Field Of Developmental Psychology Research Articles

Perspectives on the impact of generative AI on early‐childhood development and education

AbstractGenerative artificial intelligence (GAI) is rapidly becoming ubiquitous in many contexts. There is limited scholarship, however, in the fields of Developmental Psychology and Early Childhood Education exploring the implications of generative AI for babies and young children. In this Perspectives piece, we discuss potential use cases, opportunities, and risks for the application of AI in early childhood. Our insights are informed by extensive discussion with stakeholders and by desk research carried out in our roles as academics and analysts in a social innovation foundation. Our aim is to stimulate nuanced and informed discourse on the topic of generative AI in early childhood that can inform innovation in both research and practice.

"Appraisal of a Nonconforming Childrearing: A Debate in the Field of Developmental Psychology"

"Appraisal of a Nonconforming Childrearing: A Debate in the Field of Developmental Psychology"

What makes a great mentor? Two lenses borrowed from the field of developmental psychology.

What makes a great mentor? Two lenses borrowed from the field of developmental psychology.

Evolving Perspectives and Methodologies in Developmental Psychology

In the ever-expanding realm of psychological science, the domain of developmental psychology has emerged as a beacon of innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration. Recent years have witnessed an unparalleled diversification in the approaches used to decipher the intricate processes underlying human development across the lifespan. This letter aims to encapsulate the significant advancements within developmental psychology, highlighting the integration of evolutionary perspectives, cultural psychology, neuroscience, and the vital emphasis on diversity and inclusivity. The KMAN Counseling and Psychology Nexus, with its pioneering approach to scholarly publishing, stands at the forefront of these developments. By fostering an environment that encourages innovative and impactful research, the journal plays a crucial role in shaping the future of psychological science. It is my hope that this letter will inspire further exploration and dialogue within the field of developmental psychology, encouraging researchers and practitioners alike to contribute to the rich tapestry of knowledge that defines our understanding of human development. In conclusion, the field of developmental psychology is at a pivotal juncture, marked by significant advancements and an ever-expanding horizon of research possibilities. By continuing to embrace interdisciplinary approaches, diversity, and inclusivity, we can ensure that the study of human development remains a vibrant and integral part of psychological science. I look forward to witnessing the future contributions that will emerge from this dynamic field, further enriching our understanding of the complex journey of human development.

Thinking Three, Revisited Infants, Coparents, Gender Roles, and Cultural Contexts.

Tracing its beginnings to the mid-1990s, coparenting theory and research, guided greatly by Minuchin's structural family theory, have deepened socialization perspectives in the field of developmental psychology. Coparenting theory has perhaps had its largest impact in the field of infant-family mental health, where empirical investigations of coparenting and family level dynamics have dovetailed with studies of family alliances and triangles and inspired creative interventions to support families of infants and toddlers. In this article, the authors retrace some of the early accounts of coparenting and triangular interactions during infancy, highlighting symmetries with analogue conceptualizations discovered in the field of family therapy. Emphasizing key concepts and lessons divined from the infant-family mental health literature holding value for the practice of family therapy, the article also recognizes the dominant Euro-Western bias that has shaped much of the extant literature to date. A closing section addresses two important areas calling for more concerted attention by infant-family mental health experts and family therapists alike - under-appreciated and misunderstood elements of men's psychology connected to their core self-definition, and cultural distinctions in normal family processes. In both cases, if misread or misunderstood by the helping professional, the recipients of therapeutic services may experience failures of empathy.

The Evolution of Developmental Theories Since Piaget: A Metaview.

History counts and cannot be overlooked. As a case in point, the origins of major theoretical tensions in the field of developmental psychology are traced back to Piaget (1896-1980), who paved the way to major discoveries regarding the origins and development of cognition. His theory framed much of the new ideas on early cognitive development that emerged in the 1970s, in the footsteps of the 1960s' cognitive revolution. Here, I retrace major conceptual changes since Piaget and provide a metaview on empirical findings that may have triggered the call for such changes. Nine theoretical views and intuitions are identified, all in strong reaction to some or all of the four cornerstone assumptions of Piaget's developmental account (i.e., action realism, domain generality, stages, and late representation). As a result, new and more extreme stances are now taken in the nature-versus-nurture debate. These stances rest on profoundly different, often clashing theoretical intuitions that keep shaping developmental research since Piaget.

