Katrina R. Abela , Randi E. McCabe , Teresa Bennett , Nicholas Bock , Andrea Gonzalez
{"title":"Evaluating parent-mediated interventions to support child emotion regulation: a review of preventative approaches across childhood","authors":"Katrina R. Abela , Randi E. McCabe , Teresa Bennett , Nicholas Bock , Andrea Gonzalez","doi":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101218","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101218","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Parenting plays an important role in children’s emotion regulation (ER) development. Parent-mediated interventions, preventative approaches that equip caregivers with skills to enhance their children’s emotional, behavioural, or developmental outcomes, have emerged as a promising strategy to address difficulties in child ER, particularly during the early to middle childhood years (<span><span>Morawska et al., 2019</span></span>). This narrative review synthesized studies evaluating the effectiveness of parent-mediated preventative interventions aimed at enhancing ER in children aged 0–12 years. A search across three databases yielded 3189 articles, with 24 studies retained after applying inclusion criteria. Key interventions included Tuning in to Kids, Incredible Years, Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, Family Check-Up, and Triple P – Positive Parenting Program. While the interventions varied in design, all included a parental and child ER element (albeit using varied terminology to describe it), providing caregivers with skills to regulate their emotions, engage in effective parenting practices, and model healthy ER behaviours. Despite these promising outcomes, significant methodological limitations, such as inconsistent and imprecise measurement of ER and limited research on middle childhood, restricted a comprehensive understanding of the impact of these interventions. Future research should incorporate rigorous and comprehensive ER assessments and expand the focus of inquiry to include children in middle childhood to addressing the identified gaps in current literature and further promote adaptive ER development in children.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48214,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Review","volume":"77 ","pages":"Article 101218"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144711731","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ran Wei , Paul L. Harris , Catherine E. Snow , Meredith L. Rowe
{"title":"From the “Here and Now” to the “There and Then”: How parent–child decontextualized conversations support early development","authors":"Ran Wei , Paul L. Harris , Catherine E. Snow , Meredith L. Rowe","doi":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101217","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101217","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Decontextualized language (DL), language referring to concepts and events that are abstract or spatially, temporally, or personally displaced from the immediate context, has been shown to bolster children’s language, cognitive, and socioemotional development. Because research on parent–child DL spans multiple disciplinary, theoretical, and methodological traditions, a comprehensive framework defining DL and examining the mechanistic pathways linking DL’s unique attributes to early development remains absent. This review proposes a framework that delineates DL along three interrelated yet distinct dimensions: its function, relation to the perceptual context, and linguistic form. It also analyzes how cultural, social, personal, and contextual factors contribute to individual differences in parents’ DL input, emphasizing social and cultural factors. Additionally, this review elucidates the demonstrated links between parent–child decontextualized conversation and children’s language, cognitive, and socioemotional skills, along with the underlying mechanisms. We argue that a three-dimensional, gradient-based view of DL can enable a more refined and systematic exploration of developmental shifts and individual variation in DL. This approach also promises to enhance our understanding of its developmental implications and underlying mechanisms. In the concluding remarks, we provide practical recommendations on using this framework to inform coding and analytical choices and discuss areas we deem as priorities in DL research.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48214,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Review","volume":"77 ","pages":"Article 101217"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144687150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Tongyao Zhang , Giulia A. Borriello , Karin H. James , Emily R. Fyfe
{"title":"The role of patterning skill in cognitive development and learning: A critical review","authors":"Tongyao Zhang , Giulia A. Borriello , Karin H. James , Emily R. Fyfe","doi":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101202","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101202","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Patterning is a skill that involves understanding, identifying, and applying systematic rules within predictable sequences, and a recent surge in the literature has focused on this skill as a crucial part of cognitive development. The goal of this paper is to critically evaluate this growing literature to highlight what we know about patterning and what major gaps remain, and then to offer several recommendations for advancing patterning research. In particular, we believe the field has made extensive advances in understanding the assessment, developmental trajectories, and correlates of patterning skills. Yet, there are open questions about whether patterning is a proxy for other cognitive abilities, whether it is domain-specific or domain-general, and whether it causally impacts learning. We provide recommendations for future work to (1) acknowledge connections with adjacent cognitive abilities, (2) break down patterning activities into cognitive processes, (3) take a developmental perspective to observe patterning skill formation, (4) target both local and central mechanisms that support patterning, and (5) continue to explore patterning’s role in educational practices. By probing deeper into the nature of patterning, researchers can advance knowledge of both patterning and other cognitive skills that are critical to human development.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48214,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Review","volume":"76 ","pages":"Article 101202"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144106896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Daphne M. Vrantsidis , Viktoria Wuest , Sandra A. Wiebe
