Tag Archives: child development

Karene Booker

That is Tamar Kushnir’s passion. She has been awarded two new grants that will build our understanding of the mechanisms of learning in young children with important implications for the study of cognitive development as well as for early childhood education and parenting.

Young Children’s Understanding of Free Will

When do children learn how not to do something they want to do? Every parent wants to know! The answer has important implications for parenting and early childhood education. Free will, the notion that someone who has performed an action could have done otherwise, plays a central role in adults’ explanations of behavior and is critical to our ability to reason about moral obligation and social responsibility. Yet, very little research has examined the development of the concept in children.

Tamar Kushnir, Assistant Professor of Human Development and her colleagues, Henry Wellman, University of Michigan and Alison Gopnik, University of California at Berkeley, propose to do just that. In a new grant from the Causal Learning Collaborative through the James S. McDonnell Foundation, the team will study preschoolers’ reasoning about their choices and actions.

Research on children’s learning shows that by the time children are 4 or 5 years old, they can reason about the psychological causes of human actions, including goals, beliefs, desires, and intentions.  They can make distinctions between actions caused by psychological states such as desires and those caused by physical forces or biological processes.  Preschoolers are also able to reason about things that might have happened.  Thus, it is plausible that preschoolers may have some concept of freedom of choice.

Preliminary work by Kushnir, graduate student Nadia Chernyak, and her colleagues has shown that 4-year-olds can already reason about freedom of choice in some circumstances, but important developmental differences exist between 4- and 6-year olds.  In particular, 4-year-olds appreciate that in some situations they would have been able to freely choose a course of action, while in other situations their actions are constrained. However, 4-year-olds cannot reason about the freedom to inhibit or not do a desired action, whereas 6-year-olds can.

The researchers have designed two studies to look more deeply at young children’s understanding of free will.  In one, the researchers will examine preschoolers’ understanding of free versus constrained actions in more depth, hoping to establish an early link between action understanding, social cognition, and moral reasoning. In the second study, the researchers will look more closely at developmental differences in children’s reasoning about not doing an action and their own inhibitory control.

Who Knows Best? How Children Evaluate Who to Learn From

In another grant, from the Institute for the Social Sciences, Kushnir will conduct preliminary studies on how 3- and 4-year-old children evaluate evidence from experts in light of their own experiences through play.

Increasingly very young children are being exposed to formal instruction, either at home or in academically-oriented preschool programs. More research is needed to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of this trend in early childhood education. The notion that dominates theories of young children’s learning – that they learn best through play and active exploratory experiences – suggests that that instruction may not benefit this age group. On the other hand, research on developing social cognition has shown that even preschoolers understand that some people know more than others, and this understanding guides who they choose to learn from.

These experiments involve causal learning, both because causal knowledge has been shown to be central to young children’s early concepts and because new research shows that play is critical to causal learning. One study looks at whether 3- and 4-year olds take into account another person’s level of expertise when there is ambiguous or conflicting evidence from the their own play. Another study looks at whether preschoolers know that some types of causal learning benefit from instruction whereas others may benefit more from their own play.

Findings from these studies will build on a growing body of research on the mechanisms of learning in young children with important implications for the study of cognitive development as well as for early childhood education.

“We hope studies such as these will shed light on the process by which children learn – and specifically how social cognition and social context influence early learning," said Kushhir.  "Maybe more importantly, though, we hope this research will inspire people to talk to children, answer their questions, and also to listen to them and ask them questions."

She ended with a challenge, do your own 'experiments;' find out what the young minds around us are capable of.  I promise they will amaze you.”

Human Development Outreach & Extension

Human Development Today e-News

By Sheri Hall
Reprinted with permission from ChronicleOnline, April 9, 2009

Chronic stress from growing up in poverty can physiologically impact children's brains, impairing their working memory and diminishing their ability to develop language, reading and problem-solving skills, reports a new Cornell study.

The study, published online March 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is one of the first to look at cognitive responses to physiological stress in children who live in poverty.

"There is a lot of evidence that low-income families are under tremendous amounts of stress, and we know already that stress has many implications," said lead author Gary W. Evans, the Elizabeth Lee Vincent Professor of Human Ecology in the Departments of Design and Environmental Analysis and of Human Development in Cornell's College of Human Ecology. "What these data raise is the possibility that stress is also related to cognitive development."

Evans and Michele A. Schamber '08, who worked with Evans as an undergraduate, have been gathering detailed data about 195 children from rural households above and below the poverty line for 14 years. They quantified the level of physiological stress each child experienced at ages 9 and 13 using a "stress score" called allostatic load, which combines measures of the stress hormones cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine, as well as blood pressure and body mass index.

At age 17, the subjects also underwent tests to measure their working memory, which is the ability to remember information in the short term. Working memory is crucial for everyday activities as well as for forming long-term memories.

