Jessica A Willard, Dave Möwisch, Manja Attig, Susanne Enke, Pia Iken, Gizem Samdan, Sebastian Then, Sabine Weinert
{"title":"Patterns of infants' digital exposure in disadvantaged neighborhoods: Links to the family environment and toddler-age language.","authors":"Jessica A Willard, Dave Möwisch, Manja Attig, Susanne Enke, Pia Iken, Gizem Samdan, Sebastian Then, Sabine Weinert","doi":"10.1037/dev0002120","DOIUrl":"10.1037/dev0002120","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The present study examined patterns of digital exposure (frequency, duration, mothers' intentions for exposure, and co-viewing) of 7-month-old infants (<i>N</i> = 221) from socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods. One half heard another language at home, usually alongside German. Links to family variables were analyzed for the whole sample and to children's later toddler-age societal language vocabulary for a less linguistically diverse subsample (<i>n</i> = 136). Latent mixture models identified three distinct digital exposure patterns: <i>zero dosage, moderate background TV dosage,</i> and <i>higher foreground and background dosage</i>. In the latter group, more mothers exposed their infants to media with specific intentions (e.g., distract or educate). Families in the <i>higher fore- and background dosage</i> group exhibited lower incomes, lower maternal education, less observed maternal sensitivity, and less frequent picture book reading. Infants in this group were more likely to hear a heritage language at home. Even after accounting for these family-related differences, infants with higher fore- and background dosage displayed smaller societal language vocabularies at age 1.5 years. Statistical interactions between digital exposure patterns, the quality of mother-child interaction (sensitivity, stimulation), and the frequency of picture book reading were nonsignificant. Findings indicate high fore- and background dosages may be detrimental, but moderate background TV poses less risk for very young children's societal language. This underscores the importance of a nuanced understanding of digital exposure in the context of family resources and risks. Recommendations should move beyond blanket prohibitions toward emphasizing the critical role of direct, language-rich interactions for language development, particularly in socioeconomically disadvantaged settings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48464,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1593-1607"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146214479","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}
Heather Kirkorian, Rachel Barr, Bolim Suh, McCall Booth, M Annelise Blanchard, Douglas J Piper, Jennica Li, Margaret L Kerr
{"title":"Temporal associations between parents' daily reports of media motivations, infant affect, and parenting behavior.","authors":"Heather Kirkorian, Rachel Barr, Bolim Suh, McCall Booth, M Annelise Blanchard, Douglas J Piper, Jennica Li, Margaret L Kerr","doi":"10.1037/dev0002133","DOIUrl":"10.1037/dev0002133","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Past research links media use to infant negative affect, and parents report using media to cope. However, trait-level measures mask within-person effects that reflect regulatory and relational mechanisms more directly. In this study, 401 predominantly White (70.32%), college-educated (88.28%) parents (75.31% mothers) of 12- to 24-month-olds (<i>M</i><sub>age</sub> = 16.43, 51.37% boys) completed daily diaries reporting the frequency of parent and child behaviors and affective states for 21 consecutive days. Temporal network modeling was used to examine associations among parents' daily reports of media motivations, infant affect, and parenting behavior. On days when infants were fussier than usual, parents reported more yelling and more media use to occupy children, regulate children, and regulate parents' own emotions the same day and more media to occupy children the next day. The reverse was not true: Media use did not predict negative affect the next day. On days when parents reported more frequent media use to relax alone and to regulate children than usual, they also reported more comforting the next day, while more frequent media to connect with children on a given day predicted more infant positive affect the next day. Again, the reverse was not true. Results differed little as a function of infant age. Thus, temporal effects suggest media use may be an adaptive short-term strategy across the second year of life. Critically, within-person effects were not found at the between-person level, underscoring the importance of examining fluctuations within individuals to identify mechanisms and potential intervention targets. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48464,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1527-1540"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12915684/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146214509","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}
Mila Vulchanova, Nivedita Mani, Mikko J Peltola, David Saldaña
{"title":"Living in a digital ecology: The impact on social interaction, learning, and language development.","authors":"Mila Vulchanova, Nivedita Mani, Mikko J Peltola, David Saldaña","doi":"10.1037/dev0002224","DOIUrl":"10.1037/dev0002224","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This introduction presents the contributions to the special issue \"Living in a Digital Ecology: The Impact on Social Interaction, Learning, and Language Development.\" We address current directions in the field and provide a summary of the main topics covered, in addition to providing directions for future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48464,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Psychology","volume":"62 8","pages":"1487-1491"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148413225","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}
Stephanie M Reich, Rebecca Dore, Aubree Krager, Y Anthony Chen, Keiana T Mayfield, Deborah Franza, Natasha Cabrera