{"title":"Dopamine genetic composite score × environment interactions on executive function in children and adolescents: A systematic review","authors":"Daphne M. Vrantsidis , Viktoria Wuest , Sandra A. Wiebe","doi":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101201","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101201","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Individual differences in dopamine genotype are theorized to increase children and adolescent’s sensitivity to the effects of environmental factors on executive function. This review synthesized and evaluated the evidence for dopamine gene × environment interactions on children and adolescents’ (ages 2 –19 years) executive function in studies that used a multilocus or polygenic measure of dopamine genotype. Ten peer-reviewed published studies were identified and included in the review. Sixteen of 29 (55 %; N = 4697) interactions were significant, with associations between environmental factors and executive function generally stronger in individuals with genotypes related to reduced dopamine availability. A p-curve analysis found the significant interactions to be of evidential value and p-hacking to be unlikely. Results suggest that multilocus and polygenic measures hold promise for examining dopamine gene × environment interactions on executive function and that individual differences in dopamine genotype alter sensitivity to environmental effects on children and adolescent’s executive function. This finding has potential implications for understanding pathways to the development of mental and physical health problems. It also raises important theoretical questions about dopamine gene × environment interactions and the biopsychosocial mechanisms involved in executive function development to be addressed in future research.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48214,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Review","volume":"76 ","pages":"Article 101201"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143916380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Advancing a transnational ecological systems framework for research on exposure to violence","authors":"Franklin Moreno , Paul Boxer","doi":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101200","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101200","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Scholars have underscored the need to integrate research from more diverse contexts and local realities across national borders to inform global perspectives on developmental science. As multination developmental studies have increased, one area requiring further attention is the ways in which countries that wield greater power influence the local realities of youth in other countries. The domain of public safety, insecurity, and violence for youth evinces important issues related to local conditions shaped by foreign government policy interventions. In this paper we draw from multinational studies, research on exposure to community violence, Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model of human development, and policy between the United States and Central America. Utilizing Central America as a case study, our analysis examines how transnational governmental policies of the US are distal processes that have real-life impacts on youth’s proximal experiences with violence and safety in Honduras. We propose a <em>transnational ecological systems framework</em> for advancing developmental theory and research on violence to expand from a <em>within</em> country application of ecological systems to a <em>between</em> country model to account for these transnational, distal processes. We conclude with theoretical and research implications and applications with the aim of advancing a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of context-specific and general developmental processes and outcomes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48214,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Review","volume":"76 ","pages":"Article 101200"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-04-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143785966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Improving executive function during toddlerhood: A systematic review and meta-analysis of parent-led interventions","authors":"Fionnuala O’Reilly, Sylvia U. Gattas, Gaia Scerif","doi":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101198","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101198","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Individual differences in executive functions are detectable in the first year of life and continue to develop throughout the preschool years. Psychological science suggests that executive function is malleable, with parents playing a crucial role as potential agents of change. However, the effectiveness of interventions aimed at teaching parents how to enhance their children’s executive function during the preschool years remains unclear. To address this gap, we pre-registered a systematic review and <em>meta</em>-analysis of the literature on parent/caregiver-led interventions designed to foster children’s executive function from ages 2 to 5 years. We conducted an extensive search across 12 databases spanning disciplines such as developmental psychology, education, and policy. After screening over 11,000 papers, 12 studies met our inclusion criteria. These interventions included home visits, in-person group sessions for parents/caregivers, or a combination of both. Our <em>meta</em>-analysis, which included 8 studies with a total of 1,815 participants − 946 in the treatment group and 869 in the control group − revealed no statistically significant difference between the treatment and control groups overall. A follow-up analysis of two studies using the same outcome measure for Effortful Control showed a small to moderate positive effect that was statistically significant [SMD = 0.28, 95 % CI (0.08, 0.47)]. We provide recommendations for improving the evidence base in this area, emphasising the need for more rigorous and standardised methodologies in future research. This review underscores the potential of parents as key facilitators in the development of their children’s executive functions and highlights promising directions for future interventions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48214,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Review","volume":"76 ","pages":"Article 101198"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143737881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Eren Fukuda , Katharine E. Scott , Katherine L. Swerbenski , Nicole Huth , Kierin C. Barnett , Natalie Sarmiento , Madeline A. Henkel , Kristin Shutts
{"title":"A systematic review of modern measures for capturing children’s ethnic and racial attitudes, stereotypes, and discrimination","authors":"Eren Fukuda , Katharine E. Scott , Katherine L. Swerbenski , Nicole Huth , Kierin C. Barnett , Natalie Sarmiento , Madeline A. Henkel , Kristin Shutts","doi":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101189","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101189","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In recent years, there have been accelerated efforts among developmental scientists to understand and address children’s ethnic and racial attitudes, stereotypes, and discrimination. For such efforts, using high-quality and context-appropriate measures is critical. However, focused discussions and investigations of measures for capturing children’s ethnic and racial attitudes, stereotypes, and discrimination are scant. Accordingly, we conducted a systematic review of 1,001 measures that were used in 403 journal articles published between 2010 and 2022. Our review was guided by four questions: (1) What types of measures of children’s ethnic and racial attitudes, stereotypes, and discrimination are being used by researchers?; (2) How do measures represent target groups?; (3) In which geographic and demographic contexts are measures being used?; and (4) What evidence do we have about some of the psychometric properties of commonly used scales/tasks? In seeking answers to these questions, we found both strengths and problems with our field’s toolkit of measures. Taken together, our review provides an overview of modern measures for capturing children’s ethnic and racial attitudes, stereotypes, and discrimination; offers initial insights about the characteristics and psychometric properties of those measures; and makes recommendations for future efforts in the field. We argue that measurement evaluation is a fertile avenue for future work in our field and that widespread discussions about measurement are necessary to advance the science of how children feel, think about, and behave toward members of different social groups.