Parental ethnotheories delineate culturally shared beliefs about the nature of children and normative parenting in a particular cultural niche. Using a sequential mixed-methods design, we assessed parental ethnotheories in a non-White, educated, industrialized, rich, and developed cultural context of Türkiye and developed a parental beliefs scale (PBS) with a culturally informed emic approach in two studies. Study 1 relied on semistructured interviews with 125 Turkish parents (79 mothers, 46 fathers) to better understand parents' beliefs on the child's nature and proper parenting with particular attention to the key demographic characteristics reflecting intracultural diversity. This qualitative inquiry informed the generation of items for a PBS about the nature of children and parenting. In Study 2, we investigated the factor structure, measurement invariance, and the predictive power of the PBS on parenting behaviors with a nationally representative sample of 1,397 parents (796 mothers, 601 fathers) of children aged 3-17 years. Factor analysis revealed three factors representing constraining beliefs, autonomy-enabling beliefs, and beliefs in the malleability of the child. Structural and measurement invariance analyses partially supported the equivalence of the three-factor structure across parent and child gender and child age groups. Regression analyses indicated that constraining beliefs strongly and positively predicted psychological control and punitive behaviors. Autonomy-enabling beliefs predicted positive parenting, while malleability beliefs primarily predicted sociocultural control. Parent education and socioeconomic status moderated the effects of parental beliefs on parenting behaviors. The results were discussed based on parents' gender and socioeconomic status within a developing country, exemplifying a culturally informed assessment approach for the majority world. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

As local spatial cues, angle and length information are known to be effective cues for relocation in adults, yet young children often struggle with using such information. We propose that the previously found late utilization of local geometric cues might be partly attributed to the testing environments, where connected enclosures provided immediate access to its global shape. Here, we investigated at what age children acquire the ability to relocate using local angle and length information in fragmented arrays, without available global shape, and whether children represent such information for relocation in enclosures. We found that both 3-year-olds (Experiment 1: = 29, 15 girls; Experiment 2: = 28, 13 girls) and 4-year-olds (Experiment 1: = 28, 14 girls; Experiment 2: = 29, 15 girls) successfully relocated using angle or length information in fragmented arrays, where these local cues were the only available cues. However, only 4-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds represented angle or length information for relocation in an enclosure offering both global shape and local geometric information. Importantly, 3-year-olds' failure in enclosures could not be attributed to their inability to perceive and represent such information itself. Instead, it may be that young children fail to spontaneously represent local geometric information in enclosures, and that young children face greater cognitive demands on mental segmentation when processing angle and length information in enclosures where global shape is prominent. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The family stress model outlines that parents' economic pressure can lead to a cascade of family stress processes, which in turn can lead to child internalizing and externalizing behavior. In the current preregistered study, we investigated to what extent the relation between prenatal economic pressure and child internalizing and externalizing behavior at child age 6 can be explained through the sequential mediating processes of parents' psychological distress and harsh parenting at child age 3. In our models, we accounted for the influence of both mothers and fathers. We also tested the moderating role of social support at child age 6 months on two specific paths within the family stress model. We conducted (moderated) multiple mediator models on multi-informant, longitudinal data from 2,705 families enrolled in the Generation R Study, a large prospective birth cohort in the Netherlands. After accounting for mothers' economic pressure and family stress processes, only fathers' economic pressure was indirectly and positively associated with child externalizing, but not internalizing behavior, through higher levels of paternal psychological distress and paternal harsh parenting. We did not find support for the moderating role of social support in the pathways we examined within the family stress model. Our findings highlight the potential cascading influence of fathers' prenatal economic pressure, through increased family stress processes, on child externalizing behavior in early childhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The high occurrence of social content in children's fiction may provide opportunities for practicing and refining emerging understanding of others' thoughts, feelings, and desires, referred to as "theory of mind" (ToM). The aim of the present study was to test this potential developmental benefit by longitudinally examining ToM development in middle childhood and adolescence, as well as examining associations between children's reading experience and ToM. Reading experience and ToM were assessed in 234 children at five time points between ages 12.5 and 16 (56% girls). Of this sample, 16% of children were eligible for free school meals, and 9% spoke English as additional language. To examine longitudinal associations between ToM and reading experience, we tested development and stability over time and tested cross-lagged associations between these constructs. Results showed that there was meaningful improvement in ToM in this age range, but no significant variance in growth trajectories. Our data also showed rank-order stability in individual differences in ToM, suggesting that variation in theory-of-mind performance is genuine. There were bidirectional associations between ToM and reading experience, but these effects disappeared after controlling for verbal ability, gender, and parent education. Future research should include more direct tests of potential underlying mechanisms of the benefits of narrative exposure for our understanding of others. