Sentiment de compétence paternelle et adaptation socioaffective des enfants de deux à six ans en contexte de précarité socioéconomique

How fathers perceive their paternal competence when they live in disadvantaged conditions and how it affects young children's socioemotional behaviors? One hundred and eighty-seven fathers of 2 to 6 years old children completed the Child Behavior CheckList as well as the Parenting Sense of Competence Scale. Living in disadvantaged conditions, fathers feel in average less competent in their paternal role (P < 0.05) and children manifest more socioemotional problems (P = 0.001). However, children's behaviours are not affected by socioeconomic disadvantage when paternal sense of competence is strong. These results highlight the importance to take into consideration paternal sense of competence when treating young children's socioemotional problems living in disadvantaged conditions.     

How parents introduce new words to young children: The influence of development and developmental disorders

This study documents how parents weave new words into on-going interactions with children who are just beginning to speak. Dyads with typically developing toddlers and with young children with autism spectrum disorder and Down syndrome (n = 56, 23, and 29) were observed using a Communication Play Protocol during which parents could use novel words to refer to novel objects. Parents readily introduced both labels and sound words even when their child did not respond expressively or produce the words. Results highlight both how parents act in ways that may facilitate their child's appreciation of the relation between a new word and its referent and how they subtly adjust their actions to suit their child's level of word learning and specific learning challenges.     

Delivering Parent Management Training in an Integrated Primary Care Setting: Description and Preliminary Outcome Data

This paper describes how behavioral health consultants (BHCs) in an integrated primary care setting use evidence-based principles that underlie parent management training (PMT) to assist caregivers of youth with externalizing behavior problems. Illustrated is the decision-making process that BHCs utilize from the moment they receive a patient referral from a primary care provider to how interventions are selected and delivered. When delivering PMT in integrated care, operant-based learning principles underlying PMT are often selected based on a combination of factors, including match with presenting problem, caregiver efficacy, caregiver beliefs about the causes and maintaining factors, and feasibility of implementation. We further present preliminary outcome data on the effectiveness of BHCs’ efforts to use PMT principles in a primary care setting. Participants were 21 caregivers and their children (M_age = 7.76 years, 38.1% female; 66.7% Hispanic) seen for an average of 2.38 visits. Pre-post data provided by caregivers (for youth 11 years or younger) and adolescents (self-report of patients 12–17 years of age) taken at the time of first and last sessions revealed significant reductions in global distress scores and high levels of satisfaction with services received. Findings support the viability of providing brief, focused PMT interventions for pediatric populations seen in primary care.     

The role of prosody and long-term phonological knowledge in Japanese children's nonword repetition performance

This study investigated the effects of association values and the influences of prosodic information on Japanese children's repetition of nonwords with varying association values and with or without pitch accent. Fifteen 3- and 4-year-olds (mean age = 4.42 years, range: 3.9–4.9) and nineteen 5- and 6-year-olds (mean age = 5.71 years, range: 5.1–6.1) participated in this experiment. Concerning the nonword repetition scores, an effect of association value was found only in older children for consonants of nonwords only, whereas the effect of accent pattern was observed only in young children for both consonants and vowels of nonwords. The occurrences of both effects were connected to differences in the ages of the children and the types of phoneme in nonwords. We interpret these results in the context of the framework of phonological working memory.     

Prosocial tendencies predict friendship quality, but not for popular children

Is prosocial behavior a prerequisite for having good-quality friendships? This study (N = 477, mean age = 12.2 years) examined whether the link between children’s prosocial tendencies and their perceived friendship quality was dependent on children’s level of popularity in the peer group. Children’s prosocial tendencies were assessed both as observed behavior in a standardized setting and as a self-reported predisposition to act in prosocial ways. Across measures, the results showed that prosocial tendencies are associated with higher perceived friendship quality among nonpopular children (i.e., children holding average or lower levels of popularity), but not among popular children. Thus, even if they lack prosocial qualities, popular children are still able to hold good-quality friendships. Popular children may have other compensating characteristics, such as popularity by association, that make them attractive for peers to be friends with.     