Evans found that children who lived in impoverished environments for longer periods of time showed higher stress scores and suffered greater impairments in working memory as young adults. Those who spent their entire childhood in poverty scored about 20 percent lower on working memory than those who were never poor.

"When you are poor, when it rains it pours," Evans explained. "You may have housing problems. You may have more conflict in the family. There's a lot more pressure in paying the bills. You'll probably end up moving more often. We know that produces stress in families, including on the children.

"We put these things together and can say one reason we get this link between poverty and deficits in working memory may be from this chronic elevated stress," he said.

The findings suggest that government policies and programs that aim to reduce the income-performance gap should consider the stress children experience at home.

"It's not enough to just take our kids to the library," Evans said. "We need to also take into account that chronic stress takes a toll on their cognitive functioning."

Sujin Yang and Barbara Lust

Insights for parents, teachers, educators, and policy makers from research by Dr. Barbara Lust, Professor in the Department of Human Development and Director of the Cornell Language Acquisition Lab and by Dr. Sujin Yang, former Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the Cornell Language Acquisition Lab One of the greatest feats of human development is the acquisition of language. Research at Cornell’s Language Acquisition Lab (CLAL), under the direction of Professor Barbara Lust and her students, addresses many aspects of how children acquire language. The research program explores fundamental questions such as which aspects of language acquisition are biologically endowed and which are learned, when and how language acquisition begins, and how multiple language acquisition affects cognitive development in children. Results from this research demonstrate how well equipped children are, beginning at birth, to accomplish the complex task of learning language.
The Cornell Language Acquisition Lab has long been a center of vigorous research which tries to unlock the mystery of how the child succeeds at this daunting task. At CLAL, language acquisition has been studied in young children across more than 20 different languages and cultures, by teams of graduate and undergraduate students working with collaborators across the world. Now, research within the CLAL is being merged with research being conducted in many other labs in institutions across the country and the world through a new Virtual Center for the study of Language Acquisition. The newly formed center aims to foster interdisciplinary research including diverse fields such as linguistics, developmental and experimental psychology, and neuroscience.

Current Research

Research results from labs across the world shed light on how the child accomplishes the immense task of language acquisition. They leave us in awe of the intellectual accomplishment of each and every child. In her book, Child Language: Acquisition and Growth, published in 2006, Dr. Lust summarizes many of these results. A few of the major discoveries are highlighted below.

Already at birth, even before they speak or understand language, infants begin processing the speech stream around them in order to determine the sounds of the language (phonology), and the form of the phrases and sentences of the language (syntax). By the time they are 12 months of age, they will have ‘cracked the code’ for many of these properties as they get ready to launch into their first produced words. Here they will show they are mapping what they know about the form of language to what language means (semantics). Over the first 12 months, the infant is conducting many different analyses of the speech stream, working on all the dimensions of language at once (phonology, syntax, semantics.)
Once children begin producing their first words and then combining them into sentences, they will show a complex and abstract ability to map between the sounds of language and its meaning. For example, experimental research has shown that children understand ambiguity in language (multiple possible meanings) and that they are constrained against making random ‘mistakes’ with language. When the English experiment shown in the sidebar was replicated with Chinese children in Taiwan, the results were similar, suggesting biological foundations for this knowledge. (Foley et al., 2003; Guo et al., 1996)
By the time the child is about 3 years old, she or he will have mastered much of the basic system of the language around them.
Children are creative with language. They may make certain ‘errors’ compared to adult language, e.g., the child who calls fruits and vegetables all ‘apples’, but these ‘errors’ are common among normally developing children. In fact, they show the child being abstract, categorical and creative with the language they are working on around them (Golinkoff, & Hirsh-Pasek, 1999).

Children understand many meanings of a sentence. For example, given a sentence like “Oscar (O) bites his banana and Bert (B) does too,” four possible interpretations are possible; (1) O bites O’s banana and B bites B’s banana, (2) O bites O’s banana and B bites O’s banana, (3) O bites B’s banana and B bites B’s banana, and (4) O bites Ernie’s (a 3rd persons) and B bites Ernie’s banana. However, there are six impossible interpretations as well such as “O bites B’s banana and B bites O’s banana.” Experiments show that children understand the multiple meanings of such sentences, but do not form the incorrect meanings. (Foley, et al., 2003, Guo et al., 1996).

