Associations Among Parental Education, Home Environment Quality, Effortful Control, and Preacademic Knowledge

Deaf children, home language environments, and reciprocal-contingent family interactions

Engaged communication between mother and a child in their early developmental stages is one of the predictors of children's development of higher-order thinking skills. For deaf children, this engaged communication between mother and child hinges on the home language environment (HLE) being fully accessible to the child. This research uses agogical phenomenology in exploring the lived experiences of participants' HLE where sign language is used, with particular focus on the opportunities for extended discourse. Data were collected via semistructured interviews with the deaf children and their parents and observations in the HLEs of five signing families with at least one deaf child in the southwestern United States. The aim of this study was to document and provide insights into how language use in deaf children's HLE can impact their knowledge development; these insights uncovered the essence of reciprocal and contingent family interactions as a central aspect of the deaf child's HLE. It is hoped that the qualitative phenomenological findings will frame subsequent quantitative investigations of the variability in language access to home language components.

Is the Association Between Early Childhood Screen Media Use and Effortful Control Bidirectional? A Prospective Study During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Individual differences in effortful control, a component of temperament, reflecting the ability to use attention and other cognitive processes to self-regulate emotion and behavior, contribute to child academic adjustment, social competence, and wellbeing. Research has linked excessive screen time in early childhood to reduced self-regulation ability. Furthermore, research suggests that parents are more likely to use screens with children who have more challenging temperaments, such as low levels of effortful control. Since screen time by children between the ages of 0 and 18 has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, it remains timely to investigate the developmental pattern of association between child screen media use and effortful control. We hypothesize that higher levels of screen media intake at age 3.5 will be associated with lower effortful control at age 4.5 and that lower effortful control at 3.5 will contribute to more screen media intake at age 4.5. This study draws on participants followed longitudinally over the span of 2-years for an investigation of Canadian preschoolers' screen media use during the pandemic (N = 316, Wave 1). A follow-up with this sample was completed in 2021 (N = 265, Wave 2). Analyses using a cross-lagged panel model revealed stability in child screen time and effortful control between the ages of 3.5 and 4.5. Child screen time at age 3.5 significantly contributed to decreased effortful control scores at the age of 4.5, whereas effortful control at age 3.5 did not contribute to screen time at age 4.5. Our results partially confirmed our hypothesis and indicated that higher levels of screen time intake were detrimental to the development of effortful control. These results suggest that screen media use, an exceedingly frequent activity, may play an enduring role in development by shaping young children's temperaments.

Diathesis-stress or differential susceptibility? Comparing the theories when determining the outcomes for children born before 33 weeks' gestation

Infants born preterm (less than 37 weeks completed gestation) have a higher risk of suboptimal cognitive and behavioral outcomes when compared with their term-born counterparts. The risk and severity of poor outcome increases as gestational age at birth decreases; however, not all children born preterm will develop deficits, and environmental influences post birth may have a role in shaping developmental outcomes. Whilst early preterm birth is not preventable, it may be possible to intervene after birth via the environment in order to improve outcomes. The diathesis-stress theory hypothesizes that vulnerable individuals will have worse outcomes after a negative environmental exposure, whereas the differential susceptibility theory posits that vulnerable (or plastic) individuals can be both adversely and positively affected by environmental factors. These two theories were compared in 535 children born <33 weeks' gestation. The interaction between the degree of prematurity and the home environment (as measured by the Home Screening Questionnaire) at 18 months on cognition (Intelligence Quotient from the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence) and behavior (Total Difficulties Score from the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire) at 7 years was explored. Evidence was not found for either theory, although a supportive/stimulating home environment appeared to contribute to a decrease in the risk or severity of suboptimal scores. Future research is needed to establish stronger evidence in order to inform interventions to improve the home environment of children born preterm.

