{"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}
{"title":"How attention and working memory work together in the pursuit of goals: The development of the sampling-remembering trade-off","authors":"Erik Blaser, Zsuzsa Kaldy","doi":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101187","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101187","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Most work in the last 50 years on visual working memory and attention has used a classic psychophysical setup: participants are instructed to attend to, or remember, a set of items. This setup sidesteps the role of cognitive control; effort is maximal, tasks are simple, and strategies are limited. While this approach has yielded important insights, it provides no clear path toward an integrative theory (<span><span>Kristjánsson & Draschkow, 2021</span></span>) and, like studying a town’s walkability by having its college students run the 50-yard dash, it runs the danger of focusing on edge cases. Here, in this theoretical opinion article, we argue for an approach where dynamic relationships between the agent and the environment are understood functionally, in light of an agent’s goals. This means a shift in emphasis from the performance of the mechanisms underlying a narrow task (“remember these items!”) to their control in pursuit of a naturalistic goal (“make a sandwich!”, <span><span>Land & Hayhoe, 2001</span></span>). Here, we highlight the sampling-remembering trade-off between exploiting goal-relevant information in the environment versus maintaining it in working memory. We present a dynamic feedback model of this trade-off – where the individual weighs the subjective costs of accessing external information versus those of maintaining it in memory – using insights from existing cognitive control models based on economic principles (<span><span>Kool & Botvinick, 2018</span></span>). This trade-off is particularly interesting in children, as the optimal use of internal resources is even more crucial when limited. Our model makes some specific predictions for future research: 1) an individual child strikes a preferred balance between the effort to attend to goal-relevant information in the environment versus the effort to maintain it in working memory, 2) in order to maintain this balance as underlying memory and cognitive control mechanisms improve with age, the child will have to increasingly shift toward remembering, and 3) older children will show greater adaptability to changing task demands.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48214,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Review","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101187"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143377421","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 impact of bilingualism on theory of mind in children with and without developmental disorders: A scoping review","authors":"Franziska Baumeister , Dafni Vaia Bagioka , Laura Rivoletti , Stephanie Durrleman","doi":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101186","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dr.2025.101186","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Findings across studies investigating the impact of bilingualism on Theory of Mind (ToM) in children have been mixed, potentially due to methodological differences, including variations in the characterization of bilingualism. At the same time, researchers express the need to take into account the heterogeneity of bilingualism by measuring it in a continuous manner.</div><div>This scoping review aimed to explore how previous research identifies important bilingualism variables for future studies on its effects on ToM in children with and without developmental disorders. It analysed the studies’ ‘reasoning frameworks’ to assess these insights. Bilingualism is suggested to influence ToM directly or via factors like executive functioning or metalinguistic awareness. Of 37 studies analysed, few fully tested these hypotheses. Those reporting positive outcomes often involved bilinguals with significant language exposure, supporting the idea that bilingualism impacts ToM, particularly when exposure is considered.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48214,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Review","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101186"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143156349","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}
{"title":"Building a developmental science of redemption","authors":"Daniel Yonas , Larisa Heiphetz Solomon","doi":"10.1016/j.dr.2024.101183","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dr.2024.101183","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Stories about redemption are ubiquitous; people emphasize moral improvement when describing their own lives and, often, others’ lives as well. However, psychology does not yet have a well-developed literature concerning redemption, and developmental science has not addressed questions regarding how perceptions of redemption might emerge or change between childhood and adulthood. To the extent that past research has spoken to this issue, it has pointed in contradictory directions. Two different theories—focusing on essentialism and on optimism—make two different developmental predictions about how and why judgments of redemption might change with age. Integrating these perspectives, we propose a novel theory of redemption that puts work on essentialism and optimism in conversation with each other. The theory of redemption further highlights the role of social inputs (e.g., experiences with their own and others’ moral change) as mechanisms that can lead children to hold more redemptive views than do adults. The theory of redemption accounts for previous findings in developmental science and makes novel predictions regarding the social inputs and consequences of redemptive views.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48214,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Review","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101183"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143155905","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":"A person-centered approach to examining effects on the interaction between cognitive control & language development","authors":"Baila Epstein , Klara Marton","doi":"10.1016/j.dr.2024.101185","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.dr.2024.101185","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper examines the interaction between cognitive control and language in preschool- and school-age children across a continuum of language ability from a person-centered perspective. Working memory, inhibitory control, and attention are cognitive control functions that are highly correlated with language skills in children of varying language ability, including those who are typically developing, as well as in those who have language disorders and language talent, or giftedness. Children with developmental language disorder (DLD), for example, demonstrate poor working memory and weak resistance to distractor and proactive interference on a range of tasks across modalities and domains. At the other end of the language ability continuum, children with language talent exhibit superior performance in language, working memory, and interference tasks. Analysis of the interconnections across working memory, inhibitory control, and attention in children with different language skills allows us to highlight how specific functions are impaired, whereas others are spared during development within each population. This research also demonstrates how associations and dissociations in cognitive control functions are related to both task design and conditions, alongside individual differences in children’s abilities.</div><div>The objective of this paper is to present a person-centered approach that describes the relationship between cognitive control and language development in the context of global and local factors, as well as individual skills. This integrative framework synthesizes selected components and processes of cognitive control and language and may guide each discipline in informing the other.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48214,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Review","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101185"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143156350","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}