Human Nature in Self-Identity Construct: A Meta-ethnography Study

The development of identity theories in psychology tends to be partial and incoherent, and are followed by various problems. This study uses meta-ethnography to deconstruct theories of self-identity in order to find common threads and relation between theories, including main theories on identity (Erikson’s; Marcia’s), and other related theories (Berzonsky’s, Grotevant’s, Waterman’s, McAdams’s), This study uses Hofstede's (2001) view on identity theories, and formulates a fundamental and comprehensive conceptualization of identity theory. This study formulates a model of the layers of identity which includes the identity of (1) human nature, (2) personal, and (3) social. This study also explains the dynamics of the self as ‘I’ and ‘Me’ in the formation of identity. This study discusses human nature in the discourse of identity and this provides further implications in the field of developmental psychology and educational psychology.

The Development of the Perceptions of Childhood Scale

ABSTRACT To date, no measure of perceptions reflecting the view of childhood as a social construction exists within the fields of developmental psychology or education. The aim of this small-scale study was to develop items to assess beliefs about children along a spectrum – at one end of the spectrum conceptualizing children as human beings and at the other end of the spectrum conceptualizing children as human becomings—and to determine if factor analysis could be used to identify underlying constructs to develop a scale suitable for research and practitioner use. Factor analysis identified three subscales, defined as Present-Future Emphasis, Response to Child’s Worldview, and Value in Society. The study presents a promising tool. Further research with a larger sample of participants can verify if the factor solution can be replicated to demonstrate generalizability.

ДЖУДИТ РИЧ ХАРРИС И ЕЕ КОНЦЕПЦИЯ СОЦИАЛИЗАЦИИ: КРИТИЧЕСКИЕ АСПЕКТЫ

The concept of socialization and the child’s personality development by Judith Rich Harris, a specialist in the field of developmental psychology, is discussed. Her innovative work at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries contributed to the revision of ideas about the role of the environment and heredity in human development. J.R. Harris is best known as the author of the controversial books The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do (1998) and No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality (2006). She criticized the common view that parents and parenting styles in the family serve as determining factors in the development of children’s personality. The main idea of Judith Harris’s work is that a child’s personality is shaped more by his immediate social environment and heredity than by the deliberate efforts of parents and teachers. She argues that contextual sensitivity underlies human social adaptation. The child’s behavior is specific to the situation in which it was formed, and such behavior is spontaneously restructured when entering a different social environment, taking into account the requirements of the new situation. J.R. Harris argues that the upbringing that children receive in the family has no lasting effects on the personality development, unlike the behaviors that are formed by children outside the home. Children are socialized primarily through interactions with peers, and their personalities are developed through experiences growing up outside the family circle. Developmental psychology in general and socialization research in particular at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries received incentives to revise established perceptions thanks to the successes of biological sciences, behavioral genetics and deciphering the human genome. Observations by linguists, ethnographers, biologists, and anthropologists also encourage modern psychologists to reconsider conventional concepts.

DRAW.IN.G.: A tool to explore children's representation of the preschool environment.

The use of drawing as a research tool has often been the subject of debate in the field of developmental psychology, especially for the exploration of children's meanings on a specific topic. Methodological limitations do emerge when using drawing in research, especially in preschool age. One of the main critical aspects concerns the lack of systematic and standardized coding methods that include clear and operationalizable categories to analyze the content of the drawings, and that associate a brief interview with the children aimed at avoiding misinterpretations. To bridge this gap, the present contribution introduces a new methodological tool named DRAW.IN.G. (DRAWing and Interview Grid), consisting of a specific procedure and a coding system that allow for a systematic investigation of implicit and explicit levels of children's representation emerging via drawings and interviews. The specific topic investigated by DRAW.IN.G. is children's representation of the preschool environment; the scarcity of studies on this issue, despite the importance of including children's point of view in the design processes of educational spaces makes the tool particularly current and relevant to fill some gaps in research in the educational field. The DRAW.IN.G. coding system, developed on the basis of existing literature on the analysis of drawings, includes five main dimensions of children's representation of the educational environment: physical, behavioral, relational, emotional and motivational dimensions, articulated in 18 macro-categories and 90 categories that make up the scoring grid. To assess the validity of the method, a first application was conducted with a sample of 262 children (141 males, 121 females; mean age = 55.78 months; SD = 11.10; range 37-77 months) from five Italian preschools. Categorical inter-rater reliability of two independent raters showed good to excellent agreement for the categories of the grid, indicating their appropriateness and clarity. The validation study indicated the potential of the method, also revealing some critical aspects to be considered. Both methodological and practical implications are discussed.

