Human Development & Quantitative Methodology
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2248
The departments within the College of Education were reorganized and renamed as of July 1, 2011. This department incorporates the former departments of Measurement, Statistics & Evaluation; Human Development; and the Institute for Child Study.
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Item Longitudinal associations between parent-child interactions and children’s socioemotional functioning in ethnically diverse families(2024) Alonso, Angelica; Cabrera, Natasha J; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Theoretical and empirical evidence identify parenting behaviors as one of the most robust predictors of children’s socioemotional development. However, this body of evidence is primarily based on White middle-class mothers and children. As such, it remains unclear whether these developmental processes are generalizable to ethnic minority children who are reared in different sociocultural contexts. The present dissertation consists of three interrelated studies that examined longitudinal associations between parent-child interactions (parents’ emotion socialization; responsive parenting; parent-child dyadic synchrony) and children’s socioemotional functioning (socioemotional competence; executive function; self-regulation) in ethnically diverse mothers, fathers, and their young children. I also examined children’s regulatory skills and parent-child dyadic synchrony as mediators and child emotionality as a moderator of these associations. Empirical Study 1 examined how mothers’ and fathers’ emotion socialization behaviors (ESB) at 18 and 24 months were associated with toddlers’ social competence at 24 and 30 months. Fathers’ non-supportive ESBs to negative emotions at 18 months were positively associated with social competence at 30 months. There was a negative association between mothers’ non-supportive ESBs to negative emotions at 24 months and social competence at 30 months only for toddlers with high negative emotionality. A positive association between fathers’ emotion coaching of negative emotions at 18 months and 30-month social competence emerged only when mothers did not provide any emotion coaching. Empirical Study 2 examined longitudinal associations between mothers’ and fathers’ responsive parenting at 9 months and children’s socioemotional functioning (executive function and socioemotional competence) at age 3. This study also tested children’s effortful control at 24 months as a mediator and emotionality as a moderator of these associations. Only mothers’ responsive parenting at 9 months was associated with greater socioemotional competence at age 3. There was no support for effortful control and emotionality as a mediator and moderator, respectively, of associations between maternal or paternal responsive parenting and socioemotional functioning. Empirical Study 3 examined direct associations between mother- and father-child synchrony at 18 months and toddlers’ self-regulation at 24 months and indirect associations through parent-child synchrony at 24 months. I also examined child emotionality as a moderator of direct associations and explored whether participation in a parenting intervention had impacts on synchrony and self-regulation. Father-child synchrony at 24 months mediated associations between earlier synchrony and self-regulation. Child emotionality did not moderate associations between synchrony and self-regulation. Finally, mothers and fathers in the treatment conditions exhibited greater synchrony with their children at 24 months than parents in the control group. Collectively, these findings indicate the unique ways that ethnically diverse mothers and fathers contribute to their children’s socioemotional development. These studies highlight the need for further research examining mechanisms (mediators and moderators) as additional sources of within-group variability in socioemotional functioning. Doing so will help diversify the science of normative socioemotional development and can inform program efforts to best support ethnic minority children in developing strong socioemotional skills.Item Latino fathers' motivations, parental play, parent and friend relationship support, and children's socioemotional development from early childhood to adolescence in racially-ethnically diverse families(2024) Ghosh, Rachel Alina; Cabrera, Natasha; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Parenting practices and parent-child relationship quality, shaped in part by parenting cognitions and beliefs, have a strong proximal contribution to the course and outcome of children’s development from early in the lifespan. However, much existent empirical knowledge about parenting comes from studies of White middle-class mothers and children, and there is far less evidence from racially, ethnically, and economically diverse families – especially from fathers. Through a collection of three interrelated studies, the present dissertation contributes to this literature with an examination of fathers’ parenting motivations, and mothers’ and fathers’ independent and interactive influences on child and adolescent socioemotional outcomes among diverse families. Empirical Paper 1 qualitatively explored what motivated first-time Latino fathers in the U.S. to be good parents for their infants, and examined differences in their motivations by nativity status. Fathers described five primary themes, with variation by nativity,in their parenting motivations: 1) personal rearing history, 2) desire to rear a well-adjusted child, 3) relationship with their child, 4) intrinsic motivations, and 5) sense of duty and responsibility. Empirical Paper 2 examined associations between mothers’ and fathers’ quality of play (i.e., challenging parenting behaviors, playfulness) at 18 months and toddlers’ social competence at 24 months, and tested whether child negative emotional temperament moderated these associations. Contrary to hypotheses, there were no significant associations between mothers’ or fathers’ two types of play and children’s social competence, and no significant moderation effects by negative emotionality. Empirical Paper 3 examined the interactive effects of adolescents’ level of support in their relationships with mothers, fathers, and best friends in the 8th grade and associations with depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and externalizing problems in the 9th grade, as well as differences by adolescent sex. There were several interactive effects of the relationships on later depressive