Browsing by Subject "Child development"

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    Perceptual and verbal mediation in the concept learning of children
    (1963) McConnell, Owen Link, 1933-
    Some investigators have proposed that concept learning in humans can best be explained in terms of internalized processes mediating between the external stimulus and overt response. This approach contrasts with "single-unit" theory, emphasizing direct association between stimulus and response. Some psychologists advocate the developmental hypothesis that single-unit theory applies to lower organisms but that mediational theory holds for advanced organisms. Comparative psychological studies have yielded inconclusive findings with respect to this hypothesis. Some investigators have tried to experimentally influence the hypothesized mediating process by teaching subjects verbalizations which could serve as mediating responses. In general, findings suggest that older children utilize verbal mediators more readily than younger children. The current investigation stems from interest in whether young children have a specific inability to mediate verbally or a more general deficiency in mediation. Are mediating processes in young children possible on a “sensori-motor” level? The purpose of the present research is to compare younger and older children in their use of perceptual cues as a basis for mediation and in their preferences for perceptual versus verbal cues when these are in conflict. Fifty nursery-school children and seventy-five second-grade children learned two successive discriminations. The stimuli, cylinders varying in size (large-small) and brightness (black-white), were arranged on a tray before a vertical clown's face. The child put one of two stimuli taken from the tray into the clown's mouth and was rewarded, when correct, by the clown's nose blinking, an edible item, and praise. In the first discrimination a large, black cylinder was positive; in the second task the "small" object was rewarded, regardless of brightness. Since the first discrimination was solvable on the basis of either size or brightness (or both), the experimenter could attempt to influence the subject to make a mediating response to a particular dimension. The major experimental variables manipulated for this purpose during the initial discrimination were (1) kind of object arrangement on the tray, and (2) kind of verbal label children applied to the stimuli. The size arrangement, for example, had same-sized objects in proximity; but brightness was randomly distributed. In the size verbalization condition the child was instructed to precede his choices with the appropriate size label, i.e., "big" or "little." Independent groups received the following treatments at each age level: (1) size arrangement, (2) brightness arrangement, (3) size arrangement and brightness verbalization, simultaneously,(4) brightness arrangement and size verbalization, simultaneously, and (5) random arrangement, no verbalization (control). The major dependent variable was the mean number of trials to criterion on the second task, as it was assumed that ease of learning the "small" concept was an index of availability of the size dimension relative to the brightness dimension. The results indicated that both younger and older children responded in a mediational manner to the perceptual arrangements, suggesting that previous findings regarding lack of verbal mediation in young children should not be generalized to include other modes of mediation. The interfering effect of perceptually emphasizing an irrelevant dimension was stronger for younger children than for older children. Older children were more influenced than the younger children by relevant verbal cues. When relevant verbal cues were pitted against irrelevant perceptual cues, the former dominated with older children, but the latter with younger children. Younger children, however, were not influenced as predicted by relevant perceptual cues nor older children by irrelevant verbal cues . These discrepancies were discussed in terms of the nature of the experimental manipulations. It was tentatively concluded, subject to further verification, that younger children favor perceptual mediation and older children verbal mediation.
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    Stress biomarkers and child development in young children in Bangladesh.
    (Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2024-03) Butzin-Dozier, Zachary; Mertens, Andrew N; Tan, Sophia T; Granger, Douglas A; Pitchik, Helen O; Il'yasova, Dora; Tofail, Fahmida; Rahman, Md Ziaur; Spasojevic, Ivan; Shalev, Idan; Ali, Shahjahan; Karim, Mohammed Rabiul; Shahriar, Sunny; Famida, Syeda Luthfa; Shuman, Gabrielle; Shoab, Abul K; Akther, Salma; Hossen, Md Saheen; Mutsuddi, Palash; Rahman, Mahbubur; Unicomb, Leanne; Das, Kishor K; Yan, Liying; Meyer, Ann; Stewart, Christine P; Hubbard, Alan E; Naved, Ruchira Tabassum; Parvin, Kausar; Mamun, Md Mahfuz Al; Luby, Stephen P; Colford, John M; Fernald, Lia CH; Lin, Audrie

    Background

    Hundreds of millions of children in low- and middle-income countries are exposed to chronic stressors, such as poverty, poor sanitation and hygiene, and sub-optimal nutrition. These stressors can have physiological consequences for children and may ultimately have detrimental effects on child development. This study explores associations between biological measures of chronic stress in early life and developmental outcomes in a large cohort of young children living in rural Bangladesh.

