching Costs in Middle Childhood","authors":"Santiago Vernucci, Ana García-Coni, E. Zamora, Rosario Gelpi-Trudo, María Laura Andrés, L. Canet‐Juric","doi":"10.1080/15248372.2022.2156514","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2022.2156514","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Cognitive flexibility refers to the ability to rapidly and accurately switch between tasks. It is regarded as a core dimension of executive functions and has been reported to improve during childhood and into early adulthood. For its evaluation, the task-switching paradigm is widely used. Switching between tasks or response sets imposes a series of costs on performance (i.e., mixing costs, global switch costs, local switch costs). There is less evidence analyzing switching performance in children than in other age groups, and few studies have specifically analyzed switching costs only in school-age children. In the present study, we aimed to analyze age-related changes in task switching in children aged 9–12 years old. We considered year-to-year changes in performance, specifically in response time based mixing costs, global switch costs, and local switch costs. To do this, we used a task switching measure to evaluate 231 children in Argentina, aged 9–12 years (M age = 10.94, SD = 0.88) who were aggregated into four age groups (9, 10, 11, and 12 years old). Results show consistent mixing costs, global switch costs, and local switch costs at each age. However, we did not find age-related differences in the magnitude of such costs. These results suggest that both the ability to maintain and select between two tasks, and to switch from one response set to another could be considered relatively constant during this period.","PeriodicalId":47680,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cognition and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41389896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}