The strong association of early language skills to later reading ability suggests that supporting the development of these skills in children who enter preschool or kindergarten with below-average ...language abilities may lead to stronger reading skills. Despite this, few evidence-based supplemental language instructional programs exist for school-based implementation. The current study reports on two large-scale randomized trials of combinations of small-group, intensive language-focused instructional component lessons implemented in preschool and kindergarten settings. After screening on two listening comprehension measures, 740 preschool and 870 kindergarten children were randomized to business-as-usual general education or to 18 weeks of instruction that paired two of three possible 9-week component programs. Children were assessed pre- and postinstruction on a battery of proximal, instructionally aligned measures and on standardized language and early literacy measures. Results indicated significant and often sizeable impacts on measures aligned with the content of instruction received. Moderation by order of instructional components and child characteristics provides insight into the overall and specific benefits of early intensive support for language development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)
Young children learn language from their caregivers, family members, and friends. However, with few exceptions, contemporary developmental scientists have studied language input and language learning ...through the lens of the primary caregiver and the nuclear family, rather than the infants’ broader communities. In many communities—and increasingly in the United States—nonnuclear family structures are common, and extended kin, fictive kin, and intergenerational relationships are relied upon for child care. Understanding children’s relationships within kinship networks can allow for more inclusive depictions of children’s social interactions and their language experiences. We drew upon methods used by researchers studying social networks to assess U.S. infants’ and toddlers’ network composition. Results showed that young children with a greater number of close relationships (but not those with larger networks overall) had larger vocabularies, after controlling for age and socioeconomic status. These findings suggest that distributed models of child-rearing are an influential factor in early language growth and call for increased attention to social networks for understanding children’s developmental trajectories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)
Widespread concerns about the quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC), and the desire for better child outcomes, have led to a focus on improving teachers’ professional development (PD) ...as a cost-effective means of improving ECEC quality. However, most randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of PD programs have taken place in areas with advanced educational systems. This study aims to fill this research gap by adapting (both educationally and culturally) an evidence-based PD program entitled “Leadership for Learning” in the Chinese context where there is a paucity of effective PD programs. Ninety-five classrooms, 202 teachers, and 547 children (3–5 years old) from 24 kindergartens (12 control, 12 intervention) participated in this RCT program which was designed to improve teachers’ teaching quality and child development. The results of the multilevel modeling indicated that the intervention was positively predictive of classroom quality and child developmental outcomes in literacy and executive function skills. As one of the first studies exploring PD effectiveness in China, this study has several meaningful implications for PD intervention as well as cross-cultural research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)
Cognitive scientists have become increasingly interested in understanding how natural minds represent and reason about possible ways the world could be. However, there is currently little agreement ...on how to understand this remarkable capacity for modal thought. We argue that the capacity for modal thought is built from a set of relatively simple component parts, centrally involving an ability to consider possible extensions of a part of the actual world. Natural minds can productively combine this ability with a range of other capacities, eventually allowing for the observed suite of increasingly more sophisticated ways of modal reasoning. We demonstrate how our (de)compositional account is supported by both the trajectory of children's developing capacity for reasoning about possible ways the world could be and by what we know about how such modal thought is expressed within and across natural languages. Our approach makes new predictions about which kinds of capacities are required by which kinds of experimental tasks and, as a result, contributes to settling currently open theoretical questions about the development of modal thought and the acquisition of modal vocabulary in children. Our work also provides a more systematic way of understanding possible variation in modal thought and talk, and, more generally, paves the way toward a unified theory that will ultimately allow researchers across disciplines to relate their findings to each other within a framework of shared assumptions.
