The Long-Term Economic Benefits of Natural Mentoring Relationships for Youth

Natural mentors have been shown to help improve psychological and educational outcomes of youth, and may serve an important role for youth experiencing risk in the home. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), we investigated the associations between natural mentors during youth and income during early adulthood, including how these relations were moderated by the absence of a father figure and race. We also estimated the lifetime economic benefits to having a natural mentor. The presence of a natural mentor alone did not have a significant impact on annual earnings during adulthood. However, youth without a father but who had a male mentor earned significantly more, on average, than those without a male mentor. These effects were more pronounced in a subsample of African American youth. The net present value of total lifetime benefits to having a male natural mentor was approximately $190,000 for all fatherless youth and $458,000 for African American fatherless youth. These results suggest that natural mentors play a crucial role in economic outcomes for youth, which may vary by sociodemographic factors.     

Relationships between regulatory temperament dimensions and self-regulatory behaviors at 4 and 6 months of age

The present study focused on relationships between temperament and behavior in early regulation development. Unlike most studies on the topic, we observed infant behavior in a naturalistic playful situation rather than in experimental stressful procedure, and employed temperament measures uniquely reflecting regulatory dispositions rather than a global measure of reactivity. The infant's self-regulatory behaviors were observed at 4 and 6 months during face-to-face interactions and regulatory dimensions were assessed at 4 months. We found that low intensity pleasure and soothability dimensions, related to the infant physical and social experience, respectively, significantly affected regulatory behavior and their influence showed to depend on the infant's age, with the former dimension being influential at the earlier age and the latter being influential when the behavior was observed at the later age. Results are interpreted on the light of a dynamic view of regulation development.     

A phonetic approach to consonant repetition in early words

The goal of this study was to evaluate movement-based principles for understanding early speech output patterns. Consonant repetition patterns within children's actual productions of word forms were analyzed using spontaneous speech data from 10 typically developing American-English learning children between 12 and 36 months of age. Place of articulation, word level patterns, and developmental trends in CVC and CVCV repeated word forms were evaluated. Labial and coronal place repetitions dominated. Regressive repetition (e.g., [gag] for “dog”) occurred frequently in CVC but not in CVCV word forms. Consonant repetition decreased over time. However, the children produced sound types available reported as being within young children's production system capabilities in consonant repetitions in all time periods. Findings suggest that a movement-based approach can provide a framework for comprehensively characterizing consonant place repetition patterns in early speech development.     

Latin American immigrant parents and their children's teachers in U.S. early childhood education programmes

For many immigrants, their children's schools offer their first sustained interaction with the major societal institutions of their new countries, and so exploring the ways in which immigrant parents manage their children's educational experiences offers insight into how they adapt to new cultural norms, customs and expectations and how they are treated in return. This study delved into the involvement of Latin American immigrant parents in U.S. education, shifting the traditional focus down from elementary and secondary school to early childhood education. Statistical analysis of nationally representative data revealed that Latina immigrants had lower frequencies of most home‐ and community‐based involvement behaviours than U.S.‐born and foreign‐born parents of varying racial/ethnic backgrounds but higher frequencies of involvement behaviours requiring participation in early childhood education programmes. As a window into these national patterns, qualitative data from an early childhood programme in an immigration‐heavy state revealed that Latina immigrant mothers and their children's teachers often talked about each other as partners in supporting children's educational experiences but that their actual interactions tended to socialise mothers into being more passive recipients of teachers' directives.     

Étude des représentations sociales toulousaines relatives à la qualité de l’accueil extrafamilial de la toute petite enfance

The eco-systemic model of quality (Bigras & Japel, 2007; Lemay & Bigras, 2012), suggests that it is essential to take into consideration the cultural context (the macro-system) in investigating the quality of early daycare services and developmental outcomes. In order to understand specific cultural values associated with quality services in Toulouse, this study explores social representations of criteria necessary to evaluate quality in out of home daycare. Structured interviews were realized with 30 parents, 47 early education professionals, 15 daycare center directors, and 11 experts (university teachers, pediatricians and psychologists). The interviews aimed at understanding educational ideologies and values, developmental objectives and definitions of quality of educational service. Thematic content analyses indicate that the predominant educational ideology is to offer children and their families an individualized service with priority given to children's affective needs. Discussion of children's early learning needs was either absent from educators’ discourse or was considered as an objective of later school life. Developmental objectives of early daycare in France concern most often the need for socio-affective regulation and acquisition of social rules. Cognitive or language development was rarely evoked. Quality of interaction between teachers and young children was rarely mentioned (process quality). Results are discussed in terms of historical, socio-economic and political specificity of the French early education context, underlining the need to examine contextual specificity in the study of the impact of quality services for child development. This study questions the validity of investigations designed to evaluate quality education as a simple universally applicable construct.     

Early trauma and serious mental illness: what role does spirituality play?

For many who experience serious mental illness, spirituality and religion can be common vehicles that provide a sense of coherence and meaning to life. However, in the presence of early trauma, spiritual and religious beliefs may be enhanced or destroyed, or never develop. This paper explores the relationship between spirituality/religion, early trauma, and serious mental illness. Three case examples from a qualitative phenomenological study are presented to illustrate spiritual and religious struggles that can arise and how a person can work through these over time to use spirituality and religion as positive resources for recovery. Tentative implications for practice are offered.     