Hot Executive Function Assessment Instruments in Preschool Children: A Systematic Review

The study aimed to systematically analyze the empirical evidence that is available concerning batteries, tests or instruments that assess hot executive functions (EFs) in preschoolers, identifying which are the most used instruments, as well as the most evaluated hot EFs. For the review and selection of articles, the systematic review methodology PRISMA was used. The article search considered the EBSCO, Web of Science (WoS), SciELO and PubMed databases, with the keywords "Hot executive function", "Assessment", "test", "evaluation", using the Boolean operators AND and OR indistinctly, between 2000 and April 2021. Twenty-four articles were selected and analyzed. The most commonly used instruments to assess hot EFs in preschool children were the Delayed Gratification Task, the Child's Play Task, and the Delayed Reward Task. Amongst those analyzed, 17 instruments were found to assess hot EFs in preschoolers. The accuracy and conceptual clarity between the assessment of cognitive and emotional components in EFs is still debatable. Nevertheless, the consideration of affective temperature and reward stimulus type, could be an important influence when assessing EFs in this age range. Evidence of the possible involvement of cortical and subcortical structures, as well as the limbic system, in preschool executive functioning assessment has also been incorporated.

Curvilinear Relations Between Preschool-Aged Children's Effortful Control and Socioemotional Problems: Racial-Ethnic Differences in Functional Form

The majority of studies of preschool-aged children's self-regulation presume that their higher levels of self-regulation are concurrently and prospectively associated with fewer externalizing and internalizing problems. This assumes their relations are only linear in form and negative, but studies with community samples of mostly non-Hispanic White children have found curvilinear or positive relations between self-regulation and socioemotional problems in early childhood. This cross-sectional study tests linear and quadratic relations between children's behavioral battery assessed effortful control and parent rated externalizing and internalizing problems, and whether their functional forms differ across racial-ethnic groups in a diverse sample of 2.5- to 3.5-years-olds (N = 72) from highly educated two-parent households. Child effortful control was negatively related to externalizing, quadratically related to internalizing (albeit marginally), and an interaction between effortful control and race-ethnicity indicated opposite linear relations between effortful control and internalizing problems for different racial-ethnic groups. By integrating tests of curvilinearity and interactions, this study builds on theoretical and empirical work indicating complex relations between the development of self-regulation and psychopathology.

Longitudinal Associations between Parenting and Inattention, Impulsivity, and Delay of Gratification in Preschool-aged Children: The Role of Temperamental Difficultness and Toddler Attention Focusing

Data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care were used to test whether maternal sensitivity and stimulation at 15 and 54 months predicted child attention, impulsivity, and delay of gratification at 54 months, and whether toddler attention and temperamental difficultness moderated associations. Maternal sensitivity at 54 months was positively associated with children's delay of gratification and negatively associated with inattention and impulsivity at 54 months. Maternal stimulation at 15 months was negatively associated with inattention at 54 months for toddlers with higher levels of attention focusing and temperamental difficultness. The importance of attending to individual differences is discussed.

Does early maternal responsiveness buffer prenatal tobacco exposure effects on young children's behavioral disinhibition?

Children with prenatal tobacco exposure (PTE) exhibit early self-regulatory impairments, reflecting a life-course persistent propensity toward behavioral disinhibition. Previously, we demonstrated the protective role of parental responsiveness for reducing the risk of exposure-related disruptive behavior in adolescence. Here, we expanded this line of inquiry, examining whether responsiveness moderates the relation of PTE to a broader set of behavioral disinhibition features in early childhood and testing alternative diathesis-stress versus differential susceptibility explanatory models. PTE was assessed prospectively using interviews and bioassays in the Midwestern Infant Development Study (MIDS). Mother-child dyads (N = 276) were re-assessed at approximately 5 years of age in a preschool follow-up. We quantified maternal responsiveness and child behavioral disinhibition using a combination of directly observed activities in the lab and developmentally sensitive questionnaires. Results supported a diathesis-stress pattern. Children with PTE and less responsive mothers showed increased disruptive behavior and lower effortful control compared with children without PTE. In contrast, exposed children with more responsive mothers had self-regulatory profiles similar to their non-exposed peers. We did not observe sex differences. Findings provide greater specification of the protective role of maternal responsiveness for self-regulation in children with PTE and help clarify mechanisms that may underscore trajectories of exposure-related behavioral disinhibition.