Natural languages distinguish between telic predicates that denote events leading to an inherent endpoint (e.g., draw a balloon) and atelic predicates that denote events with no inherent endpoint ...(e.g., draw balloons). Telicity distinctions in many languages are already partly available to 4–5-year-olds. Here, using exclusively nonlinguistic tasks and a sample of English-speaking children, we ask whether young learners use corresponding temporal notions to characterize event structure—that is, whether children represent events in cognition as bounded temporal entities with a specified endpoint or unbounded temporal units that could in principle extend indefinitely. We find that 4–5-year-old children in our sample compute boundedness during an event categorization task (Experiment 1) and distinguish event boundedness from event completion (Experiment 2). Furthermore, 4–5-year-olds in our sample evaluate interruptions at event endpoints versus midpoints differently—but only for events that are construed as bounded, presumably because in such construals, events truly culminate (Experiment 3). We conclude that young children represent events in terms of foundational and abstract temporal properties. These properties could support the acquisition of linguistic aspectual distinctions and further scaffold the way children conceptualize and process their dynamic experiences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)
Counterfactual outcomes (i.e., events that did not happen) vary in their closeness to reality. Whereas some are viewed as distant possibilities, others are seen as close, barely unrealized outcomes. ...Here, we investigate whether young children distinguish between two kinds of counterfactual closeness: one based on proximity and the other on ability. In two experiments, 4–7-year-olds (total N = 304) saw stories where two agents lost a race against a competitor. One of the losing racers finished just behind the winner (proximity), whereas the other losing racer was much faster than the winner (ability) but lost after tripping on a stone. When asked which racer almost won the race, children across the full age range predominantly picked the racer who finished in second place, close behind the winner. However, when asked which racer easily could have won and when asked which racer should have won, children at older ages picked the fastest racer. Together, these findings show that children’s understanding of proximity-based closeness is already present at Age 4, earlier than children were previously thought to grasp counterfactual closeness. Moreover, the findings suggest young children have differentiated concepts of counterfactual closeness and do not conflate the two kinds of closeness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)
Parent-child coregulation, thought to support children's burgeoning regulatory capacities, is the process by which parents and their children regulate one another through their goal-oriented behavior ...and expressed affect. Two particular coregulation patterns-dyadic contingency and dyadic flexibility-appear beneficial in early childhood, but their role in the typical development of self-regulation is not yet clear. The present study examined whether dynamic parent-child patterns of dyadic contingency and dyadic flexibility in both affect and goal-oriented behavior (e.g., discipline, compliance) predicted multiple components of preschoolers' self-regulation. Mother-child dyads (N = 100) completed structured and unstructured dyadic tasks in the laboratory at age 3, and mothers completed child self-regulation measures at age 4. Findings showed that more flexible and contingent affective parent-child processes, as long as the affective content was primarily positive or neutral, predicted higher levels of self-regulation in early childhood. However, when dyads engaged in more negative affective and behavioral content, higher levels of affective and behavioral contingency and behavioral flexibility predicted lower levels of child self-regulation. Findings suggest parent-child coregulation processes play a meaningful role in children's typical regulatory development and that parent-child coregulation patterns can be potentially adaptive or maladaptive for child outcomes depending on the content of the interaction.
We leveraged nationally representative data from the Panel study of Income Dynamics-Child Development Supplement (N = 3,562) and the Early Childhood Longitudinal study (N = 18,174), to chart the ...development of working memory, indexed via verbal forward and backward digit span task performance, from 3 to 19 years of age. Results revealed nonlinear growth patterns for forward and backward digit span tasks, with the most rapid growth occurring during childhood followed by a brief accelerated period of growth during early adolescence. We also found similar developmental trajectories on digit span task performance for males and females across the U.S. population. Together, this study highlights the relative importance of the childhood period for working memory development and provides researchers with a reference against which to compare the developmental changes of working memory in individual studies. From a practical perspective, clinicians and educators can also use this information to understand important periods of working memory growth using national developmental trends.
Early childhood education (ECE) programs have been shown to produce immediate positive impacts on children's cognitive abilities, academic knowledge, and social-emotional skills. However, some ...research suggests that impacts may be modest and short-lived. That is, even though ECE enables participating children to begin kindergarten with greater skills on average compared with their peers, the skills of ECE attendees and nonattendees appear to converge as children progress through school. Thus, any initial differences between these groups observed at school entry are reduced or eliminated over time, a phenomenon that has been described as "fade-out," "catch-up," or both. This systematic review assesses our current understanding of the conditions under which ECE impacts persist or fade over time, which is critical because of the potential intervention and policy implications. Recent work has begun to make progress in this direction, but future efforts that address the present gaps and limitations of the field are needed in order to maximize the long-term impacts of the next generation of ECE programs.
Public Significance Statement
This systematic review examines when and why the impacts of early childhood education programs fade or attenuate over time. Specific mechanisms and moderators of persistent impacts are identified, and directions for future research that can shape practice and policy are discussed.
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