Proximate and Ultimate Mechanisms of Human Father-child Rough-and-tumble Play

Effects of Parental Childhood Maltreatment on Children's School Adaptation: An Intergenerational Perspective Based on Envy

Previous studies have examined the impact of maternal childhood maltreatment (CM) on children's school adaptation (SA), neglecting the role of fathers, and the joint influence of both parents. Based on family systems theory, this study explored the intergenerational impact of parental CM on children's SA and the mediating role of benign envy (BE) and malicious envy (ME). A total of 334 elementary school students' BE, ME, and SA statuses and their parents' CM, BE, and ME statuses were collected to construct the intergenerational transmission models of BE and ME for fathers, mothers, and parents, respectively. The results revealed that maltreated fathers or mothers individually exerted negative impacts on their children's SA, but when parents acted jointly, only fathers' CM intergenerational influence was significant. Mediation effects demonstrated that, individually, maltreated fathers indirectly affected children's SA through children's BE; maltreated mothers impacted children's SA through the "mothers' BE→children's BE" mediating chain; however, when taking combined parental action, only mothers' intergenerational transmission chain was significantly present. Identifying different intergenerational influence mechanisms of maltreated parents on offspring's school adaptation broadens our understanding of the diverse parenting roles of parents. That is, fathers foster their offspring's environmental adaptability through encouraging external exploration, while mothers enhance socialization by nurturing internal emotional development. Formulating strategies to address the emotional issues of maltreated parents, especially mothers, is crucial for mitigating the intergenerational consequences of maltreatment and enhancing the offspring's adaptability.

Caregiver or Playmate? Fathers' and mothers' brain responses to ball-play with children

Parents and children often engage in joint play-a domain where mothers and fathers are thought to exhibit disparate behaviors and impact child development via distinct mechanisms. However, little is known about the neural substrates of mother-child and father-child play. In this fMRI study, we sampled the brain activation of parents of preschoolers (N = 88) during a novel event-related adaptation of the virtual ball-tossing game "Cyberball." Mothers (N = 40) and fathers (N = 48) played "Cyberball" ostensibly with their own and an unrelated child, who consecutively included, excluded, and reincluded parents. We found that overall, exclusion yielded comparable neural activations in mothers and fathers associated with mentalizing, saliency, and emotion processing. We also observed a parent gender effect in several brain areas. While mothers exhibited increased reward- and attention-related activity during inclusion, fathers displayed increased mentalizing-related activity during exclusion. Furthermore, we tested parents' response to reinclusion, which revealed a selective decrease in reward-related activity. Finally, exploratory analyses showed that parental involvement was positively correlated with parental brain activity within attention- and mentalizing-related areas during inclusion, as opposed to other game phases, and that an anxious parenting style was associated with increased neural sensitivity for game events involving their own child. Overall, our study elucidates the common and distinct neural networks that mothers and fathers engage during play interactions with their children, supporting theories that postulate only a partial differentiation of paternal and maternal parenting systems.

Paternal involvement and peer competence in young children: the mediating role of playfulness

Objective

The capacity to interact with peers during early childhood can profoundly and enduringly influence later development and adaptation. Previous research has indicated that paternal involvement plays a vital role in shaping children's peer competence. However, limited research has been conducted on this association within the Chinese cultural contexts or on the potential mechanisms that underlie it. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate whether there is a close link between paternal involvement and peer competence in Chinese young children, as well as whether children's playfulness mediates this relationship.

Method

The Chinese version of the Paternal Involvement Questionnaire (FIQ) was distributed to 359 fathers with children (4-6 years old). Children's Playfulness Scale (CPS) and Ability to Associate With Partners Scale (AAPS) were distributed to the children's mothers.

Results

(1) There are positive correlations between paternal involvement, young children's playfulness and peer competence after controlling for the demographic variables of age and gender. (2) Paternal involvement is positively related to young children's peer competence. (3) Playfulness partially mediated the relationship between paternal involvement and children's peer competence. Findings from this study emphasize the significance of paternal involvement in enhancing young children's peer competence, while also highlighting the value of positive emotional traits such as playfulness for fostering family interaction and promoting young child development.

Animal play and evolution: Seven timely research issues about enigmatic phenomena

The nature of play in animals has been long debated, but progress is being made in characterizing play and its variants, documenting its distribution across vertebrate and invertebrate taxa, describing its mechanisms and development, and proposing testable theories about its origins, evolution, and adaptive functions. To achieve a deeper understanding of the functions and evolution of play, integrative and conceptual advances are needed in neuroscience, computer modeling, phylogenetics, experimental techniques, behavior development, and inter- and intra-specific variation. The special issue contains papers documenting many of these advances. Here, we describe seven timely areas where further research is needed to understand this still enigmatic class of phenomena more fully. Growing empirical and theoretical evidence reveals that play has been crucial in the evolution of behavior and psychology but has been underestimated, if not ignored, in both empirical and theoretical areas of evolutionary biology and neuroscience. Play research has important ramifications for understanding the evolution of cognition, emotion, and culture, and research on animals can be both informative and transformative.