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48214,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Review","volume":"76 ","pages":"Article 101189"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143735171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Decoding the intent-to-outcome developmental shift in moral judgment, from infancy to preschool age: A critical review and a novel proposition","authors":"Marine Buon , Francesco Margoni","doi":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101197","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101197","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>For decades, researchers in moral judgment development have described and tried to explain the so-called ‘outcome-to-intent shift’ that occurs by late preschool age: preschoolers predominantly base their moral judgments on the actions’ outcomes and it is only at the age of 5 or later that most children start to generate intent-based judgments. However, recent research in the domain of early moral development has reported intriguing findings: in their socio-moral evaluations, infants are sensitive to agents’ intentions and disregard information about the consequences of agents’ actions. What are the processes underlying this surprising developmental pattern? We first aim to critically review recent attempts to explain it which focus on the factors that impact infants’ and children’s sensitivity to information about <em>intentions</em>. We thus offer a review of the vast infant and child literature on the development of intent-based moral judgment<strong>.</strong> Next, we argue that current propositions explain a part of the findings, but they underestimate the importance of <em>outcomes</em> processing. By analyzing the factors that may influence the way children represent and react to outcomes, we offer a new proposition: a combination of developmental, experimental, cognitive and experiential factors determines a heightened sensitivity to outcomes in preschoolers, compared to other age groups. In addition to shedding new light on the understanding of the discrepancy between infants’ and children’s moral evaluations, the implications of this proposition for future developmental psychology research in the field of moral cognition are discussed.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48214,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Review","volume":"76 ","pages":"Article 101197"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143724171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The neurodevelopmental roots of interactions between attention and working memory during infancy","authors":"Wanze Xie , Chen Cheng , Shuran Huang","doi":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101199","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101199","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Understanding the interaction between attention and working memory (WM) is crucial in cognitive neuroscience, extensively studied in adults but less explored in infancy. This review examines the developmental roots and relationship between attention and WM in infants from a developmental cognitive neuroscience perspective. By integrating theories and recent empirical findings from research on adults and infants, we aim to revisit how this relationship emerges and manifests early in life through two perspectives. First, we propose that the maturation and collaboration of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and central nervous system (CNS) provide the foundational basis for attention and WM in infancy. This foundation is evident in shared neural substrates such as the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and parietal regions, as well as in cortical modulation driven by physiological activities like cardiac dynamics and pupil dilation. Second, we explore potential mechanisms influencing infants’ WM limitations, integrating insights from selective attention, PFC maturation, and the role of prior experiences within the predictive coding framework. This comprehensive approach elucidates the interplay between attention and WM in infancy, highlighting their collective contribution to infants’ adaptive strategies, i.e., exploration over exploitation, in interactions with the environment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48214,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Review","volume":"76 ","pages":"Article 101199"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143679880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Modelling complex span performance: activation, attentional capacity, and interference","authors":"Lorenzo Muscella, Sergio Morra","doi":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101188","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101188","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Complex span tasks, combining storage and processing requirements, are widely used working memory measures. They are related to executive attention and predict fluid intelligence and performance on cognitively demanding tasks. The two most prominent models of complex span performance are the Time-Based Resource Sharing and the Serial Order in a Box model. The former posits a refreshing process that re-activates decaying memory representations, whereas the latter is based on interference among representations and suppression of distractors. Both of these models have merits and can account for several findings, but none provides a complete explanation. We propose an alternative model that includes both capacity-limited activation and interference, framed within the Theory of Constructive Operators. Our model assumes: (a) an attentional resource activates a limited number (M capacity, increasing during development) of task-relevant information units; (b) during stimuli presentation this resource is used to activate representations of memoranda as well as encoding and order-keeping operations; (c) also the concurrent processing task uses a share of M capacity; (d) activation of the memoranda representations that exceed M capacity decreases over subsequent operations, and (e) continues decreasing during list recall; (f) interference among representations is a power function of the number of them whose activation is decreasing; (g) fully activated representations are recalled correctly, and partly activated representations are retrieved with a specified probability. The model includes one free parameter (rate of activation decrease, mainly due to interference) and one parameter (M capacity) that can be independently estimated from other tasks. Two experiments (one with adults and one with 10- to 13-year-olds) supported this model, and M capacity accounted for approximately half of the developmental variance.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48214,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Review","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101188"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143519975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}