Research with Thieving Puppets Demonstrates Toddlers' Caring Sides
June 18, 2015—An experiment conducted by the University of Manchester has shown that three and five-year-old children will intervene to protect others from theft and distress, even when not personally affected.
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Extra Love and Support Doesn't Make up for Being a Helicopter Parent
June 1, 2015—It's time for helicopter parents to land and stay grounded.
New research by professors at Brigham Young University revealed that parental warmth cannot neutralize the consequences of helicopter parenting. Additionally, a lack of warmth makes the negative effects worse.
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Sharing Doesn't Hurt
May 19, 2015—Preschoolers already recognize what it feels like to be left out when goodies are being shared. In a new study, Researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich show that 3-year-olds can anticipate negative feelings in others, and adjust their own behavior in response.
Why are we willing to share with others what we could just as well keep for ourselves? Willingness to allot a portion of a coveted resource to someone else is a behavioral pattern that can throw light on the origins and development of prosocial modes of response during childhood. In a new study, LMU's Markus Paulus (Professor of Developmental Psychology and the Psychology of Learning in Early Childhood) and Professor Chris Moore of Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia) have now shown that whether or not preschoolers choose to let another child partake of a valued commodity that they control depends on how well they can anticipate how that child is likely to feel should they decide not to do so.
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Mentally Stepping Back from Problems Helps Youth Deal with Negative Emotions
April 15, 2015—Adolescence is a time of frequent and intense emotional experiences, but some youth handle their emotions better than others. Why do some young people react adaptively while others ruminate? A new study of adolescents shows that youth who mentally take a step back from their own point of view when thinking about something troubling can deal with negative emotions more effectively and become less upset by them.
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Children Who Understand Others' Perspectives Found to Be More Popular Among Peers
April 15, 2015—Preschoolers and school-age children who are good at identifying what others want, think, and feel are more popular in school than their peers who aren't as socially adept. That's the conclusion of a new meta-analysis--a type of study that looks at the results of many different studies--out of Australia.
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Childhood Self-Control Linked to Enhanced Job Prospects Throughout Life
April 14, 2015—Parents who work to instill self-control in their children will see them reap the benefits not only in the short-term but throughout their working life, according to new research in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Element of Surprise Helps Babies Learn
April 2, 2015—Infants have innate knowledge about the world and when their expectations are defied, they learn best, researchers at Johns Hopkins University found.
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Connection between Childhood Adversity and Psychiatric Disorders Seen at Cellular Level
PROVIDENCE, RI; January 20, 2015—In a new study published online in Biological Psychiatry, researchers from Butler Hospital identify an association between biological changes on the cellular level and both childhood adversity and psychiatric disorders. These changes in the form of telomere shortening and alterations of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), are important in the aging process, and this new research provides evidence that psychosocial factors—specifically childhood adversity and psychiatric disorders—may also influence these cellular changes and could lead to accelerated aging.
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Just Like Mom and Dad: Sleep Boosts Memory Consolidation in Infants
January 13, 2015—Sleep facilitates memory consolidation—not just in adults, but also in infants during their first year of life. A new study using a new experimental design that assesses declarative memories (i.e. memories for facts and events) has revealed that napping helps infants to develop their memory and retain new behaviours they have learnt.
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The Surprising Influence of Human Speech on Young Infants
Listening to human speech has consequences for infants that go beyond learning words
EVANSTON, IL; January 5, 2015—America's preoccupation with the "word gap"—the idea that parents in impoverished homes speak less to their children, which, in turn, predicts outcomes like school achievement and income later in life—has skyrocketed in recent years, leading to a rise in educational initiatives aiming to narrow the achievement gap by teaching young children more words.
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Helping Parents Understand Infant Sleep Patterns
December 19, 2014—Most parents are not surprised by the irregularity of a newborn infant's sleep patterns, but by six months or so many parents wonder if something is wrong with their baby or their sleeping arrangements if the baby is not sleeping through the night. Healthcare providers, specifically nurse practitioners, can help parents understand what "normal" sleep patterns are for their child, according to researchers.