    Methods

    We assessed physiologic measures of stress in the first two years of life using measures of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis (salivary cortisol and glucocorticoid receptor gene methylation), the sympathetic-adrenal-medullary (SAM) system (salivary alpha-amylase, heart rate, and blood pressure), and oxidative status (F2-isoprostanes). We assessed child development in the first two years of life with the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI), the WHO gross motor milestones, and the Extended Ages and Stages Questionnaire (EASQ). We compared development outcomes of children at the 75th and 25th percentiles of stress biomarker distributions while adjusting for potential confounders using generalized additive models, which are statistical models where the outcome is predicted by a potentially non-linear function of predictor variables.

    Results

    We analyzed data from 684 children (49% female) at both 14 and 28 months of age; we included an additional 765 children at 28 months of age. We detected a significant relationship between HPA axis activity and child development, where increased HPA axis activity was associated with poor development outcomes. Specifically, we found that cortisol reactivity (coefficient -0.15, 95% CI (-0.29, -0.01)) and post-stressor levels (coefficient -0.12, 95% CI (-0.24, -0.01)) were associated with CDI comprehension score, post-stressor cortisol was associated with combined EASQ score (coefficient -0.22, 95% CI (-0.41, -0.04), and overall glucocorticoid receptor methylation was associated with CDI expression score (coefficient -0.09, 95% CI (-0.17, -0.01)). We did not detect a significant relationship between SAM activity or oxidative status and child development.

    Conclusions

    Our observations reveal associations between the physiological evidence of stress in the HPA axis with developmental status in early childhood. These findings add to the existing evidence exploring the developmental consequences of early life stress.
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    The ecocultural context and child behavior problems: A qualitative analysis in rural Nepal.
    (Soc Sci Med, 2016-06) Burkey, Matthew D; Ghimire, Lajina; Adhikari, Ramesh Prasad; Wissow, Lawrence S; Jordans, Mark JD; Kohrt, Brandon A
    Commonly used paradigms for studying child psychopathology emphasize individual-level factors and often neglect the role of context in shaping risk and protective factors among children, families, and communities. To address this gap, we evaluated influences of ecocultural contextual factors on definitions, development of, and responses to child behavior problems and examined how contextual knowledge can inform culturally responsive interventions. We drew on Super and Harkness' "developmental niche" framework to evaluate the influences of physical and social settings, childcare customs and practices, and parental ethnotheories on the definitions, development of, and responses to child behavior problems in a community in rural Nepal. Data were collected between February and October 2014 through in-depth interviews with a purposive sampling strategy targeting parents (N = 10), teachers (N = 6), and community leaders (N = 8) familiar with child-rearing. Results were supplemented by focus group discussions with children (N = 9) and teachers (N = 8), pile-sort interviews with mothers (N = 8) of school-aged children, and direct observations in homes, schools, and community spaces. Behavior problems were largely defined in light of parents' socialization goals and role expectations for children. Certain physical settings and times were seen to carry greater risk for problematic behavior when children were unsupervised. Parents and other adults attempted to mitigate behavior problems by supervising them and their social interactions, providing for their physical needs, educating them, and through a shared verbal reminding strategy (samjhaune). The findings of our study illustrate the transactional nature of behavior problem development that involves context-specific goals, roles, and concerns that are likely to affect adults' interpretations and responses to children's behavior. Ultimately, employing a developmental niche framework will elucidate setting-specific risk and protective factors for culturally compelling intervention strategies.
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    The Nurture Effect: Like Father, Like Son. What about for an Adopted Child?
    (2011-04-18) Oh, Suanna
    I investigate the influences of family environment and genes on children’s educational outcomes by working with data on Korean American adoptees and their non-adoptive siblings. I make use of the natural experiment setting where children were quasi-randomly assigned to families. From Sacerdote’s discussion of the three different approaches of analyzing the data, I derive a single-equation model that encompasses the three approaches as a few of its specific cases. The first part of my analysis identifies the causal effect of being assigned to a certain family environment. The second part of my analysis looks into causes of the differences between the educational attainment of adoptees and biological children, adding to the economists’ discussion on the relative importance of nature and nurture.