Research on Multilingualism in Children

In the CLAL, in conjunction with the VCLA, several research projects are underway which study various aspects of the development of bilingualism/ multilingualism in the young child. One set of studies involves longitudinal case studies of several young children acquiring English for the first time at 3 years of age through immersion in local nursery schools, such as the Cornell Early Childhood Center at Cornell as well as others. Results show that children learning a second language in an immersion setting show an overall success rate of grammatical knowledge similar to English monolinguals. Initial deficit in vocabulary (word learning) was followed by a fast pace of development, ultimately reaching the monolingual mean. Children’s pragmatic competence (e.g., the ability to initiate or join a conversation with peers) progressed slowly during early exposure (e.g., 8th month) but at the later point (e.g., 18th month) considerable improvement over time and many similarities with English monolinguals were displayed.
Another path of research studies children who are developing bilingually and assesses the cognitive effects of bilingualism as compared to monolingualism. This research touches on the ongoing debate as to whether positive or negative cognitive consequences follow from dual or multiple language acquisition during early childhood. A series of research investigations led by Dr. Sujin Yang with children of 4 to 6 years of age and comparison adult groups have been conducted to learn whether learning two languages leads to beneficial outcomes in what is called, “executive function.” These cognitive features in children are of particular interest since they are responsible for selective and conscious cognitive processes to achieve goals in the face of distraction and play a key role in academic readiness and success in school settings (Blair & Razza, 2007, Diamond et al., 2007). Using a neuropsychological and behavioral measure with Korean-English bilinguals, results have already revealed that bilingualism enhances the development of executive attention and facilitates superior performance in bilinguals as compared to monolingual counterparts on executive attention test. (Yang and Lust 2005, 2007; Yang, 2007).
This collection of multilingualism projects, along with many research results from other labs across the world, affirms that children can learn more than one language and they will even do so naturally if surrounded by the languages (Espinosa, 2008; see Flynn, 2003 for third language acquisition). Although some parents and educators may have concerns about the potential for confusion, bilingual children do not suffer language confusion, language delay, or cognitive deficit (Werker, & Byes-Heinlein, 2008; Petitto & Holowka, 2002; Yang & Lust, 2005; Yang, 2007). The mystery of first language acquisition is intensified when we realize that a child can and does naturally acquire more than one language at once.
Tips for parents

♦ Surround the child with as much rich language and language exchange as possible, beginning from birth.

♦ Children learn not only from language you address to them, but from language they overhear around them (Au, Knightly, Jun, & Oh, 2002). Linguistic interaction, can add positive effects on linguistic development.

♦ Although exposure to language is essential, explicit “drilling” is not needed for the normally developing child; parents will not be ‘teaching’ the child so much as the child will discover language; they are as one scholar put it “spontaneous apprentices” (Miller, 1976).

♦ Read to children, encourage them to talk about what is read, and surround them with language through literacy.

♦ Share with your child the joy of words and language.
Raising a Bilingual Child

♦ Cognitive advantages follow from becoming bilingual. These cognitive advantages can contribute to your child’s future academic success.

♦ Social advantages follow from becoming bilingual. By fostering bilingualism (or multilingualism) in your child you make it possible for them to access other cultures and other worlds in ways monolinguals cannot.

♦ Learning and exposure to another language at an early age may produce the best outcomes in attaining native-like language proficiency

♦ Developing bilingualism (or multilingualism) does not impede language acquisition in any language.

♦ Conscious planning and effort may be needed in order to provide the child with an environment that will support more than one language.

♦ Surround the child with more than one language through conversations and social groups using different languages; the earlier the better.

♦ Maintain home (heritage) language when a 2nd language is being learned outside the home.

♦ Expose children to live multilingual settings, often with peers (e.g., play groups).

♦ Provide fun and interactive language learning environments in both languages, often with peers (e.g., music, dance, and film).

♦ Promote reading and story-telling in multiple languages.

♦ Maintain a positive attitude toward languages/cultures children learn.

♦ You do not need to maintain a one person-one language situation; your child will sort out the languages by themselves.

Worried About Delays or Dysfunctions?

♦ Be certain that your child’s hearing has been tested

♦ Be aware that there are large differences in the rate at which children reach their first words or first sentences. These developmental differences are generally perfectly normal.

♦ During the first few years of life, it takes time and a lot of cognitive work on the part of your child to acquire languages. This is essentially challenging since your child is acquiring everything else about the world at the same time.

♦Consult a professional if you are in doubt or concerned.
Further Resources

Cornell Language Acquisition Laboratory

Virtual Center for Language Acquisition

Multilingualism Matters

Bilingual Families Web Site
References

Au, T. K., Knightly, L. M., Jun, S.-A., & Oh, J. S. (2002). Overhearing a language during childhood. Psychological Science, 13, 238-243.

Blair, C. & Razza, R. P. (2007). Relating effortful control, executive function, and false belief understanding to emerging math and literacy ability in kindergarten, Child Development, 78, 647-663.

Diamond, A., Barnett, W.S., Thomas, J., & Munro, S. (2007). Preschool program improves cognitive control, Science, 318, 1387-1388.

Espinosa, L. (2008). Challenging Common Myths about Young English Language Learners. (FDC Policy Brief, Advancing PI-3, No. 8). New York: Foundation for Child Development.