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Skin-to-Skin Contact between Mothers and Infants Is Important after Cesarean Birth
Skin-to-skin contact supports breastfeeding, bonding and better health outcomes
November 11, 2014—Research during the past 30 years has found many benefits of skin-to-skin contact between mothers and newborns immediately after birth, particularly with aiding breastfeeding. However, in some hospitals, skin-to-skin contact following cesarean birth is not implemented, due to practices around the surgery. A recent Quality Improvement (QI) project demonstrated that women's birth experiences were improved by implementing skin-to-skin contact after cesarean surgery.
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Orphanage Care Linked to Thinner Brain Tissue in Regions Related to ADHD
October 14, 2014—Under the rule of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, thousands of Romanian children were placed in overcrowded orphanages with bleak conditions and minimal human contact. Even after the 1989 revolution, the legacy of institutionalization continued. Only recently has research and public concern over early childhood environments caused changes in policies.
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Hold On, Tiger Mom
Research by a UC Riverside assistant professor refutes the idea that the traditional, strict 'Chinese' upbringing, advocated for in the book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, is superior
September 22, 2014—Less supportive and punitive parenting techniques used by some Chinese parents might lead to the development of skewed self-understanding and school adjustment difficulties in their children and leave them vulnerable to depression and problem behaviors, according to a paper recently published by a University of California, Riverside assistant professor and other researchers.
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Fighting Parents Hurt Children’s Ability to Recognize and Regulate Emotions
September 17, 2014—Exposure to verbal and physical aggression between parents may hurt a child’s ability to identify and control emotions, according to a longitudinal study led by NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.
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Dad Is Important for His Children's Development
September 3, 2014—A sensitive and attentive father has a positive influence on his child’s development, but only if he spends a considerable amount of time with the child during its first year.
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Learning by Watching, Toddlers Show Intuitive Understanding of Probability
August 25, 2014—
Most people know children learn many skills simply by watching people around them. Without explicit instructions youngsters know to do things like press a button to operate the television and twist a knob to open a door. Now researchers have taken this further, finding that children as young as age 2 intuitively use mathematical concepts such as probability to help make sense of the world around them.
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Can Fiction Stories Make Us More Empathetic?
August 11, 2014—Empathy is important for navigating complex social situations, and is considered a highly desirable trait. Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada, discussed how exposure to narrative fiction may improve our ability to understand what other people are thinking or feeling in his session at the American Psychological Association's 122nd Annual Convention.
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Children as Young as Three Recognise 'Cuteness' in Faces of People and Animals
July 21, 2014—Children as young as three are able to recognise the same ‘cute’ infantile facial features in humans and animals which encourage caregiving behaviour in adults, new research has shown.
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Childhood Maltreatment Associated with Cerebral Grey Matter Abnormalities
Abuse could lead to permanent brain damage
June 18, 2014—An international study has analysed the association between childhood maltreatment and the volume of cerebral grey matter, responsible for processing information. The results revealed a significant deficit in various late developing regions of the brain after abuse.
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Anxious Children have Bigger “Fear Centers” in the Brain
Philadelphia, PA; June 16, 2014—The amygdala is a key "fear center" in the brain. Alterations in the development of the amygdala during childhood may have an important influence on the development of anxiety problems, reports a new study in the current issue of Biological Psychiatry.
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Want a Young Child to 'Help' or 'Be a Helper'? Choice of Words Matters
Tying helping to children's sense of identity may be key
April 30, 2014—How do you get a preschooler to help with chores and other household tasks? A new study suggests that adults' word choice can make a big difference.
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How Mothers Help Children Explore Right and Wrong
Concordia study shows that parental talks support children’s understanding of their moral experiences
April 15, 2015—There’s no question that mothers want their children to grow up to be good people—but less is known about how they actually help their offspring sort out different types of moral issues.