Thoughts About Teaching: A Nursing Discipline-Specific Perspective of Lifespan Growth and Development.

This essay addresses a nursing discipline- specific approach to teaching a course about lifespan growth and development. This course may be a requirement for the baccalaureate degree in nursing, offered as a pre-requisite to the nursing major or relevant content may be integrated into clinical courses. Noteworthy is that the content for the course frequently is drawn from the field of developmental psychology. In this essay, I offer a nursing-discipline specific approach guided by Meleis' transitions framework and the Roper-Logan-Tierney model of nursing based on activities of daily living.

Intuitive physics learning in a deep-learning model inspired by developmental psychology

‘Intuitive physics’ enables our pragmatic engagement with the physical world and forms a key component of ‘common sense’ aspects of thought. Current artificial intelligence systems pale in their understanding of intuitive physics, in comparison to even very young children. Here we address this gap between humans and machines by drawing on the field of developmental psychology. First, we introduce and open-source a machine-learning dataset designed to evaluate conceptual understanding of intuitive physics, adopting the violation-of-expectation (VoE) paradigm from developmental psychology. Second, we build a deep-learning system that learns intuitive physics directly from visual data, inspired by studies of visual cognition in children. We demonstrate that our model can learn a diverse set of physical concepts, which depends critically on object-level representations, consistent with findings from developmental psychology. We consider the implications of these results both for AI and for research on human cognition.

Can group representations based on relational cues warrant the rich inferences typically drawn from group membership?

Pietraszewski's model - though promising in many respects - needs to be extended so that it can explain the multitude of rich inferences that people draw from group membership. In this commentary, we highlight some facets of group thinking, especially from the field of developmental psychology, that cannot be unambiguously accounted for by a model that is built solely on relational cues.

A Meta-analysis of the Relationship between Motor Skills and Executive Functions in Typically-developing Children

ABSTRACT The relationship between motor skills and executive functions (EFs) is gaining prominence in the field of developmental psychology. However, evidence of the motor skills–EFs link in children with typical development is somewhat inconsistent and there has been no adequate attempt to evaluate it systematically across studies. In view of this, the present meta-analysis was carried out to investigate the relationship between the global domains of motor skills and EFs; and to explore specific associations between different components of motor skills (balance, manual dexterity, locomotor skills, and object control skills) and EFs (response inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility) in typically developing children. The analysis involved data on 4,866 children between the ages of 3 and 12 years, taken from 32 studies. The results revealed a significant positive association between motor skills and EFs at the global level, as well as at the specific level of analysis. At the specific level of analysis, balance and manual dexterity were found to have the strongest independent associations with all EF components. Moderator analysis revealed an age effect between balance and response inhibition only. In summary, the present meta-analysis provides evidence for the theoretical assumption of a link between motor skills and EFs and emphasizes the importance of including cognitively engaging motor tasks in intervention programs designed to promote motor skills and higher-order cognitive skills in children.

Steps towards a Phenomenology of Video Games—Some Thoughts on Analyzing Aesthetics and Experience

This paper aims at conceiving a heuristic framework for analyzing video game aesthetics as well as the ways in which these aesthetics are experienced. As the main point of departure for the thoughts laid out throughout the article, I turn to phenomenological contributions to film, media and game studies—with a special emphasis on approaches to kinaesthesia. After discussing essential papers on the kinaesthetic experience of playing video games as well as drawing on a phenomenological approach to the intersubjective sharing of affects by means of kinaesthesia conceived within the field of developmental psychology, I turn to a series of brief game-analytical sketches that are supposed to highlight certain aspects of experiencing time, space, and materiality while playing video games. Finally, the specific quality of interactive intersubjectivity in video gaming is discussed, resulting in the introduction of the theoretical concept of auto-affectivity.

Jerome Kagan: February 25, 1929–May 10, 2021

We note, with sadness, the passing of Dr Jerome Kagan, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Harvard University, and pioneering researcher in the field of developmental psychology.

A neural model of vulnerability and resilience to stress-related disorders linked to differential susceptibility.