symptoms, though not on anxiety symptoms or externalizing problems, and few differences by adolescent sex. More support from one parent was related to fewer depressive symptoms when youth experienced an unsupportive relationship with the other parent or with a best friend. Taken together, the findings of these studies advance developmental theory and provide nuance to our understanding of mothering, fathering, and children’s and adolescents’ socioemotional developmental processes. These studies have implications for research and programs aimed at promoting the normative, healthy development of diverse youth through recognizing and capitalizing on the contributions of different members within the family system.Item Reframing Children's Judgments of Consensus Reliability as a Process of Information Aggregation(2023) Levush, Karen Carmel; Butler, Lucas P; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Consensus is a compelling cue to the truth value of a given claim, but certain consensus patterns provide stronger evidence than others. This dissertation examines the developmental trajectory of children’s reasoning about the epistemic value of diverse perspectives for consensus’ reliability. One-hundred forty-four children between the ages of 7 and 9, as well as 48 adults, were introduced to a novel planet and alien groups that live there. Tasked with learning the “right things” about why various natural phenomena occur on this planet, participants were asked which one of two consensus groups, each of whom collectively thought something different, was the “better” group to ask. Participants rated their relative preference for one consensus group over another using a 6-point scale and were asked to explain their reasoning. These findings provide initial evidence that qualitative changes in children’s ability to consider how dependencies can lead to redundant information parallel the developmental shift in children’s appreciation for interpretive diversity in middle childhood.Item Mother-child and father-child "serve and return" interactions at 9 months: Associations with children's language skills at 18, 24, and 30 months(2023) Chen, Yu; Cabrera, Natasha J; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Infants learn language through the back-and-forth interactions with their parents where they “serve” by vocalizing, gesturing, or looking and parents “return” in a temporally and semantically contingent way. My dissertation focuses on these “serve and return” (SR) interactions between 9-month-old infants and their mothers and fathers (n = 296 parents and 148 infants) from ethnically and socioeconomically diverse backgrounds by examining the variability in SR interactions explained by maternal and paternal psychological distress, the association between SR interactions and children’s language skills at 18, 24, and 30 months, and the moderation effect of maternal and paternal SR interactions on language outcomes. Psychological distress was indicated by parent-reported depressive symptoms, parenting stress, and role overload, and SR interactions were transcribed and coded from video-taped parent-child toy play activities during home visits. I report three major findings. First, neither maternal nor paternal psychological distress was significantly associated with and SR interactions at 9 months, controlling for demographic factors. Second, fathers who responded to their child’s serves more promptly and mothers who provided more semantically relevant responses had children with higher receptive and expressive language skills, respectively, at 18 and 30 months. Third, fathers’ semantically relevant responses were negatively associated with children’s receptive language skills at 24 months; however, this main effect was moderated by mothers’ semantically relevant responses. Understanding how mothers and fathers engage in temporally and semantically contingent social interactions with their children during the first year, especially among families from diverse backgrounds, would enable programs and policies to more effectively promote early language development and reduce gaps in school readiness.Item THE CONTRIBUTION OF INHIBITORY CONTROL ON CHILDREN’S GESTURE USE IN AN EARLY MATHEMATICAL ENVIRONMENT(2023) Barkin, Raychel; Ramani, Geetha; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Early academic scores are strong and robust predictors of children’s later school and career performance (Duncan et al., 2007; Rose, 2006). However, the USA ranks well below other countries on math scores (27th out of 34; OECD, 2013), and have been marked as particularly inadequate at “mathematics tasks with higher cognitive demand(s)”. Thus, it is important to focus on the mechanisms which may contribute to differences in early mathematics problem solving and find tools that are uniquely suited to addressing this issue. One advantageous strategy young children use during math problem solving are hand gestures. Gestures are one of several overtly observable strategies in math contexts(e.g., counting on fingers vs. counting out loud without gestures), but have been specifically recognized as useful given their ability to reduce the user's working memory load during math contexts (Goldin-Meadow & Wagner, 2005). As children get older, the type and frequency of strategies used are reported to shift from basic to more advanced and efficient (Siegler, 1987). This pattern is often seen as younger children using more overtly observable strategies (e.g., finger counting), whereas older children rely on more implicit strategies (e.g., memory retrieval of math facts, Geary et al., 1991). However, less is known about how differences in children’s concurrent domain-general abilities (e.g., working memory, inhibitory control) and domain-specific knowledge (e.g., math specific) contribute to strategic use of gesture during arithmetic problem solving. This line of research is vital given that gestures may be especially advantageous based on their capacity to bolster mental resources needed for problem solving. Using the Gestures in Math Environments model (GME model; Gordon & Ramani, 2021) as a framework, the current study provides a comprehensive assessment of the factors underlying children’s domain-general and specific abilities, and provides evidence as to their relation to children’s use of gesture as a strategy during arithmetic problem solving. Furthermore, it tests a newly proposed adaptation to the GME model where inhibitory control plays a moderating role on the relation between children’s working memory and use of gesture. One-hundred-thirty-seven 