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Bye-Bye Boot Camp: Positive Parenting for Challenging Kids
April 1, 2014—Having children is not a prerequisite for having strong opinions about childrearing, so it’s not remarkable that when we do have children, we can be a bit defensive about our parenting style. This is true even when it seems to be working well; but what if our child’s behavior seems particularly challenging? Because we take our responsibility seriously, we may focus on who or what is to blame, rather than on what we can do to improve the situation. We may even wonder whether it can be improved. Is a noncompliant toddler doomed to become a challenging adolescent? Worse, if we have a defiant teenager—one who refuses to comply with requests or follow rules of conduct—do we have any real chance of producing the result we want for him or her?
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Neurobiologists Find Chronic Stress in Early Life Causes Anxiety, Aggression in Adulthood
Cold Spring Harbor, NY; March 27, 2014— In recent years, behavioral neuroscientists have debated the meaning and significance of a plethora of independently conducted experiments seeking to establish the impact of chronic, early-life stress upon behavior—both at the time that stress is experienced, and upon the same individuals later in life, during adulthood.
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Safety First, Children
University of Iowa study examines how parents can teach their children to be safer
March 20, 2014—As parents, we’ve all been there: Watching our children teeter on a chair, leap from the sofa, or careen about the playground, fearing the worst. And, we all wonder, how can we teach them to be safer? Such was the goal of a team of researchers at the University of Iowa, who analyzed in a new study how children take stock of various real-life scenarios, and how mothers can help them assess potential hazards. Their conclusions: Children and mothers regularly don’t see eye-to-eye on situational dangers. Because of that, it’s critical that mothers explain why a situation is dangerous, beyond simply administering a verbal slap on the wrist.
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Playing with Barbie Dolls Could Limit Girls' Career Choices, Study Shows
CORVALLIS, OR; March 5, 2014—In one of the first experiments to explore the influence of fashion dolls, an Oregon State University researcher has found that girls who play with Barbie dolls see fewer career options for themselves than for boys.
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Study Shows Why Breastfed Babies Are so Smart
Two parenting skills deserve the credit
February 26, 2014—Loads of studies over the years have shown that children who were breastfed score higher on IQ tests and perform better in school, but the reason why remained unclear until now.
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Culture Influences Young People's Self-Esteem
February 24. 2014—Regardless of our personal values, we base most of our self-esteem on the fulfilment of the dominant values of our culture, reveals a global survey supervised by Maja Becker, a social psychologist at the CLLE (Laboratoire Cognition, Langue, Langages, Ergonomie, CNRS / Université de Toulouse II-Le Mirail). The results of the study, involving more than 5,000 teenagers and young adults in 19 countries, were recently published online in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
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Stanford Psychologist Shows Why Talking to Kids Really Matters
February 13, 2014—Fifty years of research has revealed the sad truth that the children of lower-income, less-educated parents typically enter school with poorer language skills than their more privileged counterparts. By some measures, 5-year-old children of lower socioeconomic status (SES) score two years behind on standardized language development tests by the time they enter school.
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'I Know It but I Won't Say It'
Tie between toddlers' shyness, language abilities reflects reticence to respond
February 3, 2014—Previous research has suggested that shy children have difficulties with language. Now, a new longitudinal study paints a more nuanced picture.
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For Young African-Americans, Emotional Support Buffers the Biological Toll of Racial Discrimination
February 3, 2014—African American youth who report experiencing frequent discrimination during adolescence are at risk for developing heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and stroke in later years, according to a new study. The study also found that emotional support from parents and peers can protect African American youth from stress-related damage to their bodies and health.
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Parents Less Likely to Spank after Learning about Links to Problems in Children
Studies demonstrate that brief exposure to research findings can reduce positive corporal punishment attitudes in parents and non-parents
January 21, 2014—Parents who spank their children believe it’s an effective form of discipline. But decades of research studies have found that spanking is linked to short- and long-term child behavior problems. Is there any way to get parents to change their minds and stop spanking? Child psychologist George Holden, who favors humane alternatives to corporal punishment, wanted to see if parents’ positive views toward spanking could be reversed if they were made aware of the research.