Coaching Approach Behavior and Leading by Modeling: Rationale,Principles, and a Session-by-Session Description of the CALM Program for Early Childhood Anxiety

Whereas the cognitive-behavioral treatment of childhood anxiety has been well-researched and empirically supported over the last 20 years, interventions for anxiety in young children (ages 7 and below) have garnered little attention. Because young children generally lack the required developmental skills to effectively engage in cognitive-behavioral treatment, a simple downward extension of treatments used for older children is inappropriate. The CALM program (Coaching Approach behavior and Leading by Modeling) was developed as a developmentally compatible intervention to treat anxiety disorders in young children ages 3 to 7. The CALM program is an adaptation of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), and an extension of Pincus, Eyberg, and Choate's (2000) adaptation of PCIT for young children with separation anxiety disorder. It is a parent-focused treatment that teaches parents skills to effectively reinforce their children's brave behavior and coaches the use of these skills during in-session parent-child interactions. The treatment emphasizes live, bug-in-the-ear coaching of parents during in vivo exposure sessions. This article describes the CALM program in detail.     

L’utilisation précoce des écrans est-elle néfaste ? Une première réponse avec la cohorte Elfe

In France, a recent well-documented book by Desmurget (2019) severely condemned all use of screen by preschoolers. Desmurget speaks from a danger of decerebration leading to dumbass children. However, a critical analysis of his argumentation suggests that such a rejection could be an overly radical position. The French longitudinal study, Elfe, was initiated in 2011 on more than 18,000 newborns. Follow-up was intensive in the infancy and pre-school periods, including a telephone interview of the mother (or, if not available, the father) at age 3.5 years. In this interview, the mothers answered many questions about the use of screens (here limited to tablets, computers, and smartphones) by their children. The children were then tested in 2016, when they were in the nursery school (4- to 5-year-olds, 57 months in mean), with a large cognitive test, involving both literacy (n = 35) and numeracy (n = 24) items, and a visual attention test, the Teddy bears cancellation test. In the latter test, the participant is asked to cross out, with the pencil in his/her dominant hand, all the teddy bears (n = 15) distributed on the page among 60 distractors in one minute of time. Moreover, the teachers were asked to rate the children's competence in cognitive (language, maths, sciences) and non-cognitive (physical or musical activities) domains and their social behaviors (helping, sharing, and attention to others) on a 3 or 5-items Likert-scale. Regression analysis of the total cognitive test score on the screen use, adjusted for age, gender, mother's study level, family's income, and number of siblings, showed an association between computer use and cognitive performance in nursery school. Correlations between screen use and, respectively, the cognitive test score, the visual attention test, the teachers’ rating about the performance or behavior of their students was never significantly negative. In fact, some were even significantly positive, albeit low and non-conclusive due to the limitations of the study. The results, both of the regression and correlational analyses, are consistent with our suggestion that Desmurget's position is overly radical but do not exclude that, in the long term, the early use of screen can be the basis of a future addiction.     

Reprint of “Co-occurring motor,language and emotional–behavioral problems in children 3–6 years of age”

PurposeDevelopmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) has been shown to co-occur with behavioral and language problems in school-aged children, but little is known as to when these problems begin to emerge, or if they are inherent in children with DCD. The purpose of this study was to determine if deficits in language and emotional–behavioral problems are apparent in preschool-aged children with movement difficulties.MethodTwo hundred and fourteen children (mean age 4 years 11 months, SD 9.8 months, 103 male) performed the Movement Assessment Battery for Children 2nd Edition (MABC-2). Children falling at or below the 16th percentile were classified as being at risk for movement difficulties (MD risk). Auditory comprehension and expressive communication were examined using the Preschool Language Scales 4th Edition (PLS-4). Parent-reported emotional and behavioral problems were assessed using the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL).ResultsPreschool children with diminished motor coordination (n = 37) were found to have lower language scores, higher externalizing behaviors in the form of increased aggression, as well as increased withdrawn and other behavior symptoms compared with their typically developing peers.ConclusionsMotor coordination, language and emotional–behavioral difficulties tend to co-occur in young children aged 3–6 years. These results highlight the need for early intervention.     