Flynn, S. (2003). Simultaneous vs Sequential Third Language Acquisition Among Children. In Cohen, J., McAlister, K., Rolstad, K., & MacSwan, J. (eds). Selected Papers from the 4th International Symposium on Bilignualism (pp. 768-774). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

Foley, C., Nunez del Prado, Q., Barbier, I & Lust, B. (2003). Knowledge of Variable Binding in VP Ellipsis: Language Acquisition Research and Theory Converge. Syntax, 6(1), 52-83.

Golinkoff, R.M. & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (1999). How Babies Talk. New York: Penguin Books.

Guo, F., Foley, C., Chien, Y-C, Lust, B. & Chiang, C-P. (1996). Operator Variable Binding in the Initial State. A Cross linguistic study of VP ellipsis structures in Chinese and English. In
Lucus, A. & Paul, W. (eds). Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale 25(1), 3-34.

Lust, B. (2006). Child Language: Acquisition and Growth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Miller, G. A. (1976). Spontaneous apprentices: Children and language. New York: Seabury Press.

Petitto, L. A., & Holowka, S. (2002). Evaluating attributions of delay and confusion in young bilinguals: Special insights from infants acquiring a signed and spoken language. Sign Language Studies, 3, 4-33.

Werker, J. & Byes-Heinlein, K. (2008). Bilingualism in Infancy: First Steps in Perception and Comprehension. Trends in Cognitive Science, 12(4), 144-151.

Yang, S. & Lust, B. (2004). Testing effects of bilingualism on executive attention: comparison of cognitive performance on two non-verbal tests. Poster session presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development 29, Boston, MA. Retrieved from http://128.197.86.186/posters/29/YangBUCLD2004.pdf

Yang, S. & Lust, B. (2007). Cross-linguistic differences in cognitive effects due to bilingualism: Experimental study of lexicon and executive attention in two typologically distinct language groups. Proceedings of the Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD) 31. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

Yang, S. (2007). Impacts of Early Childhood Bilingualism on the Development of Executive Attention: Evidence from the Attention Network Test (ANT). Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Cornell University.

Yip, V. & Matthews, S. (2007). The Bilingual Child: Early Development and Language Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Recommended Readings

Baker, C. (2000). The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals: An introduction for professionals. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

Bialystok, E. & Hakuta, K. (1995). In Other Words: The science and psychology of second-language acquisition. New York: Harper Collins.

Grosjean, F. (1982). Life with Two Languages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Pearson, B.Z. (2008). Raising a Bilingual Child: A step-by-step guide for parents. New York: Living Language.

Tabors, P.O. (1997). One Child, Two Languages. A Guide for preschool Educators. Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing Company.