Early Executive Function at Age Two Predicts Emergent Mathematics and Literacy at Age Five

Previous work has shown that individual differences in executive function (EF) are predictive of academic skills in preschoolers, kindergartners, and older children. Across studies, EF is a stronger predictor of emergent mathematics than literacy. However, research on EF in children below age three is scarce, and it is currently unknown whether EF, as assessed in toddlerhood, predicts emergent academic skills a few years later. This longitudinal study investigates whether early EF, assessed at two years, predicts (emergent) academic skills, at five years. It examines, furthermore, whether early EF is a significantly stronger predictor of emergent mathematics than of emergent literacy, as has been found in previous work on older children. A sample of 552 children was assessed on various EF and EF-precursor tasks at two years. At age five, these children performed several emergent mathematics and literacy tasks. Structural Equation Modeling was used to investigate the relationships between early EF and academic skills, modeled as latent factors. Results showed that early EF at age two was a significant and relatively strong predictor of both emergent mathematics and literacy at age five, after controlling for receptive vocabulary, parental education, and home language. Predictive relations were significantly stronger for mathematics than literacy, but only when a verbal short-term memory measure was left out as an indicator to the latent early EF construct. These findings show that individual differences in emergent academic skills just prior to entry into the formal education system can be traced back to individual differences in early EF in toddlerhood. In addition, these results highlight the importance of task selection when assessing early EF as a predictor of later outcomes, and call for further studies to elucidate the mechanisms through which individual differences in early EF and precursors to EF come about.

Parental Education and Aggressive Behavior in Children: A Moderated-Mediation Model for Inhibitory Control and Gender

Aggressive behaviors are highly prevalent in children. Given their negative consequences, it is necessary to look for protective factors that prevent or reduce their progress in early development before they become highly unshakable. With a sample of 147 children, the present study aimed to assess the relation between parental education and inhibitory control in the aggressive behavior of children aged from 7 to 10 years. The participants completed a go/no-go task to assess inhibitory control, whilst their parents reported their education level, and their teachers rated the aggressive behavior of the children through the Teacher Rating Scale (TRS) of the Behavior Assessment System for Children 2 (BASC-2). The results showed that both parental education and inhibitory control determined aggressive behavior in children. In addition, inhibitory control partially mediated the associations between parental education and aggressive behavior after accounting for age. However, a moderated mediation model revealed that lower parental education was associated with higher levels of aggressive behavior, which, in girls occurred independently of inhibitory control. In contrast, inhibitory control mediated this relation in boys. These results suggest the importance of parental education and inhibitory control in the aggressive behavior of children, supporting the idea that both constructs are relevant for understanding these conduct problems in schools, particularly in boys. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed, along with possible future lines of investigation.

The Relation between Effortful Control and Language Competence-A Small But Mighty Difference between First and Second Language Learners

The present longitudinal study evaluates the effect of effortful control (EC) as a core dimension of temperament on early language competence. We assume that first and second language competence is influenced by EC, and that immigrant children with low EC are thus at risk of an unfavorable language development. The sample consisted of n = 351 dual language learners (DLLs) with an immigrant background and n = 78 monolingual children. Language competence was measured with a standardized language test at age 4.9 years and at age 6.3 years. EC was captured with the Child Behavior Questionnaire, completed by teachers. Results of regression analyses revealed a significant effect of EC on second language development. DLLs with lower EC were found to have not only lower language competence at the beginning and the end of kindergarten but also a less favorable language development. Comparisons between the effect of EC on first and second language provide evidence that EC plays a bigger role in subsequent second language competence compared to first language competence. Overall, the results emphasize the small yet significant role of EC in the second language development of DLLs.