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Infants Show Ability to Tell Friends from Foes
Infant cognition study offers new evidence that babies make inferences about social relationships
January 8, 2014—Even before babies have language skills or much information about social structures, they can infer whether others are likely to be friends by observing their likes and dislikes, a new UChicago study on infant cognition has found.
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Loving Touch Is Critical for Premature Infants
Philadelphia, PA; January 6, 2014—The benefit that premature infants gain from skin-to-skin contact with their mothers is measurable even 10 years after birth, reports a new study in Biological Psychiatry.
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Babbling Babies Responding to One-on-One ‘Baby Talk’ Master More Words
January 6, 2014—Common advice to new parents is that the more words babies hear the faster their vocabulary grows. Now new findings show that what spurs early language development isn’t so much the quantity of words as the style of speech and social context in which speech occurs.
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When Being Called “Incredibly Good” is Bad for Children
Study shows inflated praise can harm kids with low self-esteem
COLUMBUS, OH; January 2, 2014—Parents and other adults heap the highest praise on children who are most likely to be hurt by the compliments, a new study finds. Researchers found that adults seem to naturally give more inflated praise to children with low self-esteem. But while children with high self-esteem seem to thrive with inflated praise, those with low self-esteem actually shrink from new challenges when adults go overboard on praising them.
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Brain Connections May Explain Why Girls Mature Faster
December 19, 2013—Newcastle University scientists have discovered that as the brain reorganizes connections throughout our life, the process begins earlier in girls which may explain why they mature faster during the teenage years.
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Bedtime for Toddlers: Timing Is Everything, Says CU-Boulder Study
December 16, 2013—The bedtime you select for your toddler may be out of sync with his or her internal body clock, which can contribute to difficulties for youngsters attempting to settle in for the night, according to a new University of Colorado-Boulder study.
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Messy Children Make Better Learners
Study shows toddlers learn words for nonsolids better when getting messy in a highchair
December 2, 2013—Attention, parents: The messier your child gets while playing with food in the high chair, the more he or she is learning.
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Kids Whose Bond with Mother Was Disrupted Early in Life Show Changes in Brain
December 2, 2013—Children who experience profound neglect have been found to be more prone to a behavior known as "indiscriminate friendliness," characterized by an inappropriate willingness to approach adults, including strangers.
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Connections in the Brains of Young Children Strengthen during Sleep
November 20, 2013—While young children sleep, connections between the left and the right hemispheres of their brain strengthen, which may help brain functions mature, according to a new study by the University of Colorado Boulder.
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For Low-Income Families, Substandard Housing Takes Toll on Children
Study of 2,400 children, teens and young adults sharpens focus on quality, not affordability
CHESTNUT HILL, MA; Oct. 22, 2013—A new report from researchers at Boston College and Tufts University shows the distinct emotional and educational price children pay when their families live in run down apartments and homes.
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Not All Silence is Golden: Study Compares Environments for Premature Infants
Cincinnati, OH; October 17, 2013—Medical technology has improved the survival rates of premature infants, but adverse developmental outcomes are a continuing problem. Researchers have turned their attention to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), where premature infants spend their first few weeks or months, for potential answers. In a new study scheduled for publication in The Journal of Pediatrics, researchers studied the relationship between different room types in the NICU and the developmental outcomes of the children at 2 years of age.
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Babies Know When You're Faking
Infants can detect unjustified emotional reactions as early as 18 months, say researchers
Montreal; October 16 2013—If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands! That’s easy enough for children to figure out because the emotion matches the movement. But when feelings and reactions don’t align, can kids tell there’s something wrong? New research from Concordia University proves that they can—as early as 18 months.
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Go to Bed! Irregular Bedtimes Linked to Behavioral Problems in Children
Effects build up incrementally and are reversible, say researchers
October 14, 2013—Researchers from University College London have found that children with irregular bedtimes are more likely to have behavioural difficulties.
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Household Chaos May Be Hazardous to a Child’s Health
Study links crowding, noise, lack of routine to worse outcomes
COLUMBUS, OH: October 9, 2013—Kindergarten-age children have poorer health if their home life is marked by disorder, noise and a lack of routine and they have a mother who has a chaotic work life, new research suggests.