Human Development Today e-News

Human Development Outreach & Extension

Stacey Doan
Print version

Research by Dr. Qi Wang at Cornell University focuses on how culture affects maternal interaction style of memory sharing, which, in turn, influences children’s developing understanding of self and autobiographical memory (Wang, 2001, 2006; Wang, Leichtman, & Davies, 2000) In the context of discussion, memories take on personal meaning for the self as past events are re-interpreted and re-evaluated. This process leads to an understanding of the self in relation to the physical and social the world (Fivush, 2007). From a socio-cultural perspective, Dr. Wang’s research has identified cultural differences in the way that mothers narrate and discuss past events with their children. These differences have been linked to cultural variations in children’s self-concept and autobiographical memory. Specifically, European mothers have been found to use a more elaborative child centered approach which leads to more detailed autobiographical narratives, and independent self concept, while Chinese mothers’ tend to use a more didactic, mother-centered approach, focusing on appropriate behaviors, rules, and social obligations.
The Socio-cultural Perspective
Vygotsky (1978), one of the most prominent psychologists of the century, argued that children’s development is embedded in the every day interactions between parent and child. Social interaction, particularly language, is an important mechanism by which children learn to understand themselves. Furthermore, the socio-cultural perspective emphasizes the idea that these interactions are influenced by culture, which essentially provides individuals with certain frameworks that influence how the individual is seen in relation to others. Based on this perspective, in discussion of past events with their children, mothers from different cultures may have different goals regarding the purpose of remembering, and these goals further influence the way in which they speak to their children. For example, European American mothers’ use of high-elaborative conversation style has been shown to be associated with their values regarding an autonomous, individual identity (Wang, 2007).
Development of Children’s Ability to Participate in Reminiscing
The process of sharing memories between mother and child begins early in development. As soon as children become capable of using language to express themselves they begin to participate in discussing past events with caregivers. At about 18-20 months children can refer to the immediate past, but at this stage they actually make very few spontaneous, in-depth references to past events. At about 20-36 months children can provide simple responses to parents’ questions about the past. It is not until about 3-5 years of age that children are able to engage in more detailed conversations about the past. However, even at this age they rely on adults to scaffold, or provide most of the structure and content. By the time children are about 5-6 years of age, they are able to independently provide increasingly rich narratives about their past.
Cultural Differences in Maternal Reminiscing Style
Research of mother-child memory sharing has identified two distinct conversational styles (Fivush & Fromhoff, 1988; Fivush, Haden, & Reese, 2006). Mothers who engage their children in a “high-elaborative” conversational style frequently ask wh-questions (i.e., where, when, what, who, how, why), provide feedback and encouragement, and supplement information whenever the child fails to respond. In contrast, mothers who engage their children in a “low-elaborative” conversational style often repeat their pointed questions without providing embellishment or feedback. While these different conversational styles can vary within a single culture, cross-cultural studies have shown that European American mothers are generally more elaborative than Korean, Chinese, and Japanese mothers. For instance, in studies of memory conversations between American and Chinese mothers and their 3-year-old children, Wang and colleagues (Wang, 2001, 2006; Wang, Leichtman, & Davies, 2000) found that American mothers often used a high-elaborative conversational style, where they talked at length with their children about the past event, supplemented children’s responses with rich and embellished information, and provided immediate feedback to encourage children’s participation. In contrast, Chinese mothers tended to use a low-elaborative conversational style, where they directed the conversations by posing and repeating factual questions, provided little detail and embellishment, and often carried out the conservation in didactic style.
Furthermore, American mothers often took a child-centered approach, where the child was the focal point of the conversation and the talk surrounded the child’s interests, preferences, opinions, and personal attributes (Wang, 2001; Wang, et al. 2000). In contrast, Korean (Mullen & Yi, 1995) and Chinese (Wang, 2001; Wang et al. 2000) mothers often took a mother-centered approach, where the mothers set the direction for the conversation and emphasized interpersonal relations, moral rules, and behavioral expectations. Child-centered approaches, where mothers scaffold, interact with the child, and elaborate on past events have been associated with a variety of social emotional outcomes, including more detailed memories and coherent sense of an individual self.
Effects of Maternal Reminiscing Style on Autobiographical Memory
The stylistic and content differences in mother-child memory sharing can have direct consequences for children’s autobiographical memory operations. Shared conversations of the past help children understand the socially accepted ways of narrating and evaluating one’s past experiences as well as how to incorporate past experiences into one’s personal life story (Nelson & Fivush, 2004). High elaborative mothers in essence scaffold their children’s narrative abilities through the type of questions they ask and the information they provide. In addition, through evaluations and feedback, highly elaborative mothers indicate valuing their children’s participation. Finally, a child centered approach emphasizes the importance of individual experience; specifically the function of reminiscing becomes intertwined with the conceptualization of the self (Wang 2006, 2008).
Studies by Wang and colleagues have rendered empirical support to these cross-cultural differences in autobiographical memory. When asked to recount their past experiences, European American preschool and grade school children often provided more elaborate and detailed memory accounts than did Chinese and Korean children (Han, Leichtman, & Wang, 1998; Wang, 2004). The American children also recollected more about specific past events than the two groups of Asian children, who recollected more about daily routines. Furthermore, American children referred more frequently to their own roles, preferences, and emotions than did Chinese children, who talked more about other people rather than themselves in their memory narratives. Collectively, these findings suggest that the style that mothers use and content that mothers focus on during memory conversations with their children may have enduring effects on children’s own memory operations.
Interestingly, these cultural differences in children’s memory appear to extend to adulthood. In a study where college-aged students were asked to report their earliest childhood memory, Wang (2001) found that Americans reported lengthy and specific accounts of memories that are self-focused and emotionally elaborated. Chinese, on the other hand, reported brief accounts of memories that are centered on general routines, are collective-focused and emotionally neutral. In another study, Wang and Conway (2004) examined the autobiographical memory of middle-aged adults who were each asked to recall 20 memories from any period of their lives. Not surprisingly, Americans provided more memories of individual experiences and unique, one-time events that focused on their own roles and emotions, while Chinese provided more memories of social and historical events that focused on social interactions and significant others. Collectively, these findings suggest that cross-cultural differences in autobiographical memory are evident early in life and last through life.
Self Development
In addition to autobiographical memory, mothers’ conversational style may influence a child’s self-concept. Autobiographical memory has been referred to as the “extended self” or the “remembered self,” and is believed to be closely intertwined with the self-concept (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000). While our self-concept shapes how we remember our experiences, our memories in turn help to define who we are. Importantly, the way that an individual comes to understand him - or herself is deeply rooted in the culturally prevailing views of selfhood. The promotion of individuality, self-expression, and personal agency  attributes that are prized in Western cultures, often facilitates the development of an independently-oriented self that is well-bounded, separate and distinct from other people. In contrast, the promotion of communality, interpersonal harmony, and personal humility  attributes that are valued in East Asian cultures, often encourages the development of an interdependently-oriented self that is fused within a complex web of relationships and social networks (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).
Cultural differences in the conceptions of self have long been documented to influence a wide array of psychological processes (Markus & Kitayaman, 1991). Pertaining to the current analysis, differences in the cultural conceptions of self hold important implications for memory. An independent self-construal, how the self is represented, that focuses on the self as a unique entity with particular qualities and attributes would facilitate attention to and encoding of relevant information that is specific to the self. On the other hand, an interdependent self-construal constituted primarily by social roles and obligations may place precedence on retaining information important for maintaining social harmony and understanding one’s relations to others (Mullen, 1994; Wang, 2001; Wang, 2004).
Mothers in conversation with children emphasize different components of the past. In socializing an independent self-construal, Western mothers are more likely to focus on the child’s internal states. Specifically, the child is encouraged to talk about and reflect on how they felt in a past event . Mothers ask about and encourage children to express their opinions and concerns. Later on when children are able to speak about their own memories, they similarly have a self-focus, discussing their own internal states, preferences and feelings. Chinese mothers, on the other hand, are more likely to focus on children’s behaviors, frequently discuss how their actions may influence other people, and bring up social events rather than events personal to the child.
Tips for Parents and Child Educators
Consider your goals before starting a discussion with your child. What aspects of the event do you think is important for your child to remember? To what extent do you think you should focus on the child’s thoughts, feelings, and desires or how their behavior has an influence on others?