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Although it is developmentally appropriate for preschoolers to be highly active, this physical activity level can be difficult for parents to manage at mealtime when children are asked to sit and focus on eating. We examined how children's physical activity levels across the week related to parents' feeding coparenting efforts and how parent feeding pressure and prompts to change the child's activity mediated these associations. From a sample of 100 families with a preschool-age child (3-5 years, 49% female, 59% White, 12% Black, 10% Hispanic, 26% low-income), home dinners with mothers and fathers present were recorded in 65 families for seven consecutive days (455 total meals observed). Coders rated meals for children's activity level and parents' prompts for activity change, pressuring feeding behaviors, and feeding coparenting support, undermining, and balance. Multilevel structural equation models tested direct and indirect associations at within-person and between-person levels. On days children were more active than usual, parents engaged in more supportive feeding coparenting and used more prompts for children's activity change. Fathers' increased prompts for activity change explained associations between child activity level and supportive feeding coparenting. Although fathers' feeding pressure related to more supportive and balanced feeding coparenting, it was not predicted by child activity level and, thus, did not mediate associations between child activity and feeding coparenting. At the between-person level, children who were more physically active had parents who engaged in more undermining feeding coparenting. Results are discussed in terms of the consistency of children's physical activity and fathers' feeding engagement. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The acquisition of mental language understanding is crucial for social-cognitive development. While there is evidence for the production of epistemic terms in the third year of life, the comprehension of different degrees of speaker (un-)certainty has not yet been systematically investigated at this age. In the present longitudinal study, we developed an eye-tracking task and measured preferential looking as an indicator of an implicit understanding of the epistemic verbs "know" and "think" in toddlers twice at the ages of 27 ( = 199) and 36 months ( = 131). Toddlers were faced with two agents who indicated the location of a hidden object (right vs. left box), with a narrator attributing contrasting degrees of certainty to their statements ("know" vs. "think") before asking the toddlers about the object's location. We measured the extent to which children fixated the box associated with the agent described as knowing the target's location. At both 27 and 36 months of age, we observed systematic differences in their looking behavior toward this box across the trial. Children appeared to display a spontaneous preference for the box associated with the agent who knew the target's location, relative to the agent who only thought the target was in their box in the prequestioning phase. Subsequently, their preference switched in the postquestioning phase; however, this effect was smaller. These results indicate that toddlers in their third year of life distinguish different degrees of speaker (un-)certainty, expressed by the verbs "know" and "think." (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Arithmetic skills are needed at any age. In everyday life, children to older adults calculate and deal with numbers. The processes underlying arithmetic seem to change with age. From childhood to younger adulthood, children get better in domain-specific numerical skills such as place-value processing. From younger to older adulthood, domain-general cognitive skills such as working memory decline. These skills are needed for complex arithmetic such as addition with carrying and subtraction with borrowing. This study investigates how the domain-specific (number magnitude, place-value processing) and domain-general (working memory, processing speed, inhibition) processes of arithmetic change across the lifespan. Thereby, arithmetic effects (carry and borrow effects), numerical effects (distance and compatibility effects), and cognitive skills were assessed in children, younger and older adolescents, and younger, middle-aged and older adults. The results showed that numerical and arithmetic skills improve from childhood to young adulthood and remain relatively stable throughout adulthood, even though domain-general processes, particularly working memory and processing speed, decline with age. While number magnitude and place-value processing both develop until adulthood, number magnitude processing shows deficits during aging, whereas place-value processing remains intact even in old age. The carry effect shifts from a categorical all-or-none decision (whether or not a carry operation is needed) to a more continuous magnitude process in adulthood, reflecting increasing reliance on domain-specific skills. In contrast, the borrow effect remains largely categorical across all age groups, depending on general cognitive processes. These results provide critical