4- to 7-year-old children and their parents participated in this study. All children completed two sessions; an autonomous online-game based assessment and a video recorded zoom session regulated by a trained research assistant. At each session, children completed measures of inhibitory control, early mathematical knowledge, and working memory. Their gesture use was video recorded during one measure where children partake in arithmetic problem solving. Parents completed a standardized measure assessing their child’s inhibitory control and working memory abilities. Using structural equation modeling, the relations between all measures and a consideration of how each corresponded to a set of comprehensible latent factors (one factor each for inhibitory control, working memory, and math) were examined. Further examination of how each factor related to children’s use of gesture was investigated. In line with the original GME model, working memory ability was a unique predictor of children’s use of gesture above and beyond impacts of age, math knowledge, inhibitory control, and gender. While there is not any evidence from the current study to support the proposed moderation between inhibitory control and working memory on gesture use, a modification to the GME model with the addition of gender is subsequently recommended.Item CHILDREN’S DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE AND FRIENDSHIP PREFERENCES IN GENDER STEREOTYPED CONTEXTS(2023) Sims, Riley N.; Killen, Melanie; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)From an early age, children prefer fair and just treatment of others. Young children often reason about the importance of establishing equality between individuals and groups, with concerns for equity emerging by middle childhood. At the same time, children expect that individuals who counter gender stereotypic norms will face exclusion from the peer group, and give preferential treatment towards gender ingroup members over gender outgroup members in resource allocation tasks. Denying individuals from friendships, resources, or opportunities based on gender stereotypic expectations constitutes unfair treatment. Intergroup contact has been shown to reduce children’s prejudicial attitudes, but less research has investigated how intergroup contact with counter-stereotypic peers shapes children’s friendship preferences. Furthermore, research indicates that children rectify inequalities for historically marginalized racial/ethnic groups. Women have historically been marginalized and excluded within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Though some research has investigated the extent to which children rectify inequalities between racial groups, less research has focused on how children rectify inequalities between gender groups in stereotypic contexts, such as those involving science inequalities. The present dissertation contains three empirical papers that explore how gender stereotypic expectations shape children’s friendship preferences and distributive justice beliefs. Empirical Paper 1 explored how children’s own reported gender stereotypes and playmate experiences relate to their desires to play with peers who hold counter-stereotypic toy preferences. Empirical Paper 2 assessed children’s evaluations, resource allocation decisions, and reasoning in contexts involving inequalities of science supplies between groups of boys and girls. Empirical Paper 3 extended work from Empirical Paper 2 to investigate how children and young adults consider merit and gender group membership in science inequality contexts. Together, this body of work suggests that intergroup contact with counter-stereotypic peers can dampen the influence of gender stereotypes in shaping children’s friendship preferences, and that children and young adults maintain subtle pro-boy biases in their evaluations and decision-making regarding access to science resources between gender groups. Documenting the contextual factors that encourage children to resist gender stereotypic expectations and promote more equitable attitudes as it relates to rights to resources and opportunities can inform future research aimed at promoting inclusive orientations in childhood.Item The roles of group biases and mental state understanding in children's intergroup interactions(2023) Glidden, Jacquelyn; Killen, Melanie; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Balancing concerns for fairness with group dynamics, including preferences for one’s ingroup and attitudes about peers viewed as members of the outgroup, emerges early in childhood. While children understand fairness and act on their judgments about it, they also display preferences for others who are similar to themselves. Further, their mental state knowledge, that is, beliefs about others’ beliefs, desires, and intentions, is related to their ability to give priority to fairness considerations. The present dissertation includes a collection of three papers which explore the influence of children’s ingroup biases and mental state understanding skills on their intergroup moral decisions. Empirical Paper 1 documents circumstances in which intergroup factors are associated with increased group biases. Specifically, hearing an outgroup member claim that someone has performed a moral transgression was associated with children displaying heightened ingroup biases. Next, Empirical Paper 2 explores whether mental state understanding might serve as a mediator between children’s ingroup biases and their moral decisions. Children’s mental state understanding skills did in fact mediate the relationship between ingroup bias and children’s ability to attribute intentions and decisions to exclude peers. Finally, Empirical Paper 3 addresses the role of mental state understanding skills in children’s judgments of gender inequalities and their attributions of emotions to individuals who are harmed by or benefitted by gender inequality. Children’s advanced mental state understanding skills were associated with them judging gender inequality more negatively and recognizing that benefitting from gender inequality is not necessarily a positive experience. Together, these three empirical papers provide evidence that children are balancing concerns for groups and their ability to understand others’ mental states when making intergroup moral evaluations. This collection has implications for future research aimed at improving children’s intergroup interactions and reducing intergroup biases.Item Promoting Children's Early Mathematical and Statistical Understanding Through Parent-Child Math