{"title":"Bidirectional relationships of parenting stress, media use for behavior management, and children's behavior problems from 9 to 30 months.","authors":"Stephanie M Reich, Rebecca Dore, Aubree Krager, Y Anthony Chen, Keiana T Mayfield, Deborah Franza, Natasha Cabrera","doi":"10.1037/dev0002164","DOIUrl":"10.1037/dev0002164","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>As digital devices permeate the environments of young children, there is growing concern that media use might be displacing very young children's opportunities to cultivate important developmental skills, such as controlling their emotions and behaviors. Further, given the power of devices to capture children's attention, even when emotionally upset, parents might utilize media to both calm and distract their children, even when such use is counter to professional recommendations for very young children's media use. This study uses data from a longitudinal bilingual (English/Spanish) parenting intervention to assess how mothers' and fathers' parenting stress might be reciprocally related to their use of media to calm or distract their child from infancy to toddlerhood and how such use might be linked to young children's behavior problems from 9 to 30 months. Importantly, bidirectional relationships between the device use for behavior management and children's behavior problems are also considered. With a sample of 419 low-to-moderate income, ethnically diverse parents (210 families), we found that for mothers, parenting stress, device use to calm and distract, and children's behavior problems were reciprocally related over time. These within-subject effects indicate that the relationship between these constructs varies within mother-child dyads. For fathers, only between-subject effects were found for device use to calm and distract and children's behavior problems, indicating differences between fathers in their use of media. Such findings underscore the need to include both mothers and fathers in media research and to consider both parent and child contributions to media use and developmental processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48464,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1620-1631"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13078718/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147391322","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 impact of interactivity of touchscreen technology on 4- and 5-year-old children's causal learning and transfer.","authors":"Chunying Gao, Jingyi Zhang, Heyi Zhang, Yinghe Chen, Xiaojuan Niu","doi":"10.1037/dev0002098","DOIUrl":"10.1037/dev0002098","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The present study aimed to explore whether interactive touchscreen could facilitate children's causal learning and transfer compared with demonstration and video. In Experiment 1 (<i>n</i> = 121, 54 girls) and Experiment 2 (<i>n</i> = 133, 61 girls), 4- and 5-year-olds either passively observed screen-based demonstration, and video, or actively interacted with blocks on the touchscreen to make accurate inferences about the causal relationship between the color of the blocks and their corresponding effect. We presented children with 100% and 75% possibilities of causality and tested their ability of discriminating between these two competing causal hypotheses with different possibilities on the touchscreen. The results suggested that interaction with touchscreens was superior to screen-based demonstration and video learning for helping 4-year-olds identify 100% and 75% color feature hypotheses and distinguish the most likely color hypothesis in both simple and generalized conflict tasks. For 5-year-olds, it specifically aided in resolving generalized conflict tasks. In Experiment 3 (<i>n</i> = 139, 69 girls), we not only replicated our previous findings but also found that interaction learning helped children to transfer the causality abstracted from touchscreen to reality. Specifically, interacting with blocks on the touchscreen supported 4-year-old children to successfully perform cross-medium near transfer and 5-year-old children to perform cross-medium near and far transfer, but these abilities were not available for demonstration and video learning. In conclusion, findings demonstrated that touchscreen interactivity has the potential to facilitate 4- and 5-year-olds' causal learning and transfer compared to demonstration and video learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48464,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1492-1511"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145439702","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":"Children's cortical speech tracking in child-adult and child-robot interactions.","authors":"Fatih Sivridag, Nivedita Mani","doi":"10.1037/dev0002086","DOIUrl":"10.1037/dev0002086","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Synthesized speech technology holds potential for enabling natural conversations between humans and machines, particularly in social robotics. However, the combination of synthesized speech with social robots still lacks some qualities of natural speech, which is crucial for human-robot interactions, especially for children. In this study, we recorded the neural activity of 5-year-old, typically developing children from middle to high socioeconomic households using an electroencephalogram while they listened to stories narrated by either an adult or a social robot, specifically Furhat. We measured cortical speech tracking to compare how well children's brains tracked synthesized speech from a robot compared with natural speech from an adult. Our results suggest that children do indeed show cortical speech tracking in both scenarios. The results also suggest that cortical speech tracking requires larger time delays between the speech and the response to reach its peak in child-robot interaction compared with child-adult interaction. Possible sources of these differences along with their implications are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48464,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1608-1619"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145214182","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":"Digital and physical play contexts influence mother-child spatial language and maternal questions.","authors":"Sierra Eisen, Jamie J Jirout","doi":"10.1037/dev0002179","DOIUrl":"10.1037/dev0002179","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Playing with spatial toys is associated with increased spatial skills, which are important for success in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Past research on spatial play has focused on physical toys, but digital games that require spatial thinking are increasingly popular, with limited research examining how children and their parents engage with them. The present study aimed to address these gaps by examining how play context impacts mothers' and children's spatial talk and mothers' use of scaffolding behavior, specifically question-asking. Mother-child dyads (<i>N</i> = 60, <i>M</i> = 71.3 months, <i>SD</i> = 7.4 months, 30 female) coplayed with digital spatial games and matched physical toys across two sessions. The digital games included tangram puzzles (<i>Dragon Shapes</i> app) and block-building (<i>Minecraft</i> app), and physical toys were designed to match the digital games. During digital play compared to physical play, mothers and children spoke fewer spatial words, used different spatial language types, and mothers asked fewer questions, including pedagogical questions that aim to promote learning. Further analyses examined the dimensionality of the activities and children's prior play experiences. In an increasingly digital world, it is important to understand how spatial play, whether in physical or digital form, impacts children's spatial development. By demonstrating how mothers and children change their behavior between digital and physical