Expert opinion remains divided concerning the impact of putative risk factors on vulnerability to depression and other stress-related disorders. A large body of literature has investigated gene by environment interactions, particularly between the serotonin transporter polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) and negative environments, on the risk for depression. However, fewer studies have simultaneously investigated the outcomes in both negative and positive environments, which could explain some of the inconclusive findings. This is embodied by the concept of differential susceptibility, i.e., the idea that certain common gene polymorphisms, prenatal factors, and traits make some individuals not only disproportionately more susceptible and responsive to negative, vulnerability-promoting environments, but also more sensitive and responsive to positive, resilience-enhancing environmental conditions. Although this concept from the field of developmental psychology is well accepted and supported by behavioral findings, it is striking that its implementation in neuropsychiatric research is limited and that underlying neural mechanisms are virtually unknown. Based on neuroimaging studies that examined how factors mediating differential susceptibility affect brain function, we posit that environmental sensitivity manifests in increased salience network activity, increased salience and default mode network connectivity, and increased salience and central executive network connectivity. These changes in network function may bring about automatic exogenous attention for positive and negative stimuli and flexible attentional set-shifting. We conclude with a call to action; unraveling the neural mechanisms through which differential susceptibility factors mediate vulnerability and resilience may lead us to personalized preventive interventions.

Advancing School Professionals’ Dyslexia Knowledge Through Neuroscience: Bridging the Science-Education Gap Through Developmental Psychology

This review presents a summary of the research on advancing dyslexia knowledge among school professionals. It contributes to the literature with a proposed solution for professional development and teacher training through the field of developmental psychology. The article outlines what has been done to address the science-education gap owing to misunderstandings about dyslexia, proposing a solution to advance school professionals’ knowledge of dyslexia through developmental psychology coursework aimed at the neuroscience of dyslexia, including basic and cognitive neuroscience concepts. The review outlines the legislative and research support for this proposal as well as the candidate knowledge focused on the neuroscience of dyslexia to address gaps in professional knowledge and practice. The review includes a discussion section with implications for research and practice.

The Happy Campaign: Assessing the Effects of a Community-Wide Intervention on Older Adults Living in Public Housing

In the field of developmental psychology, the Stress-and-Coping model (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) posits that individual differences in biological, psychological, and social risk and protective factors serve to increase or buffer the impact of stressful experiences on psychological well-being later in life. Importantly, research suggests that residents of public housing generally experience more risk factors than elders at large (Rabins, et al. 1996). The present study examines the impact of a programmatic intervention, The Happy Campaign, on individuals living in public housing in a small Midwestern city (aged 51-90 years; Mage= 63.3 years; SDage= 8.6 years). Goals of the Happy Campaign were to improve residents’ coping skills and increase perceived support. Results demonstrated significant improvement in key aspects of well-being post-intervention; these included significant increases in exercise (p = .04), self-reported health (p = .01), as well as decreases in negative affect (p= .008). Data also show a moderate increase in residents’ hope post-intervention (p = .06). Although future research is needed to account for confounding variables that arose in conducting research in this community setting, these data provide preliminary evidence that a broad-based, environmental intervention may offset the myriad risks faced by particularly vulnerable elders, and even augment well-being.

Bullying and Substance Use in Early Adolescence: Investigating the Longitudinal and Reciprocal Effects Over 3 Years Using the Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model.

Bullying and substance use among adolescents have been increasingly studied in the field of developmental psychology, but research to date has primarily investigated the cross-sectional relationship and, to a lesser extent, the long-term impact of bullying on substance use. Grounded in the General Theory of Crime, this study focused on the longitudinal reciprocal relationships between bullying and substance use (i.e., smoking and alcohol consumption) during early to mid-adolescence, which is a critical developmental phase. We aimed to investigate the hypothesis of a reinforcing downward spiral at the within-person level. Moreover, we intended to examine gender differences in the expected longitudinal relationships. Our analyses are based on self-report data for bullying and substance use collected from 1,495 adolescents (746 males; Mage at T1 = 12.42, SD = 0.58) at three waves between 2017 and 2019. We applied the random intercept cross-lagged panel model to separate within-person from between-person effects. At the between-person level, the mutual association between bullying and substance use, previously demonstrated in cross-sectional studies, was confirmed. At the within-person level, results provide evidence of a significant age-dependent change in bullying and substance use from 13 to 14 years old, where the significant increase in bullying could be attributed to females but not to males. We also found a gender-independent significant positive effect of bullying at 12 years old on substance use at 13 years, but not vice versa. Thus, the hypothesis of a reinforcing downward spiral, shown by significant positive reciprocal effects, did not find support. According to the General Theory of Crime, our findings underline that bullying can be considered a context-related factor inasmuch as it pushes adolescents to smoke and drink, which are both expressions of low levels of self-control, which need to be considered in intervention programs to effectively prevent unhealthy and risky behaviors in adolescence.