Evidence-based strategies to support children’s emergent literacy in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries

This study was designed to examine teachers’ reported use of evidence-based strategies to support children’s emergent literacy in Arab countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The study participants comprised 644 kindergarten teachers from four countries, including Saudi Arabia (n = 154), Qatar (n = 105), United Arab Emirates (UAE) (n = 190), and Oman (n = 195). The researchers designed a 29-items questionnaire that addressed five dimensions, examining evidence-based strategies that support emergent literacy: phonological awareness, knowledge and understandings of books and other texts, print awareness, knowledge of letters and words, and early writing. The results showed that teachers reported higher use of strategies concerning knowledge of letters and words, followed by those concerning print awareness. In addition, they reported lower use of strategies concerning early writing. Moreover, teachers in the UAE reported higher use of strategies in support of emergent literacy followed by teachers in Qatar and Oman, whereas teachers in Saudi Arabia reported lower use of evidence-based strategies. Finally, statistically significant differences were found regarding teachers’ use of emergent literacy strategies due to teachers’ demographic background. Implications for future research are discussed, and they include highlighting evidence-based emergent literacy strategies in early years settings in the GCC countries as well as expanding the scope of the study to include samples from different contexts.     

The associations between autistic and communication traits in parents and developmental outcomes in children at familial risk of autism at 6 and 24 months of age

BackgroundSeveral studies have explored relationships between parent broader autism phenotype and offspring communication, and have reported that autistic-like traits in parents are related to offspring communication difficulties and autism severity. However, past research has focused on studying such associations in childhood and we know very little about them in infancy. With accumulating evidence that interventions administered during infancy may be most effective in reducing ASD symptoms, it is imperative to examine whether relationships between parent autistic-like traits and child communication appear even earlier during this critical period of life.MethodThis longitudinal study collected data from infant siblings of autistic children (N = 32) and infants with no family history of autism (N = 45) to explore how autistic-like traits in parents related to child developmental outcomes during infancy.ResultsParental communication difficulties and autistic-like traits were found to be associated with a range of child behaviours in the first two years of life, including social-emotional difficulties at 6 and 24 months, lower communication and emerging cognition at 24 months, and increased autistic behaviours at 24 months.ConclusionsBased on the results, it appears that some of the difficulties seen in parents are relayed to children genetically. These findings contribute to ASD research concerning early communication development in children and heritability of ASD traits and may have important implications in monitoring child development. Furthermore, since the current study found a significant association between autistic traits in parents and child social-emotional behaviour as early as 6 months of age, it provides evidence of the value of assessing interventions that target infancy.     

Links between television exposure and toddler dysregulation: Does culture matter?

Television exposure in early childhood has increased, with concerns raised regarding adverse effects on social-emotional development, and emerging self-regulation in particular. The present study addressed television exposure (i.e., amount of time watching TV) and its associations with toddler behavioral/emotional dysregulation, examining potential differences across 14 cultures. The sample consisted of an average of 60 toddlers from each of the 14 countries from the Joint Effort Toddler Temperament Consortium (JETTC; Gartstein & Putnam, 2018). Analyses were conducted relying on the multi-level modeling framework (MLM), accounting for between- and within-culture variability, and examining the extent to which TV exposure contributions were universal vs. variable across sites. Effects of time watching TV were evaluated in relation to temperament reactivity and regulation, as well as measures of emotional reactivity, attention difficulties, and aggression. Results indicated that more time spent watching TV was associated with higher ratings on Negative Emotionality, emotional reactivity, aggression, and attention problems, as well as lower levels of soothability. However, links between TV exposure and both attention problems and soothability varied significantly between cultures. Taken together, results demonstrate that increased time spent watching television was generally associated with dysregulation, although effects were not consistently uniform, but rather varied as a function of culturally-dependent contextual factors.     

How are social-emotional and behavioral competences and problems at age 1 year associated with infant motor development? A general population study

Based on limitations in previous research evidence, we concluded that more research is needed for deeper understanding of how social-emotional and behavioral (SEB) outcomes among infant-toddler-aged children in the general population are associated with early motor development. In this study, we investigated associations between early competencies and problems, as measured by the Brief Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (BITSEA), and the timing of achievement of the main gross and fine motor milestones usually attained during the first year of life in a general population context. The study sample consisted of 515 infants (mean age 12.9 [SD 0.9] months) and their parents (514 mothers, 434 fathers), who were recruited in child health centers in Northern Finland. The infants were divided into two groups, based on their BITSEA screen status, and motor milestone achievement ages were compared across BITSEA screen status No Concern and Of-Concern infants. An Of-Concern screen status on the maternal and paternal Competence scale and Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) item cluster was associated with later infant achievement ages for gross motor milestones. By contrast, infants who were screened to be in the Of-Concern range on the maternal Problem scale achieved gross motor milestones earlier than infants with the corresponding No Concern screen status. No significant associations were found between the paternal Problem scale screen status and infant motor development. In further analyses, the strongest associations were found between an Of-Concern screen status on the paternal Competence scale and ASD item cluster and infant motor development. The findings indicate that the inclusion of infant motor developmental information may assist early identification and the clinical interpretation of parental reports of early SEB problems. Clinical implications of the current findings are discussed in the paper.