play, this study adds to the growing research on how parents can support their children's engagement with and learning from digital technology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48464,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1541-1555"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147943334","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":"Let's watch and focus on this: The effects of advance organizers on young children's learning from prosocial and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) digital narratives.","authors":"Alanna L Peebles","doi":"10.1037/dev0002204","DOIUrl":"10.1037/dev0002204","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Young children are taught primarily by stories, and many popular stories have gone digital. The aim of these stories is to teach children concepts that they can later apply to their own lives. Despite this, children often exhibit minimal learning after one-time exposure without additional help. Based on the propositions in Fisch's capacity model about children's information processing of educational narratives, this project investigates a simple instructional design intervention of adding structured previews (\"advance organizers\") at the beginning of two different commercially available digital narratives to manage children's essential processing. A total of 123 preschool-aged U.S. children (Mage = 52.33 months, 52% female, 74% White) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: no advance organizer, an advance organizer about the overarching lesson, or an advance organizer about the plot. Children watched a prosocial digital narrative about sharing (Session 1) and watched a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics digital narrative about using a pan balance roughly 2 weeks later (Session 2). Linear mixed-effect models revealed that the efficacy of the advance organizers varied based on children's cognitive capacity or working memory. Children with lower cognitive capacity benefited more from a plot-focused advance organizer than a lesson-focused advance organizer, but children with more cognitive capacity benefited more from a lesson-focused advance organizer than a plot-focused advance organizer. The results have theoretical implications for the propositions put forth by information-processing approaches, as well as equity-minded implications about the design of children's digital narrative content. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48464,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Psychology","volume":"62 8","pages":"1512-1526"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148413178","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}
Lidia Altamura, Cristina Vargas, Johannes Naumann, Ladislao Salmerón
{"title":"How digital reading habits shape reading motivation and comprehension over time: Longitudinal associations in primary school.","authors":"Lidia Altamura, Cristina Vargas, Johannes Naumann, Ladislao Salmerón","doi":"10.1037/dev0002094","DOIUrl":"10.1037/dev0002094","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Nowadays, children's reading habits extend beyond traditional printed texts, embracing new practices and forms through digital devices. The influence of such new digital reading habits on reading motivation and comprehension development remains largely underexplored. This study aimed to explore reciprocal causal paths between digital reading habits, reading comprehension and intrinsic reading motivation. To do so, we analyzed longitudinal data of 908 Spanish students from Grades 4 to 6. We estimated random-intercept and cross-lagged panel models to examine long-term associations between our main variables. Results revealed null causal paths between digital reading habits and reading comprehension for both leisure and academic purposes. After controlling for autoregressive effects and considering only within-person variance, one significant path remained from academic digital reading habits in Grade 5 to decreased intrinsic reading motivation in Grade 6. Our study provides new insights about the role of digital reading habits in the development of reading comprehension and intrinsic reading motivation in primary school students. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48464,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Psychology","volume":" ","pages":"1648-1671"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2026-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145460350","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":"Family environments and daily activities shape children's executive function: Cross-ethnic evidence from a multicultural Asian society.","authors":"Luxi Chen, Wei-Jun Jean Yeung","doi":"10.1037/dev0002233","DOIUrl":"10.1037/dev0002233","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Executive function (EF), encompassing cognitive \"cool\" and affective \"hot\" components, develops in the context of children's everyday experiences during early childhood. However, how family contexts shape EF through children's daily activities remains less well-understood, particularly in Asian societies. Drawing on nationally representative longitudinal data from the Singapore Longitudinal Early Development Study, we examined how parental resources, parenting behaviors, and children's time use contribute to hot and cool EF, indexed by working memory and delay of gratification, respectively. The sample included 2,542 children aged 36-83 months (<i>M</i> = 58.7, <i>SD</i> = 14.2) at baseline across ethnic Chinese, Malay, and Indian families. Structural equation modeling revealed that parental resources predicted children's EF both directly and indirectly through parenting behaviors and children's activities. Greater parental resources, including better verbal cognitive ability, stronger self-control, and lower economic stress, were associated with more positive parenting (consistent rule-setting, warmth/responsiveness, and less punishment), as well as more enriching time-use patterns in children. Among parenting behaviors, rule-setting was the strongest predictor of children's time use, particularly lower screen time and greater time spent in achievement-oriented activities, both of which, in turn, predicted hot and cool EF. Physically active play also predicted stronger EF, independent of parental resources and parenting behaviors. Multigroup analyses revealed largely consistent pathways across ethnic groups, although some associations differed in magnitude or emerged only within specific groups. These findings highlight both universal and culturally contingent pathways to EF development and underscore the importance of situating EF within sociocultural contexts to inform culturally responsive interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":48464,"journal":{"name":"Developmental Psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2026-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148594050","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}