Set aside a quiet time to discuss past events with your child. For younger children, events where both parent and child were present will allow parents to do more scaffolding and structuring of the conversation.

Consider the type of events you wish to discuss with your child and their implications. Selecting social events would allow you to reflect on your child in relation with others, social norms, and behavioral expectations. Choosing a personal event, would allow you to focus on your child’s experiences, thoughts and feelings relating to the event, and how this event may influence the child’s perception about him/herself.

Discuss one-time, relatively novel events, rather than daily repeated activities. Children sometimes have difficulty teasing apart events that occur on a daily basis.

Ask a lot of “wh” questions (e.g. who, what, where, when, why). Provide answers when the child does not remember. Avoid repeating questions, or “looking” for a right answer. Try not to create a test-like atmosphere.

You can choose to focus on the child’s thoughts and feelings, by asking what they particularly liked, how they felt, and drawing out their thoughts. This type of conversational focus, instills children with an autonomous, independent sense of self, and elaborative autobiographical memory. Alternatively, if your concern is for your child to understand behavioral norms and social rules, focus on their specific behaviors, how their behaviors might have affected others, and what they would do differently or similarly. Conclude with “lessons learned”. This type of conversation aids children in focusing on the self in relation to others, and encourages an interdependent self-concept.

Provide positive feedback when your child participates and be responsive to their contribution to the conversation.

Most importantly, have fun and engaging conversations. Demonstrate to your child that you are invested and interested in their life!
Resources


Dr. Qi Wang’s Social Cognition Website
References
Conway, M.A., & Pleydell-Pearce, C.W. (2000) The construction of autobiographical memories in the self memory system. Psychological Review, 107, 261-288.
Fivush, R., & Fromhoff, F. A. (1988). Style and structure in mother-child conversations about the past. Discourse Processes, 11, 337-355.
Fivush, R., C.A. Haden and E. Reese (2006) `Elaborating on Elaborations: Maternal Reminiscing Style and Children's Socioemotional Outcome', Child Development 77: 1568—88.

Fivush, R. (2007). Maternal Reminiscing Style and Children's Developing Understanding of Self and Emotion, Clinical Social Work, 35, 37-46.
Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224-253.
Mullen,M. (1994). M.K. Earliest recollections of childhood: A demographic analysis. Cognition, 52, 55–79.
Mullen, M. & Yi, S. (1995). The cultural context of talk about the past: Implications for the development of autobiographical memory. Cognitive Development, 10, 407–419.
Nelson, K. and Fivush, R. (2004). The Emergence of Autobiographical Memory: A Social Cultural Developmental Theory', Psychological Review, 111, 486—511.

Vygotsky, L. (1978). Interaction between Learning and Development (pp. 79-91). In Mind in Society. (Trans. M. Cole). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wang, Q. (2001). ''Did you have fun?''American and Chinese mother-child conversations about shared emotional experiences. Cognitive Development, 16(2), 693-715.
Wang, Q. (2006). Relations of maternal style and child self-concept to autobiographical Memories in Chinese, Chinese Immigrant, and European American 3-year-olds. Child Development, 77(6), 1794-1809.
Wang, Q. (2007). "Remember when you got the big, big bulldozer?" Mother-child reminiscing over time and across cultures. Social Cognition, 25, 4, 455-471.
Wang, Q., Leichtman, M. D., & Davies, K. (2000). Sharing memories and telling stories: American and Chinese mothers and their three year olds. Memory 8(3), 159-177.
Wang, Q. & Conway, M. A. (2004). The stories we keep: Autobiographical memory in American and Chinese middle-aged adults. Journal of Personality, 72, 5, 911-938.
Wang, Q. (2008). Emotion knowledge and autobiographical memory across the preschool years: A cross-cultural longitudinal investigation. Cognition, 108, 117-135.