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Empathy Helps Children Understand Sarcasm
October 8, 2013—The greater the empathy skills of children, the easier it is for them to recognize sarcasm, according to a new study in the open-access journal Frontiers in Psychology.
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Young Adults Reminisce about Music from before Their Time
September 9, 2013—Music has an uncanny way of bringing us back to a specific point in time, and each generation seems to have its own opinions about which tunes will live on as classics. New research suggests that young adults today are fond of and have an emotional connection to the music that was popular for their parents' generation.
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Giving Preschoolers Choice Increases Sharing Behavior
August 19, 2013—Getting kids to share their toys is a never-ending battle, and compelling them to do so never seems to help. New research suggests that allowing children to make a choice to sacrifice their own toys in order to share with someone else makes them share more in the future. The new findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
These experiments, conducted by psychological scientists Nadia Chernyak and Tamar Kushnir of Cornell University, suggest that sharing when given a difficult choice leads children to see themselves in a new, more beneficent light. Perceiving themselves as people who like to share makes them more likely to act in a prosocial manner in the future.
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Will to Win Forms at Age Four
New research suggests children under four don’t yet understand competitive behaviour
August 15, 2013—A team of researchers from the University of Warwick and University of Salzburg found most children under 4 did not have a developed understanding of other people's perspectives—specifically, of the fact that what someone intentionally does depends on their take on the situation.
Johannes Roessler, from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, and his co-authors Beate Priewasser and Josef Perner from the Department of Psychology at the University of Salzburg, tested 71 children aged between 3 and 5 years old on two tasks: the first assessed children's ability to understand that people sometimes act on the basis of false beliefs, and the second assessed their understanding that two competitors have different, and conflicting, goals.
The researchers wanted to explore how much young children’s understand other people’s goals: do they understand that an actor’s goals reflect his or her perspective on what’s desirable?
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Boys Will Be Boys—In the U.S. but Not in Asia
CORVALLIS, OR; May 22, 2013—A new study shows there is a gender gap when it comes to behavior and self-control in American young children—one that does not appear to exist in children in Asia.
In the United States, girls had higher levels of self-regulation than boys. Self-regulation is defined as children’s ability to control their behavior and impulses, follow directions, and persist on a task. It has been linked to academic performance and college completion, in past studies by Oregon State University researchers.
In three Asian countries, the gender gap in the United States was not found when researchers directly assessed the self-regulation of 3-6 year olds. The results appear in the new issue of the journal Early Childhood Research Quarterly.
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From Mice to Humans, Comfort is Being Carried by Mom
CELL PRESS, April 18, 2013—There is a very good reason mothers often carry their crying babies, pacing the floor, to help them calm down. New research published in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on April 18 shows that infants experience an automatic calming reaction upon being carried, whether they are mouse or human babies.
The study is the first to show that the infant calming response to carrying is a coordinated set of central, motor, and cardiac regulations and an evolutionarily conserved component of mother-infant interactions, the researchers say. It might also explain a frustrating reality for new parents: that calm and relaxed very young children will so often start crying again just as soon as they are put back down.
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Core Competencies for Kids: Building Moral Intelligence
April 15, 2013—If you had to compose a list of skills children need in order to develop into healthy, well-adjusted adults, what would it include? You might think of any number of important attributes, but most would probably fit within the five broad categories identified by researchers Nancy G. Guerra and Catherine P. Bradshaw in their 2008 study. In this series we have covered all but the last of these “core competencies for positive youth development,” which include a positive sense of self, self-control, good decision-making skills, and prosocial connectedness. The final competency, according to Guerra and Bradshaw, is a moral system of belief—or what some have referred to as "moral intelligence."
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Multiple Moves Found Harmful to Young Children in Low-Income Families
March 28, 2013—Poor children who move three or more times before they turn 5 have more behavior problems than their peers, according to a new study by researchers at Cornell University and the National Employment Law Project. The study is published in the journal Child Development.