insights into how arithmetic skills change over the lifespan, relying on both domain-specific and domain-general processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Extensive research on the Family Stress Model demonstrated the negative indirect impacts of parental cultural stress on adolescents' mental health via disrupted parenting. However, limited attention has been paid to testing how adolescents' cultural stress could affect parents' mental health through adolescent-reported parenting. According to Family Systems Theory, the family serves as an interdependent system, suggesting that adolescents' cultural stress can spill over and negatively influence parenting and their parents' mental health. Furthermore, prior studies have largely neglected the bidirectional link between parenting and mental health within the Family Stress Model. Thus, this study examined the associations among cultural stress, parenting (i.e., maternal warmth and hostility), and their mental health (i.e., anxiety and depressive symptoms) in mother-adolescent dyads across two waves. Participants included 595 mothers ( = 38) and adolescents (54% female, = 12) as dyads. The actor-effect results revealed that Mexican-origin mothers' and adolescents' cultural stress at Wave 1 (W1) were related to their own mental health at Wave 2 (W2) via their self-reported parenting at W1. Moreover, mothers' and adolescents' cultural stress at W1 were associated with their self-reported parenting at W2 through their self-reported mental health at W1. Partner-effect results indicated that mothers with higher levels of cultural stress at W1 were likely to report anxiety at W1, which may in turn influence adolescents' perceptions of more maternal hostility at W2. This study provides implications for family-based intervention programs that aim to both foster parenting and promote mental health outcomes in Mexican-origin mothers and their adolescents. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Parent mental state talk (MST) is an important contributor for children's theory-of-mind development, with cognitive MST for Western children being more advanced, often being used with older children relative to talk about desires or emotions. We investigated the contexts in which cognitive MST is most prevalent, as well as the conditions that prompted mothers to provide scaffolding of MST with toddlers. We tested 89 mother-toddler dyads, examining mothers' MST and non-MST with familiar and unfamiliar children during a Picture Describing Task. Of particular interest was whether the age of the toddler, the toddler's preestablished mental state (MS) or non-MS vocabulary, spontaneous conversation dynamics, or the familiarity of the child influenced the mothers' MST. We found that mothers used significantly more cognitive talk in interactions with their own child than with an unfamiliar child. These findings persisted even after covarying out the child's age and MT vocabulary, as well as the mother's MST and non-MST during the picture task. We argue that mothers possessed a better understanding of their own child's MS vocabulary because of their rich relationship history, which resulted in greater use of more advanced cognitive MS discourse with the child. Further, our cross-lagged correlational analysis examining the first half and second half of the Picture Describing Task demonstrated that more child MS talk cued mothers to use more advanced cognitive talk. Overall, the findings of the present study underscore the importance of a relationship history between adults and children for the sensitive scaffolding of children's MT understanding. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Moving is a common experience for U.S. families and may negatively affect the mental health of both parents and children. In this study, we examined how residential mobility is associated with changes in mental health over time among mothers and children in the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (previously "Fragile Families") from the child's birth to age 15. Using path analyses, we found that moving frequently when children were young was associated with greater depression among mothers when their children were 5, which, in turn, was associated with maternal and child mental health outcomes in the middle childhood and adolescent periods. That is, maternal depression acted as a pathway through which early residential mobility was associated with both maternal and child outcomes over time. This study highlights the complex interplay between residential mobility and maternal and child mental health and the critical role of maternal depression. Results underscore the need to support mothers who move frequently to support their own and their children's mental health in the years to follow. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

During elementary school, children demonstrate significant growth in an array of cognitive skills, including their ability to use deliberate strategies for remembering. Despite a rich literature documenting age-related changes in these skills (Schneider & Ornstein, 2019), much remains to be learned about contextual factors that support the development of strategic memory. Data from a longitudinal investigation were used to examine the role of kindergarten teachers' instructional language in the growth of children's abilities related to the use of meaning-based sorting in the service of memory goals. A sample of 76 kindergarteners from 10 classrooms was followed across 2 school years. Kindergarten teachers were observed for their use of cognitive processing language (CPL; Ornstein & Coffman, 2020) while they taught mathematics and language arts lessons. CPL is thought to help children process information deeply, reflect on their own cognition, and acquire strategies for remembering. The participating teachers were characterized as being higher or lower in the use of CPL, and multilevel models were used to examine children's growth in sorting across kindergarten and first grade. Despite similar baseline performance, children exposed to higher levels of CPL engaged in more strategic sorting at the end of first grade than peers exposed to less CPL in kindergarten. Moreover, children in high-CPL classrooms demonstrated faster rates of change in sorting than children in low-CPL classrooms, controlling for working memory skills and parental education. These findings highlight links between the instructional language to which children are exposed in kindergarten and their growth in organizational sorting. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The spread of digital communication around the globe has raised questions about the nature of digitally mediated cultural identity and how worldviews are constructed in the context of permeable and dynamic communities less tethered to physical geography. To expand research on the impacts of digital communication on cultural identity development among adolescents in the Majority World, the present study compared the worldviews of indigenous Maya adolescents before and after the Internet and mobile devices became widely used in their community. Adolescents were interviewed in 2009 ( = 80; 40 girls, = 16.94) and in 2018 ( = 79; 44 girls, = 15.91) using eight vignettes that were developed from ethnographic work in the community and designed to elicit participants' cultural beliefs and values. In each story, one character articulates a traditional, collectivistic worldview, and another articulates a Western, individualistic worldview present in the community. Participants were asked who they agreed with and why, and responses were analyzed quantitatively (pattern of character endorsements) and qualitatively (frameworks of meaning). Analysis of covariance showed no differences in character endorsements across the two cohorts. Schooling, not the use of mobile devices or social media, uniquely predicted alignment with individualistic characters in regression analyses. Although individualistic values did not increase, qualitative analyses of frameworks of meaning showed that adolescents in the two cohorts differed in how they integrated individualistic and collectivistic perspectives. The study demonstrates the importance of locally relevant mixed methods for understanding changes in the contents of cultural identity over historical time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Growing evidence suggests that infant attention may predict subsequent cognitive outcomes. However, prior studies have predominantly tested small samples of infants in tightly controlled laboratory settings that differ from the complex, visually rich environments that infants experience in their day-to-day lives. The present study addresses this gap by measuring infant sustained attention in the home using novel remote webcam eye tracking methodology. A large, demographically diverse sample of 3- to 12-month-old infants ( = 160; 49% = female; 65% from low- to extremely low-income households; 48% White, 18% Black, 16% Hispanic/Latine, 9% more than one race, 5% Asian, and 4% other) were recruited across the United States. Infants were remotely administered a free-viewing video task previously validated in lab-based studies, and infant look durations and gaze shifts were measured using remote webcam eye tracking. Our results revealed expected age-related changes in infant look durations and no effects of family demographics on variations in infant attention. Notably, we also found that variation in infant attention predicted emerging executive functions in a subset of infants ( = 78) who participated in a subsequent longitudinal assessment using the Early Executive Functions Questionnaire. This research adds to a growing literature validating the use of at-home remote assessments for objective measurement of infant cognition. This is a notable step toward advancing ecological validity and accessibility of developmental psychology studies in diverse samples. Ultimately, these findings may have important implications for characterizing normative developmental trajectories and for understanding how early sociocultural contexts shape these trajectories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

This study explores the directionality of the associations between silent reading fluency and arithmetic fluency development from Grade 1 through Grade 9 (ages 7 to 16) in a large Finnish sample of 2,518 participants. Participants' silent reading and arithmetic fluency skills were assessed at seven time points across Grades 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 9. A random intercept cross-lagged panel model was employed to distinguish between between-person and within-person associations. The model revealed a strong positive correlation between reading and arithmetic fluency at the between-person level, suggesting that individuals proficient in one domain typically excel in the other as well. At the within-person level, significant developmental associations emerged predominantly during the early acquisition phase (Grades 1-3). Between Grades 1 and 2, we identified positive bidirectional effects between reading and arithmetic fluency, indicating that variations in one skill predict variations in the other at a subsequent time point. From Grades 2 to 3, a positive unidirectional path from reading to arithmetic was identified, suggesting that variations in silent reading fluency predict subsequent variations in arithmetic fluency. After Grade 3, no significant cross-lagged paths were identified. These findings highlight the dynamic interplay between reading and arithmetic fluency at different stages of development and that factors influencing time-specific changes in reading and math are more similar during the early phases of schooling and skill