Human Development Today e-News

Human Development Outreach & Extension

Karene Booker

We know Poverty Matters for Children’s development, but why? One of the reasons poverty is bad for children is because it reduces maternal responsiveness. But why are low-income mothers less responsive to their children’s needs than their more affluent counterparts?

Many studies on poverty and parenting in North America have revealed an association between household income and maternal responsiveness. The evidence indicates that low-income mothers tend to be less responsive to their children’s physical and emotional needs which partially explains why poverty is harmful for children’s development.

“What we did not know is why poverty leads to unresponsive parenting in the first place,” said Gary Evans, Cornell Professor in the Departments of Design and Environmental Analysis and Human Development and lead author of a paper in the current issue of the International Journal of Behavioral Development. “Our study provides evidence that low-income mothers are less responsive to their children compared with middle-income mothers because of two key aspects of the ecological context of poverty. First, low-income mothers face a daunting array of psychosocial and physical stressors that diminishes their capacity to be a responsive parent. Second, mothers living in poverty may also be less attuned to the needs of their children because they themselves lack adequate social networks.”

The paper is important not only because it sheds light on the question of why poverty is harmful to children, but also because the authors examine this question in an understudied population - rural white parents of young adolescents living in North America. Nearly all of the data examining poverty and parenting comes from urban, ethnic minority families.

There are numerous studies that document that adults living in poverty experience more negative life events and income-related stressors than lower and middle class adults. There is also evidence that low-income households have smaller social networks to help them cope with stressors. A smaller body of literature demonstrates the potential for parental stress or social isolation to reduce parental responsiveness. What has been missing, however, is a direct test of why poverty leads to unresponsive parenting.

Two hundred and twenty-three mothers and their seventh to eighth grade children were evaluated in their homes. Maternal stress was measured with the Perceived Stress Scale. This 10-item scale assesses how unpredictable, uncontrollable, and overwhelming persons find their lives. Maternal social networks were gauged with the Social Network Index. This instrument evaluates participation in 12 types of social relationships, including spouse/partner, parents, parents-in-law, children, other close family members, close neighbors, friends, workmates, schoolmates, fellow volunteers, and religious and non-religious affiliations. Maternal responsiveness was measured by youth perceptions of maternal responsiveness. A rating scale consisting of eleven items tapping both instrumental (e.g., help with homework) and emotional responsiveness (e.g., willing to talk to me when needed) was developed for this project.

The data showed that poverty erodes maternal responsiveness because low-income mothers experience increased psychological stress and have smaller social networks. Diminished social resources may be especially challenging for low-income, rural mothers because of longer distances from town, family and friends coupled with lack of mass transit and high fuel and car maintenance costs.

The findings address questions about the mediational pathways between poverty and maternal responsiveness, providing a template for further research as well as valuable insights for policy makers designing programs to improve parenting among low-income families.

For Further Information

Evans, G.W., Boxill, L., & Pinkava, M. (2008). Poverty and maternal responsiveness: The role of maternal stress and social resources. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 32, 232-237.

Boxill and Pinkava are former Cornell undergraduate students majoring in Biology and Society and Human Development respectively.

This article is based on a presentation at the first Urie Bronfenbrenner Conference at Cornell, October 2007.

Daniel T. Lichter, Department of Policy Analysis and Management and Department of Sociology, Cornell University

Elaine Wethington, Department of Human Development and Department of Sociology, Cornell University

The first Urie Bronfenbrenner Conference, Chaos and Children’s Development: Levels of Analysis and Mechanisms, was held on the campus of Cornell University in October 2007 in honor of the late Urie Bronfenbrenner, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus, who is internationally known for his contributions to the ecology of human development. The focus of this interdisciplinary conference was on how chaotic environmental settings, characterized by high levels of noise, crowding, instability, and a lack of structure and predictability, influence human development from infancy through adolescence. Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model views child development as occurring within the context of the complex system of relationships in his or her environment. The main tenet of his theory is that development is powerfully shaped by the interactions between the child’s own biology, immediate family, community environment, and the larger society. Four nested levels or systems influence each other and the development of children: Microsystem: Immediate environments such as family, school, peer group, neighborhood, and childcare; Mesosystem: A system comprised of connections between immediate environments such as a child’s home and school; Exosystem: External environmental settings which only indirectly affect development such as parent's workplace; and Macrosystem: The larger cultural context, national economy, political culture. According to this model, human development takes place through proximal processes – increasingly complex reciprocal interactions between the individual and the people, objects, and symbols in his or her immediate environment. Proximal processes are seen as the primary engines of development. Developmental outcomes are the result of the interaction of proximal processes and characteristics of the individual. Context can shape the occurrence of these processes as well as moderate their impacts. The length, frequency and regularity of exposure to proximal processes are also important to consider.