Moving is a fairly common experience for American families; in 2002, 6.5 percent of all children had been living in their current home for less than six months. Among low-income children, that number rose to 10 percent. In addition, in 2002, 13 percent of families above poverty moved once, but 24 percent of families below poverty moved. Research has shown that frequent moves are related to a range of behavioral, emotional, and school problems for adolescents.
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Arguments in the Home Linked With Babies’ Brain Functioning
APS; March 25, 2013—Being exposed to arguments between parents is associated with the way babies’ brains process emotional tone of voice, according to a new study to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
The study, conducted by graduate student Alice Graham with her advisors Phil Fisher and Jennifer Pfeifer of the University of Oregon, found that infants respond to angry tone of voice, even when they’re asleep.
Babies’ brains are highly plastic, allowing them to develop in response to the environments and encounters they experience. But this plasticity comes with a certain degree of vulnerability—research has shown that severe stress, such as maltreatment or institutionalization, can have a significant, negative impact on child development.
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Iowa State Researchers Find Parent-Child Violence Leads to Teen Dating Violence
AMES, Iowa; March 25, 2013—Teens today are involved in intimate relationships at a much younger age and often have different definitions of what is acceptable behavior in a relationship. Violence is something that is all too common and according to researchers at Iowa State it is a reflection of the relationships teens have with their parents or their parent’s partner.
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Mom's Sensitivity Helps Language Development in Children with Hearing Loss
CORAL GABLES, FL; March 8, 2013—University of Miami (UM) Psychologist Alexandra L. Quittner leads one of the largest, most nationally representative studies of the effects of parenting on very young, deaf children who have received cochlear implants. The findings indicate that mothers who are most sensitive in their interactions with their children receiving cochlear implants have kids that develop language faster, almost "catching up" to their hearing peers. The report is published in the Journal of Pediatrics.
This cohort of deaf and hearing children has now been followed for approximately 8 years post-implantation; NIH has just funded the competitive renewal, allowing the researchers to follow them for another 5 years, into adolescence. The aims will focus on their cognitive and social development, as well as their academic achievement.
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Solving Common Family Problems
February 24, 2013—In every family, there will be problems. No matter how positive and empathic we have been, kids will still argue and misbehave, and ask for more than they can have. The demands of our daily lives—and of theirs—will inevitably create conflict and misunderstanding.
Kenneth Barish, Clinical Associate Professor of Psychology at Cornell University's Weill Medical College, offers five concrete steps that will help parents solve most of the common problems they will encounter,
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The Praise Wars: Are Children Overpraised?
It is far too easy for parents to come to either-or conclusions on the topic of children and praise. For many, the question is a Shakespearean one: "To praise, or not to praise?"
According to Kenneth Barish, Ph.D., however, we may be asking the wrong question. Barish, Clinical Associate Professor of Psychology at Weill Medical College, Cornell University, has been working with children and teens in a clinical setting for more than 30 years. In his own review of the research on praise, another story seems to emerge: one that is well supported by his long clinical experience.
"My own experience—and, I believe, a correct reading of the research on praise—teaches a very different lesson," says Barish, "In three decades of clinical practice, I have met many discouraged, angry, and unhappy children. And the culprit is not praise, but criticism. Most of these children were overcriticized; very few were overpraised."
But what about the dangers of creating "praise junkies?" Barish explains some of the nuances that help reconcile current black-and-white notions about praising children.
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Core Competencies for Kids: The Crucial Role of Self-Control
Of the responsibilities parents tacitly accept when they bring a child into the world, perhaps the most important is teaching how to regulate thoughts, emotions and behavior.
Children who reach adolescence without developing this ability are more likely to fail academically, exhibit aggressive behavior, abuse substances, engage in high-risk sexual behavior and—as a result of any or all of these—generally experience negative life events. Unfortunately, many parents who struggle in this area themselves are ill-equipped to pass these skills down. Yet some researchers will go so far as to suggest that most if not all major problems that plague individuals of all ages in our society, including a number of health problems and mental issues, can be traced in some way to an inability to appropriately control aspects of the self.
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