Co-occurring motor,language and emotional–behavioral problems in children 3–6 years of age

PurposeDevelopmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) has been shown to co-occur with behavioral and language problems in school-aged children, but little is known as to when these problems begin to emerge, or if they are inherent in children with DCD. The purpose of this study was to determine if deficits in language and emotional–behavioral problems are apparent in preschool-aged children with movement difficulties.MethodTwo hundred and fourteen children (mean age 4 years 11 months, SD 9.8 months, 103 male) performed the Movement Assessment Battery for Children 2nd Edition (MABC-2). Children falling at or below the 16th percentile were classified as being at risk for movement difficulties (MD risk). Auditory comprehension and expressive communication were examined using the Preschool Language Scales 4th Edition (PLS-4). Parent-reported emotional and behavioral problems were assessed using the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL).ResultsPreschool children with diminished motor coordination (n = 37) were found to have lower language scores, higher externalizing behaviors in the form of increased aggression, as well as increased withdrawn and other behavior symptoms compared with their typically developing peers.ConclusionsMotor coordination, language and emotional–behavioral difficulties tend to co-occur in young children aged 3–6 years. These results highlight the need for early intervention.     

Are “late-signing” deaf children “mindblind”? Understanding goal directedness in imitation

Recent studies with “late-signing” deaf children (deaf children born into families in which no-one uses a sign language) have indicated that they have difficulty performing tasks that require them to reason about other people's false beliefs. However, virtually no research has so far investigated how far late signers’ difficulties with mental state understanding extend. This paper reports one study that uses an imitation paradigm to examine whether late signers may also have difficulty in interpreting other people's actions in terms of their goals. Both late-signing (N = 15) and second generation “native-signing” deaf children (N = 19) produced a pattern of responses to this task that indicates that they can and readily do view the actions of others as goal-directed. We conclude that this form of mental state understanding (generally seen as a precursor to understanding false beliefs) is intact in late-signing deaf children.     

Individual differences in effects of child care quality: The role of child affective self-regulation and gender

The current study investigated whether the relation between child care quality and children's socio-emotional behavior depended on children's affective self-regulation skills and gender. Participants were 545 children (M_age = 27 months) from 60 center-based child care centers in the Netherlands. Multi-level analyses showed that children with low affective self-regulation skills or who were male demonstrated less teacher-rated social competence when exposed to relatively low quality child care. In addition, children with low affective self-regulation skills also showed more social competence in the case of relatively high quality child care, suggesting mechanisms of differential susceptibility. No main effects of child care quality or interactions were found for teacher- and parent-rated externalizing behavior. These findings emphasize the importance of considering children's affective self-regulation skills and gender in understanding the effects of child care quality. High quality child care can be a means to strengthen children's social development.     

Rational action selection in 1½- to 3-year-olds following an extended training experience

Previous studies failed to find evidence for rational action selection in children under 2 years of age. The current study investigated whether younger children required more training to encode the relevant causal relationships. Children between 1½ and 3 years of age were trained over two sessions to perform actions on a touch-sensitive screen to obtain video clips as outcomes. Subsequently, a visual habituation procedure was employed to devalue one of the training outcomes. As in previous studies, 2- and 3-year-olds chose actions associated with an expected valued outcome significantly more often during a subsequent choice test. Moreover, analysis of children’s first responses in the post-devaluation test revealed evidence of rational action selection even in the youngest age group (18–23 months). Consistent with dual-process accounts of action control, the findings support the view that the ability to make rational action choices develops gradually.     

Development of self-perceived ability in elementary school: the role of parents’ perceptions,teacher evaluations,and intelligence

The present study examined the importance of different sources of information for the development of children's self-perceptions of early school-related ability. In a sample of German elementary school children (N = 595) it was demonstrated that the associations between pupils’ ability self-perceptions on the one hand and parents’ perception of their children's ability, pupils’ intelligence and teacher-rated school achievement on the other increased throughout elementary school. In a second step, commonality analyses were employed in two subsamples (N = 416 and N = 145) to partition variance in children's self-perceptions that was specifically explained by either teacher-rated school achievement or parents’ perceptions, or by both variables. The results support the assumption that the importance of teacher evaluations for children's ability self-perceptions increases while the importance of parents’ perceptions decreases during the early school years.     