Games(2022) DePascale, Mary; Ramani, Geetha; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Basic statistical literacy is essential for understanding and making inferences from information received from external sources and for developing critical thinking skills necessary for engagement in real-world contexts. However, many children and adults struggle with understanding and interpreting data and graphs. Therefore, it is critical to develop engaging, effective methods for teaching early graphing and data analysis, as they have the potential to enhance children’s development of statistical understanding, math, and higher-order thinking skills that remain essential throughout their lifespan. Math games are a common method for teaching math in a way that is engaging and effective for young children. However, few studies have examined games for math content beyond numerical skills. The current study examined the effectiveness of a home-based, experimental graphing game intervention for children’s statistical understanding and math skills. One-hundred-forty-eight 5- to 6-year-old children and their parent were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: graphing board game, graphing card game, or literacy board game, and completed a pretest, 4-week intervention, and posttest. At each test session, children completed statistical understanding and math ability measures. During the intervention, parents and children played games together in their home. Game materials were mailed to families, and families video recorded a session of gameplay at the midpoint of the intervention. Parent and child use of numerical, mathematical, and statistical talk during play were examined. Children in the graphing game conditions improved more than children in the literacy game condition on measures of statistical understanding and arithmetic. Families who played graphing games used more number and math talk during play than families who played literacy games. Talk during play did not relate to gains in statistical understanding or math abilities. These findings provide initial evidence on the effectiveness of games for promoting children’s early statistical understanding, as well as descriptive information about children’s early graphing skills and parent and child engagement in graphing games at home. Results also support the development of play-based interventions and materials to promote children’s early mathematical and statistical skills, with implications for children’s later development and achievement.Item CHILDREN’S CONCEPTIONS OF FAIRNESS: THE ROLE OF MENTAL STATE UNDERSTANDING AND GROUP IDENTITY(2021) D'Esterre, Alexander; Killen, Melanie; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Children’s everyday experiences occur against a backdrop that is rich in social information andwhich requires decisions involving considerations about fairness, intentionality, and social groups. With age, children improve in their ability to utilize intentional information in their judgments and have been shown to demonstrate preferences for fairness over group benefit. What has not been fully investigated is how children coordinate and weight these considerations at different ages. Moreover, mistaken intentions and a tendency to benefit the in-group over others can be seen even in adulthood – suggesting that these issues are not so easily overcome and have the potential to affect the evaluations and behaviors of individuals more than have been previously considered. Research designed to carefully investigate the impact of these social and cognitive factors on children’s fairness concepts can provide insight into the ways in which biases may begin to form and potentially inform our understanding of the underlying mechanisms present in prejudicial attitudes. The present dissertation contains a series of three empirical papers that are designed to investigate children’s responses to unintentional and intentional transgressions based on their cognitive ability to infer beliefs of others and their relationship to the group identity of the target. Empirical Study 1 demonstrated the value of using a morally-relevant theory of mind measure embedded directly into the context when predicting children’s responses to unintentional and intentional transgressions. Empirical Study 2 investigated the ways in which children’s assessment of fair and unfair advantages were influenced by the group identity of the character who created the advantage. Empirical Study 3 explored the types of retributive justice that children would endorse in light of various types of intentional and unintentional transgressions, revealing differences based on group identity and the impact that the retributive justice would present to the functioning of the group. The results of these studies together suggest that children’s fairness concepts are heavily influenced by the context in which children find themselves and are far from static. Better understanding the relationship between these factors will provide increased insight into the ways in which prejudice and bias may develop in childhood and suggest potential areas for intervention.Item The Association Between Parental Executive Function and Children’s Language Skills at 18 Months(2021) McKee, Kelsey; Cabrera, Natasha; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Executive function (EF) is thought to be particularly important for parenting (Crandall et al., 2015). Studies have shown that maternal EF is related to parenting quality and children’s social and cognitive outcomes (Bridgett et al., 2015). These studies are few and are mostly conducted with mothers raising the question of whether paternal EF also affects children in the same way as maternal EF. In an effort to address these gaps I examined whether maternal and paternal EF influenced child language at 18-months, in part through parental engagement in home learning activities, in a sample of low-income, first time parents and their infants. My results did not show a significant, direct influence of maternal or paternal EF when children were 9 months old on children language skills at 18 months. Similarly, neither of the overall indirect effects of parental EF to child language through home parental learning activities were significant. However, paternal EF did positively predict paternal home learning activities, though this was not the case for mothers. Results of this study highlight the unique influences on maternal and paternal parenting and suggest further study is needed to fully elucidate the relation between parental EF and child language skills.