development than in later stages. The early bidirectional relationship suggests that fostering reading skills may support arithmetic development and vice versa, particularly in early grades. This suggests that it may be useful to target both domains in the early interventions with children having problems in reading or math to enhance overall academic performance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Positive youth development (PYD) has gained considerable traction among developmental scientists, but past studies were generally conducted among youth samples from Minority World countries. This study investigated the factorial validity of the newly developed 7Cs model of PYD (competence, confidence, connection, character, caring, contribution, and creativity). Specifically, we compared four measurement models (one-factor, seven-factor, higher order, and bifactor) among emerging adults living in five Southeast Asian countries. The study also aimed to establish evidence of measurement invariance across gender, age, education, and country of origin. Criterion-related validity was also sought using COVID-19 socially responsive behaviors and anxiety. Controlling for the influence of gender, age, and education, sample-level comparisons were also performed on the 7Cs. Data came from 1,888 emerging adults ( = 24.10; = 6.89) from Indonesia ( = 253), Malaysia ( = 289), the Philippines ( = 496), Singapore ( = 306), and Thailand ( = 544) during the pandemic. The results supported the superiority of the seven-factor model, which exhibited strict invariance across gender, age, and education and partial scalar invariance across country of origin. The 7Cs exhibited mixed associations with the pandemic-related measures. Significant differences were found in the 7Cs across the five countries. The study provides additional evidence on the theoretical validity of the 7Cs model among youth from understudied settings, while also highlighting avenues for refining current PYD measures. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

By 18-24 months of age, infants whose caregivers talk to them more tend to recognize and comprehend common words relatively quickly and accurately. In turn, real-time language comprehension skill at this age is linked to language development later in childhood. Critically, infants begin to comprehend common words as early as 6-9 months of age, but it is unclear whether the origins of lexical comprehension skill are likewise influenced by hearing child-directed speech. Instead, ambient speech, including caregiver speech that is overheard by infants rather than directed to them, may play strong supportive role in very early language development. Thus, we tested how aspects of the home language environment (HLE) are related to performance on a lexical recognition task in 9-month-old American-English learning infants ( = 38). In our sample, 94.9% of infant participants were Caucasian, 8% Hispanic, 7.7% American Indian/Alaskan Native, and 5.1% Black. Families used the Language Environment Analysis (LENA) system to make audio recordings of the HLE across 2 days. We used LENA-generated measures, as well as measures of child-directed and overheard speech calculated from 2 hr of transcribed recordings, to determine which aspects of the HLE are related to lexical recognition. We found that LENA measures of the total amount of speech infants heard, and of their participation in conversational exchanges, predicted lexical recognition. However, hand-transcribed measures of child-directed speech were not related to lexical recognition. These results suggest that adult speech and speech heard within vocal interactions are important to early-emerging language comprehension abilities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The current research examined whether telling young children about an adult's emotional reactions to their future honesty or dishonesty influences their cheating. In five preregistered studies, children aged 3-6 years participated in a challenging test, purportedly to assess their knowledge but actually to measure their honesty ( = 480; 240 boys; all middle-class Han Chinese). Telling 5- to 6-year-olds about a familiar adult's negative emotional reactions to their future dishonesty significantly reduced subsequent cheating, regardless of whether the adult was their homeroom teacher or their mother. Telling 3- to 4-year-olds about their mother's positive reactions to honesty or her negative reactions to dishonesty also reduced cheating. Thus, providing information about a familiar adult's emotional reactions can effectively promote honest behavior among young children. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Parental racial socialization has promotive and protective effects on children's development as they navigate their racialized worlds. Few studies have focused on how Asian American parents navigate conversations about race and racism with their children during middle childhood and early adolescence, even though children during this period are making sense of race-related topics and their racial-ethnic identities. The present study qualitatively explored Asian American parents' racial socialization motivations and beliefs. Semistructured interviews were conducted with a diverse sample of 68 Asian American parents ( = 43.4 years, = 5.0; 78% mothers) with children between the ages of 6 and 12, residing across the United States. About two thirds of the parents were second generation and one third were first generation. Data were coded and thematically analyzed using a hybrid inductive-deductive approach. The results indicated that many parents were motivated to engage in conversations about race and racism with their children because they believed knowledge of racism and the ability to cope with and respond to racial discrimination would benefit their children's development. However, some parents reported waiting to have such conversations because they believed talking about race and racism with their children would be detrimental to their children's well-being. Qualitative differences by generational status and family racial-ethnic makeup (i.e., monoracial, multiracial) suggest that parents' racial socialization decisions are reflective of their acculturation experiences and that racial socialization engagement among parents of multiracial children is sometimes dependent on their children's racialized experiences. Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Knowing what you know is a significant part of learning and a component of many learning theories. In this work, we explored 3.5-year-old's metacognition of word learning to understand children's confidence over recently learned novel words and explore the experimental conditions in which young children can show metacognitive abilities. After novel words were taught, children were asked about the meaning of words two times. Prior to asking the second time, an opportunity to seek help was offered so that the second word meaning inquiry could be modified. We coded the amount of time children took to select the referent during the first time they were asked the question and examined the relationship between the accuracy of their first-time referent selection and the subsequent help seeking. When children made an incorrect response, they were slower and were more likely to ask for help compared with when children made a correct response. Thus, even though children at this age are not able to report their own learning explicitly, the information-seeking measure showed that they were sensitive to their metacognitive states. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of the development of metacognition and for word learning mechanisms in general. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Having a robust understanding of viruses is critical for children to understand the COVID-19 pandemic and the protective measures recommended to promote their safety. However, viral transmission is not part of current educational standards in the United States, so children likely must learn about it through informal means, such as media and conversations with caregivers-contexts that often animate and anthropomorphize viruses. In this registered report, we developed an at-home educational intervention to teach children about viruses by creating a picture storybook about COVID-19. We tested children ages 5-8 on their understanding of viruses before and after reading the book at home with their caregivers. Critically, we manipulated which of three books children received: realistic (that detailed the microscopic processes involved in COVID-19 transmission), anthropomorphic (that depicted all the same information but using anthropomorphic language and images for COVID-19), or control (that only showed the visible aspects of illness). Bayesian analyses revealed that children learned about COVID-19 by reading the picture books with their parents at home and extended this knowledge to other viruses and that learning was substantially higher for those reading the realistic and anthropomorphic books than the control books. We also found that learning did not differ as a function of whether the book used anthropomorphic depictions or not although children reading the anthropomorphic book reported being less afraid of viruses. Altogether, these results demonstrate that carefully constructed picture books can help children learn about complex scientific topics at home. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

This article describes the adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) for South Africa's 11 official spoken languages. The CDI is a parent-report tool that measures early language development from 8 to 30 months. We developed cross-linguistically comparable CDIs, representing two distinct language families, West Germanic and southern Bantu, using a common protocol. We describe our approach to item construction and harmonization across languages and to obtaining sociodemographic information in different cultural settings. Issues such as language contact and variation, sampling, data collection, and quality control are discussed as well as item selection and instrument reliability and validity. This study highlights key issues for CDI adaptations and other instrument development in understudied contexts and discusses the theoretical implications of adding this diverse set of cross-linguistically comparable languages for early child language research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

This research examined 3- to 6-year-old's prosocial responses to an unfamiliar experimenter demonstrating diverse needs (instrumental, material, and emotional) in structured tasks across two distinct cultural contexts (urban Canada/Canadian vs. rural Mexico/Tzotzil Maya). Two hundred eighty participants were recruited from preschools in Zinacantán, Mexico (100% Tzotzil Maya), and Montréal, Canada (70% European descent). We compared responses to instrumental, material, and emotional needs across experimental (need present) and control (need absent) conditions. In both cultural contexts, prosociality was responsive to need. However, Canadian children were more likely to respond prosocially than the Tzotzil Maya children across all three needs. In addition, consistent with past research, we found that prosocial responses increased with age. Across the two cultural contexts, we observed both similarities (e.g., the relative frequency of responding to the various needs) and differences (e.g., the effect of task on prosocial responding to instrumental and emotional needs). Taken together, these results highlight the importance of considering the nuanced role of culture in the development of diverse prosocial behaviors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Real-time