Effets du bilinguisme précoce sur la flexibilité représentationnelle et procédurale dans le dessin du bonhomme

The present research aims to evaluate representational and procedural flexibility by comparing the performances of simultaneous bilingual children French-Arabic (n = 28), successive bilingual children Tamil-French (n = 21) and French monolinguals (n = 24) at 5 years old and at 8 years old educated, in public school, in a disadvantaged neighborhood. The paradigm of the man that does not exist (Karmiloff-Smith, 1990) has been proposed to measure the ability to introduce graphic innovation into a familiar production and drawing a man by starting with the foot (Baldy, 2010) was used to evaluate the ability to make an usual pattern in an unusual way. The results show that bilingual children as young as 5 years old produce significantly more inter-categorical innovations than their monolingual peers while in monolingual children this capacity doesn’t appear until 8 years old. In procedural representations, the results are more nuanced. The underlying mechanisms that explain the best performance of bilingual children are discussed.     

Reasoning about knowledge: Children’s evaluations of generality and verifiability

In a series of experiments, we examined 3- to 8-year-old children’s (N = 223) and adults’ (N = 32) use of two properties of testimony to estimate a speaker’s knowledge: generality and verifiability. Participants were presented with a “Generic speaker” who made a series of 4 general claims about “pangolins” (a novel animal kind), and a “Specific speaker” who made a series of 4 specific claims about “this pangolin” as an individual. To investigate the role of verifiability, we systematically varied whether the claim referred to a perceptually-obvious feature visible in a picture (e.g., “has a pointy nose”) or a non-evident feature that was not visible (e.g., “sleeps in a hollow tree”). Three main findings emerged: (1) young children showed a pronounced reliance on verifiability that decreased with age. Three-year-old children were especially prone to credit knowledge to speakers who made verifiable claims, whereas 7- to 8-year-olds and adults credited knowledge to generic speakers regardless of whether the claims were verifiable; (2) children’s attributions of knowledge to generic speakers was not detectable until age 5, and only when those claims were also verifiable; (3) children often generalized speakers’ knowledge outside of the pangolin domain, indicating a belief that a person’s knowledge about pangolins likely extends to new facts. Findings indicate that young children may be inclined to doubt speakers who make claims they cannot verify themselves, as well as a developmentally increasing appreciation for speakers who make general claims.     

Direction counts: a comparative study of spatially directional counting biases in cultures with different reading directions

Western adults associate small numbers with left space and large numbers with right space. Where does this pervasive spatial–numerical association come from? In this study, we first recorded directional counting preferences in adults with different reading experiences (left to right, right to left, mixed, and illiterate) and observed a clear relationship between reading and counting directions. We then recorded directional counting preferences in preschoolers and elementary school children from three of these reading cultures (left to right, right to left, and mixed). Culture-specific counting biases existed before reading acquisition in children as young as 3 years and were subsequently modified by early reading experience. Together, our results suggest that both directional counting and scanning activities contribute to number–space associations.     

Transcultural validation and reliability of the Spanish version of the behaviour of young novice drivers scale (BYNDS) in a Colombian young driver population

