Children who experience early and extensive child care, especially center-based care, are rated by teachers as having more externalizing behavior problems than are other children. This association is ...reduced, but not eliminated, when care is of high quality, and it varies by socioeconomic disadvantage and the type of behavior assessed. We examine the processes that may account for the quantity effect, concluding that it occurs primarily among relatively advantaged White non-Hispanic families. It appears primarily for teacher-rated behavior, especially externalizing and low self-control, but is not evident for positive behavior and peer interaction skills. Some of the processes accounting for the relation of quantity to behavior are most likely to be poor caregiver-child relationships and negative peer interactions, not reduced attachment to mothers or lowered maternal sensitivity. Many questions remain about duration of effects, developmental and individual differences, more nuanced conceptualizations of both care quality and social behavior, and variations across cultural and ethnic groups.
Low family socioeconomic position is a net of related conditions-low income, material deprivation, single-parent family structure, low educational level, minority ethnic group membership, and ...immigrant status. According to ecological theory, proximal contexts experienced by children, including family, material resources, out-of-school experiences, schools, neighborhoods, and peers, are mediators of poverty effects. Developmental timing of exposure to poverty conditions and the processes by which effects occur differ for cognitive and social domains of development. Understanding how contexts combine and interact is as important as understanding their independent influences. Effects may be cumulative, but advantages in one context can also ameliorate disadvantages in others. Although research is typically based on unidirectional causal models, the relations between the developing child and the contexts he or she experiences are reciprocal and transactional. Finally, although income inequality has increased greatly, little is known about the influences of relative poverty and social inequality on human development.
School Readiness and Later Achievement Duncan, Greg J; Dowsett, Chantelle J; Claessens, Amy ...
Developmental psychology,
11/2007, Letnik:
43, Številka:
6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Using 6 longitudinal data sets, the authors estimate links between three key elements of school readiness-school-entry academic, attention, and socioemotional skills-and later school reading and math ...achievement. In an effort to isolate the effects of these school-entry skills, the authors ensured that most of their regression models control for cognitive, attention, and socioemotional skills measured prior to school entry, as well as a host of family background measures. Across all 6 studies, the strongest predictors of later achievement are school-entry math, reading, and attention skills. A meta-analysis of the results shows that early math skills have the greatest predictive power, followed by reading and then attention skills. By contrast, measures of socioemotional behaviors, including internalizing and externalizing problems and social skills, were generally insignificant predictors of later academic performance, even among children with relatively high levels of problem behavior. Patterns of association were similar for boys and girls and for children from high and low socioeconomic backgrounds.
This study extends the growing literature of family instability by investigating the significance of its timing for children's social adjustment . We find that more than a third of the 1,364 ...elementary school children in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development experienced some family structure change. Their cumulative level of family instability was associated with multiple indicators of social development at the end of elementary school, associations that were especially strong for boys. These associations were driven largely by the lasting effect of family change in early childhood, demonstrating the significance of early family instability for children's later social development.
ABSTRACT
This monograph offers a comprehensive test of an important theory of motivation. Because the theory is sufficiently precise to permit disconfirmation, the results that support and those that ...fail to support it are both informative. The finding that parents' influence appears primarily for peripheral subjects (sports and music), but not for reading and math raises many issues for further research. The study also informs our understanding of gender differences in motivation.
Although science policy and social policy have distinct cultures, there are overlapping influences on both. Science policy decisions across the spectrum of basic and applied research are influenced ...by perceived social utility and the potential for solving current social problems. With the advent of evidence-based policy requirements, social policymakers increasingly use scientific information, although it constitutes only 1 factor in a mix of ideology, interests, and institutional constraints. The spread of early childhood intervention programs in the United States and elsewhere is one example in which strong, cumulative evidence has contributed to a policy consensus. Developmental scientists can contribute to better science policy and better social policy by strengthening the scientific quality of their evidence and communicating research-based knowledge more effectively.
In this article, I summarize a lifetime of research investigating the socializing effects of contexts outside the family, specifically television, gender‐role expectations, child care, poverty, and ...public policy. The themes running throughout this work are (a) understanding processes underlying associations of behavior with social and environmental conditions, (b) understanding positive development as well as problem behavior, (c) questioning social values and implicit assumptions in research and policy, and (d) taking a truly interdisciplinary approach. My goals include generating knowledge and applying these themes to policy and practice. I conclude that researchers need to be prepared with good evidence when the policy windows open.
Using latent variable structural equation modeling, a family economic stress model that links economic well-being to child well-being in an ethnically diverse, low-income sample of 419 elementary ...school-age children was evaluated. The sample was 57% African American and 28% Hispanic, and most families were headed by single mothers. The results provided support for the position that family process is a critical mediator of the effects of economic hardship on children's social adjustment. Lower levels of economic well-being, and the corollary elevated perceptions of economic pressure indirectly affected parenting behavior through an adverse impact on parental psychological well-being. Distressed parents reported feeling less effective and capable in disciplinary interactions with their child and were observed to be less affectionate in parent-child interactions. In turn, less than optimal parenting predicted lower teacher ratings of children's positive social behavior and higher ratings of behavior problems. Multiple-group analyses revealed that the pathways by which economic hardship influences children's behavior appear to operate similarly for boys and girls, and for African American and Hispanic families.
This study investigated the association between family instability and children's problem behavior during the transition to first grade. In a sample (n = 1,015) drawn from the NICHD Study of Early ...Child Care and Youth Development, we found that a quarter of sample members experienced at least one family transition between birth and age 6. Instability was also related to family structure at birth: those born into cohabiting parent families experienced the most instability, followed by those born into single mother families and finally, those in two-biological married parent families. Children who experienced instability had higher teacher and observer reports of problem behaviors than those from stable family structures. Finally, differences in problem behavior associated with family instability varied by family structure at birth and the emotional, social and material resources in the family.
Maternal education is a strong correlate of children's language, cognitive, and academic development. In most prior research, mothers' education has been treated as a fixed characteristic, yet many ...mothers, particularly economically and educationally disadvantaged mothers, attend school after the birth of their children. In the present study, we use longitudinal data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development to consider whether increases in maternal education are associated with concurrent improvements in children's school readiness, language skills, and the quality of home environments at age 3. Increases in mothers' education are linked to young children's expressive and receptive language skills but only among mothers with initially low levels of education. Increases in education are also associated with improvements in some aspects of children's home environments, particularly mothers' responsiveness and the provision of learning materials. Mediation analyses provide some evidence that improvements in children's language associated with increased maternal education are due in part to changes in the quality of home environments.
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