The following presents examples of recently published reports from Programs I and II of Child and Family Research. Program I: Child and Family Development Across the First Three Decades The significance of caregiver sensitivity for child development has been debated among scholars, not least due to sensitivitys inconsistent predictive value over time and across contexts. This study examines correspondences among four established standardized measures of caregiver sensitivity in independent classifications of the same sample of mothers of infants. Fifty European American motherinfant dyads of diverse SES were independently assessed with three observational caregiver sensitivity measures: the Emotional Availability Scales, the Parent Child InteractionNursing Child Assessment Satellite Training Feeding Scale, and the Maternal Behavior Q-Sort. Ratings were juxtaposed with classifications of the same sample based on the original Ainsworth Maternal Sensitivity Scales. The EAS, NCAFS, and MBQS are related to the AMSS, but large proportions of variance were unshared. Researchers and clinicians should be cautious when assuming that popular observational assessment instruments, commonly believed to measure a generic construct of caregiver sensitivity, are interchangeable, as these measures may evaluate different features of sensitivity to infants. Many adolescents display risk behaviors that may persist into adulthood and contribute to an enormous public health and social financial burden. We examined co-occurrences of multiple health-risk behaviors among adolescents in a 5-year longitudinal design as well as their associations with mental health outcomes. We identified four latent profiles based on risk levels of behaviors at 18 years and 23 years: Low Risk, Modest Risk, Medium Risk, and High Risk. Some adolescents maintained their latent profile membership over time, but more transitioned between risk profiles. Adolescents with more depressive symptoms had a higher probability of developing into the High Risk profiles at 23 years. Adolescents in the High, Low, and Modest Risk profiles at 18 years developed more depressive symptoms in young adulthood compared to Medium Risk adolescents. This study provides a better understanding of the prevalence, distribution, and change patterns of health-risk profiles across adolescence and young adulthood. Reciprocal relations between high risk profiles and depressive symptoms suggest the need for integrated but tailored prevention and intervention programs. Parenting is widely believed to contribute in central ways to the course and outcome of child development and adjustment by regulating the majority of childenvironment interactions and helping to shape childrens adaptation. Parenting is expressed in cognitions and practices. Parenting cognitions shape parentssense of self, help to organize parenting, and contribute to determining how much time, effort, and energy to expend. Parents practices instantiate the opportunities parents provide children and constitute a large measure of childrens worldly experience. In a large-scale prospective 8-year study, we tested a conservative 3-term model linking parenting cognitions in toddlerhood to parenting practices in preschool to classroom externalizing behavior in middle childhood. Mothers who were more knowledgeable, satisfied, and attributed successes in their parenting to themselves when their toddlers were 20 months of age engaged in increased supportive parenting during joint activity tasks 2 years later when their children were 4 years of age, and 6 years after that their 10-year-olds were rated by teachers as having fewer classroom externalizing behavior problems. This developmental cascade of a standard model of parenting applied equally to girls and boys. Conceptualizing socialization in terms of cascades helps to identify points of effective intervention. Program II: Child Development and Parenting in Multicultural Perspective We undertook a novel interdisciplinary exploration that unites evolutionary biology, brain neuroscience, and developmental cultural psychology. Based on extensive and detailed behavioral analyses of 684 new mothers in 11 countries and complementary functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) analyses of brain responses in 43 first-time new U.S. mothers to their own infants cries, 44 experienced Chinese mothers to infant cries and control emotional sounds, and 12 Italian mothers and non-mothers to generic infant cries, for the first time we identify specific behavior repertoires and specific corresponding activated brain regions in human caregivers that constitute primary responses to infant distress. This study set will appeal to scientific and general audiences because it elucidates the foundations of core parenting practices in response to infant vocal distress and does so at coordinated behavioral and neural levels in multiple cultural groups. Mothers tend preferentially to pick up and hold and to talk to their crying babies, and those specific behavioral responses are initiated in concordant brain regions whose activity is augmented by the sound of infant cry. We address three long-standing fundamental questions about early human development and parental caregiving within a specificity framework using data from 796 infant-mother dyads from 11 societies world-wide. Adopting a cross-society view opens a vista on universal biological origins of, and contextual influences on, infant behaviors and parenting practices. We asked: How do infant behaviors and parenting practices vary across societies? How do infant behaviors relate to other infant behaviors, and how do parent practices relate to other parent practices? Are infant behaviors and parent practices related to one another? Behaviors of firstborn 5-month infants and parenting practices of their mothers were microanalyzed from videorecords of extensive naturally occurring interactions in the home. In accord with behavioral specificity, biological expectations, and cultural influences, we find that infants and mothers from diverse societies exhibit mean-level society differences in their behaviors and practices; domains of infant behaviors generally do not cohere, nor do domains of maternal practices; and only specific infant behaviors and mother practices correspond. Few relations were moderated by society. Promoting childrens prosocial behavior is a goal for parents, healthcare professionals, and nations. Does positive parenting promote later child prosocial behavior, or do children who are more prosocial elicit more positive parenting later, or both? This cross-national study uses 1178 families from 9 countries to explore developmental transactions between parental acceptance-rejection and girls and boys prosocial behavior across three waves (child ages 9 to 12). Controlling for stability across waves, within-wave relations, and parental age and education, higher parental acceptance predicted increased child prosocial behavior from age 9 to 10 and from age 10 to 12. Higher age 9 child prosocial behavior also predicted increased parental acceptance from age 9 to 10. These transactional paths were invariant across 9 countries, mothers and fathers, and girls and boys. Parental acceptance increases child prosocial behaviors later, but child prosocial behaviors are not effective at increasing parental acceptance in the transition to adolescence. This study identifies widely applicable socialization processes across countries, mothers and fathers, and girls and boys.
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