The overrepresentation of young drivers in road crashes, and the fatalities and injuries arising from those crashes, is an intractable problem around the world. A plethora of research has led to the development and application of a range of research tools, including self-report survey instruments. One such instrument, the five-factor Behaviour of Young Novice Driver Scale (BYNDS), was developed in an Australian young driver population, and has recently been validated in a New Zealand young driver population. The current study aimed to validate the BYNDS in a Colombian young driver population, the first application of the instrument in a developing country. Translation from English to Spanish, and back translation from Spanish to English, in addition to culturally-appropriate modifications (such as changing ‘right hand side’ to ‘left hand side’) resulted in a Spanish version of the BYNDS (BYNDS-Sp). The BYNDS-Sp was administered to a sample of 392 young drivers aged 16–24 years (n = 353 aged 19–24 years) with a valid driver’s licence. An exploratory factor analysis revealed a six factor structure using 40 of the original 44 BYNDS-Sp items, accounting for 58.5% of the variance in self-reported risky driving behaviour. Ninety-three percent of participants reported having ready access to their own vehicle (42% owned their own vehicle), with Colombian young drivers most likely to report driving at night and on the weekend. The majority of participants reported driving in excess of posted speed limits (e.g., only one third of participants reported never driving 10–20 km/h over the speed limit), and driving in response to their mood (e.g., only one third of participants reported they never drove faster if in a bad mood). As such, the BYNDS-Sp can reveal patterns of problematic behaviours (such as risky driving exposure), in addition to specific behaviours of concern (such as carrying passengers at night, and driving when tired), guiding the development and implementation of interventions targeting the risky driving behaviour of young drivers in Colombia. In addition, the BYNDS-Sp can be used as a measure of intervention success if used as a baseline and as a follow-up tool. Further research can investigate the utility and applicability of the BYNDS-Sp in other Spanish-speaking countries, such as Spain and Mexico.     

Sur la différenciation des aptitudes cognitives de l'enfant

Data from the standardization sample of a French intelligence scale for children aged from 4 to 9 years (Échelles Différentielles d'Efficiences Intellectuelles) were examined to verify the ability differentiation hypothesis. The whole sample (n = 574) was divided into three age groups (4–5, 6–7 and 8–9 years) and multisample confirmatory factor analyses were performed. Results showed that correlations between subtests, factor loadings, correlation between factors, and residual variance of subtests were similar across age groups. This finding doesn't seem to be the consequence of a sampling bias or a positive correlation between age and reliability or variability of subtest scores. Like results of other recent research on this question, it challenges the hypothesis of a differentiation of abilities during childhood, at least when studies are conducted with intellectual composite scales applied to unselected samples of participants.     

Development of motor imagery and anticipatory action planning in children with developmental coordination disorder – A longitudinal approach

Children with impaired motor coordination (or Development Coordination Disorder – DCD) have difficulty with the predictive control of movements, evidenced by cross-sectional studies that show impaired motor imagery and action planning abilities. What remains unclear is whether this deficit in predictive control reflects immaturity of the motor system (a developmental delay) or some deviation from normal development (a disorder). To advance this discussion the present study used a longitudinal design to examine the development of motor imagery and action planning in children with DCD. Thirty children were included in the DCD group (aged 6–11 years) and age- and gender-matched to 30 controls. The DCD group had a mABC-2 score ≤ 16th percentile, the control group > 20th percentile. Motor imagery was assessed with the hand rotation task, action planning with a test for end-state comfort. Children participated in three measurements, with one year in between measurements. Results showed that children with DCD were slower and less accurate than their typically developing peers in all subsequent years but were able to improve their motor imagery ability over time. Furthermore, children with DCD showed less planning for ESC at the start of the present study, but were able to catch up with their peers during two-year follow up. These results exemplify that improvement of motor imagery and action planning ability is possible in DCD, and they lend theoretical support to the use of new training techniques that focus on training motor imagery to improve motor skills in children with DCD.     

Nonbelieved memories in middle-aged and older people

Previous studies have reported that young participants typically date events that they remember, but no longer believe they experienced, to the period of childhood. The present study investigated whether participants aged between 40 and 79 years dated events related to relinquished memories to the period of childhood, as do younger people, or whether they dated such events to a period later in life. The study also compared believed and nonbelieved memories with respect to memory perspective (1st vs 3rd person perspective). Results indicated that the majority of middle-aged and older people dated nonbelieved memories to the period of childhood (median age = 8 years). No correlation was found between the participants’ current age and their age at the time the nonbelieved event occurred. In addition, results showed that believed memories were more likely to be retrieved from a 1st person perspective than were nonbelieved memories.