affective dynamics surrounding everyday conflicts are central to the quality of relationships between mothers and their socioemotionally maturing adolescents. In this longitudinal study, we examined whether dyadic affective flexibility in early adolescence predicted trajectories of mother-adolescent relationship closeness and conflicts over time. We focused on flexibility not only in dyads' emotional fluctuations conflict interactions (i.e., flexibility) but also in the repair of their affective patterns conflict interactions (i.e., flexibility). At Wave 1, 201 adolescents (11-12 years old, 46.3% girls) and mothers (87.5% Caucasian) completed two consecutive discussions about everyday conflicts and happy memories, respectively. Dynamic flexibility was derived from second-by-second affect coding via state space grids, and reactive flexibility was assessed as the latent change in dynamic flexibility across discussions. Annually for 5 years, including periods during the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., Waves 3-5), mothers reported feelings of closeness with the adolescents, and both dyad members identified and rated the intensity of conflicts with each other. Results revealed that greater dynamic and reactive flexibility predicted greater and increasing closeness particularly from early to mid-adolescence. Greater dynamic and reactive flexibility were also associated with less intense and less diverse conflicts overall but not developmental changes in conflicts. These findings have implications beyond the immediate dyadic interactions around conflicts, suggesting that real-time flexibility within the mother-adolescent emotional system may serve as a resilience factor that buffers against the strains of relationship adjustment during adolescence at a longer timescale. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Based on a representative sample of 196 Chinese children (101 girls; ages 5-9) and their parents, this study examined the longitudinal relations of early home numeracy activities, measured in preschool in 2015, with children's math skills in third grade in 2019. The results showed that the frequency of number book activities predicted children's third-grade nonsymbolic math skills and that the frequency of number application activities was predictive of third-grade symbolic math skills. More importantly, these relations persisted even after controlling for preschool number skills, the other types of numeracy activities, parenting styles, and demographic variables. The findings highlight the potential role of enhancing early number book and application activities at home in engendering long-lasting effects on children's math development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Innovation in children is typically studied by examining their capacity to independently create tools to solve problems. However, it has been argued that innovating requires more than creative problem-solving; it is essential that the future utility of a solution is recognized. Here, we examined children's capacity to recognize and construct a tool for future uses. Experiment 1 presented fifty-five 3- to 5-year-olds (28 girls) with a future-directed variation of a task in which children had to make a hook to solve a problem. When given a tool construction opportunity in anticipation of returning to the task, only 5-year-olds chose to make a hook-shaped tool more often than expected by chance. Experiment 2a assessed ninety-two 3- to 7-year-olds' (48 girls) capacity to construct a tool with both present and future utility in mind. Specifically, they needed to make a tool long enough to not only poke a ball from a short tube in the present but also poke a ball from a longer tube in the future. Older children tended to construct longer tools and were more likely to do so in this situation than in a follow-up control study (2b, = 89, 41 girls) where the future- and present-task tubes were identical. This pattern suggests that older children had the future task in mind when making their tools. Children's propensity to construct longer tools in Experiment 2a was associated with their capacity to prepare for two alternative possibilities on a secondary task, suggesting performance reflects emerging future-oriented cognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

We examined an understudied aspect of children's pedagogical cognition and investigated whether children selectively transmit objective information. In three experiments ( = 168), 5- and 6-year-olds were asked to distinguish between objective and subjective statements (Experiment 1) and to choose objective or subjective information to pass on to others (Experiments 2 and 3). Children of both ages distinguished between the two types of statements, = 19.1, and preferentially transmitted more objective than subjective information when asked to teach, = 5.06. A control condition, in which participants were asked to share information with a peer, found that 5- and 6-year-olds also favored sharing objective information in a nonpedagogical context, = 1.96. Critically, children taught more objective information when placed in a pedagogical stance compared to a conversational context, = 2.31. These findings contribute to the growing body of work suggesting that children recognize teaching as a unique communicative mechanism, one that calls for the propagation of objective information, not subjective opinion. Our study furthers the understanding of how young children's pedagogical knowledge and competence develop. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

This study examined children's emotion situation knowledge and social problem-solving abilities as mediators in the prospective link between constructive interparental conflict (IPC) and children's psychological adjustment in a sample of 238 preschool children ( = 4.38 years; 52% female children; 28% Black; 14% multiracial or other race; 16% Latinx) and their mothers. The methodological approach consisted of multiple methods and informants in a longitudinal design with three annual measurement occasions (i.e., preschool, kindergarten, first grade). Results of the path analysis indicated that Wave 1 constructive IPC predicted residualized increases in children's emotion situation knowledge and social problem solving at Wave 2 with the inclusion of hostile IPC, demographic factors, and prior child characteristics (i.e., child age, race, internalizing and externalizing symptoms, social competence) as simultaneous predictors. In turn, children's emotion situation knowledge at Wave 2 predicted residualized decreases in their internalizing and externalizing symptoms at Wave 3. Wave 2 social problem solving also predicted residualized increases in their social competence at Wave 3. Results are discussed in the context of how they advance developmental models of constructive family conflict. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

As part of the developmental stage of emerging adulthood, youth may cultivate critical consciousness (CC) to transform oppressive systems. CC development may be influenced by discriminatory experiences and may affect well-being. To better understand longitudinal CC development and its relationship to discrimination and well-being (i.e., perceived stress, anxiety, hopefulness), we studied a U.S. national longitudinal cohort of emerging adult college students between the ages of 18 and 22 at baseline ( = 20.0, = 1.3) who completed four surveys between April 2020 and July 2021 ( = 684). The analytic sample was 63% women and 37% men (gender-diverse participants were removed due to small sample size) and 26% lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer/questioning, and other minoritized sexual identities. Self-identified race/ethnicity backgrounds were 54% white, 20% Asian/Pacific Islander, 9% Latinx, 5% Black, and 10% multiple races/ethnicities and/or as Middle Eastern/North African. We conducted latent profile transition analysis and identified five patterns of CC development, with a minority of participants in two "growth" transition patterns wherein they increased their CC over time. Maintaining higher levels of CC, and especially developing CC, was associated with more prior experiences with discrimination and with concurrent and subsequent higher levels of perceived stress and anxiety. We recommend institutions of higher education and college-based organizations to build well-being practices and structures into CC-raising spaces to support empowering CC development amid ongoing sociopolitical turmoil. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

In an attempt to better characterize the complexity of difficulties observed within developing populations, numerous data-driven techniques have been applied to large mixed data sets. However, many have failed to incorporate the core role of developmental time in these approaches, that is, the typical course of change in behavioral features that occurs over childhood to adolescence. In this study, we utilized manifold projections alongside a gradient-boosting model on data collected from the Millennium Cohort Study to unpack the central role of developmental time in how behavioral difficulties transition between the ages of 5, 11, and 17. Our analysis highlights numerous observations: (a) Girls develop relatively greater internalized behavioral problems during adolescence; (b) in the case of a chaotic home environment, co-occurring internalizing and externalizing difficulties tend to persist during childhood; (c) peer problems were the most likely to persist over the whole 12-year period (especially in the presence of early maternal depression and poor family relationships); and (d) there were two pathways with distinct risk factors leading to antisocial behaviors in adolescence-an early-childhood onset pathway and later adolescent onset pathway. Our findings provide evidence that investigations of child and adolescent difficulties must be open to the possibility of multiple subgroups and variability in trajectory over time. We further highlight the crucial role of family and social support and school experience-related factors in predicting children's outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Parents and adolescents often hold concordant and discordant views on parenting behaviors. Scant research has explored short-term within-family dynamics of parent-adolescent congruency and discrepancy on parental positive reinforcement on a micro timescale. Adopting a month-long daily diary design, we examined the convergence and divergence among 86 dyads of adolescents ( = 14.5 years, 55% female, 45% non-White) and one of their parents ( = 43.7 years, 72% female, 38% non-White) on their perceived daily parental positive reinforcement behaviors and the links to adolescents' daily emotional, hyperactivity, and conduct problems. Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling revealed both convergence and divergence at the within-family level. At the between-family level, however, there was minimal evidence for parent-adolescent convergence. Within-families, parent divergence was positively and reciprocally linked with adolescent emotional problems prospectively. Parent divergence was also associated with fewer adolescent hyperactivity problems the next day. More adolescent hyperactivity problems were negatively linked to parent-adolescent convergence the next day. The findings unveiled distinct structure of, and associations with parent-adolescent convergence and divergence on parental positive reinforcement behaviors, which highlights the importance of disentangling short-term within-family fluctuations from stable between-family differences at different levels. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).