Using Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model as a theoretical framework, Lichter’s presentation at the Bronfenbrenner conference, co-authored with Elaine Wethington, reviewed historical and sociological research on social change, family changes, and child development in reference to the emerging concept of “chaos.” They addressed the specific question of whether chaos has increased in the lives of children over the last century.

The authors challenge the conventional view that chaos is growing in the lives of American children. They argue that chaos in the early 21st century is manifested in much different ways from the past. The risks to children from environmental hazards, poverty, poor health and early death were much worse in the past. Chaos at the macrosystem level has been increasingly replaced over the past century by chaos at the microsystem level (i.e., in children’s family environments). The authors also contend that it is difficult to assess whether the typical child today is worse off than in the past because the “typical” or average child no longer exists in our increasingly diverse society. Averages mask growing inequality and differences in childhood experiences.

As more American children are placed “at risk” because of family disruption, school dropout, drug abuse, delinquency, and teen pregnancy, we may nostalgically cling to the belief that chaos in the lives children is something new. “Chaos” is defined here as chronic or persisting instability in family life, neighborhood, and community and institutional connections. The past is often viewed in overly sentimental ways—strong family and kinship ties, stable neighborhoods knitted together by shared ethnicity, religion, language, and supportive community support networks.

Historical evidence suggests that we should question sentimental views of the past. The truth is that children in the past often faced harsh conditions known to be related to “chaos”. These conditions affected their healthy development and transitions to productive adult roles. One hundred years ago many more children suffered from financial and social instability. Infants and young children were also more likely to be threatened by ill health and even death. Life was hard and children suffered in ways different from today.

Children in Historical Perspective

The early twentieth century was a period of great economic uncertainty and social unrest. Rapid growth and urbanization were accompanied by social and economic disruptions including two World Wars, the 1918 flu epidemic, massive immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe, the “Great Migration” of blacks out of the rural South, the Great Depression, and the Dust Bowl migration and other white migration from Appalachia to urban areas. Poverty levels were extremely high and have subsequently declined significantly. Given the context of rapid urbanization, economic dislocations and high rates of poverty and unemployment, geographical mobility rates were little different from the mobility rates of today. Maternal, infant, and child mortality rates were very high and child labor was prevalent. Children’s lives in the early 20th century were difficult by almost any measure.

Childhood in Recent Historical Perspective

In the past, instability in children’s lives reflected large-scale social and economic upheavals. Home was presumably a safe haven for children in a harsh and chaotic world. Today, the world may be a safer place for children in terms of health and government supports, but these benefits may be offset by increasing instability rooted in rapid changes in family life.

Demographic evidence suggests overall declines rather than increases in the conditions related to chaos along the dimensions of crowding, noise, and stressful neighborhood conditions such as crime. Household size has decreased, home ownership rates have increased, and the population has shifted to the suburbs and exurbs which are cleaner, quieter and safer.

While poverty rates among U.S. children have been relatively stable over the past three decades, poverty as an indirect indicator of chaotic conditions for children may misrepresent trends in more proximate family conditions that are ultimately more threatening to stability in children’s lives. Presumably, living with single parents is associated with more chaos in the home. In the early 20th century, about 85 percent of America’s children lived with both parents. Between 1970 and 1980, this percentage dipped to 70 percent, where it has remained. Today, over 20 percent of children reside with a single mother, which places them at risk of high poverty and chaotic home conditions. However, overall prevalence measures of children’s changing living arrangements mask the complexity of recent family changes.

For example, divorce rates accelerated after 1970 and then leveled off at high level after 1990. Today, more than 1 million children per year experience the divorce of their parents. Divorce and remarriage of children’s parents have been associated with higher levels of sexual activity for daughters in adolescence, poor relationship choices, and depressive symptoms during young adulthood.

High rates of cohabitation and remarriage may also contribute to increasing instability of children’s lives. An increasing share of children have the benefit of two caretakers and providers in the home, but are also exposed to new complexities unique to stepfamilies as well as the potential for increased conflict, economic instability, mobility, severed emotional ties to adults, and the reorganization of family processes and rituals. Chaos is also reflected in the increasing share of children born to unmarried and cohabitating mothers. Nearly 40 percent of children today are born out-of-wedlock.

Rapid changes in American family life since the 1960s have many causes, including the dramatic rise in maternal employment and women’s growing economic independence. These changes may have introduced an additional element of chaos and complexity into children’s lives. Whether increasing maternal labor force participation represents a source of added risk or has a net negative effect on children’s healthy development, is a matter of debate.

The existing literature suggests that the effects of maternal employment depend on many factors such as work schedule, type of work, wage rates, and availability of high quality childcare. On one hand, maternal work can be an additional family stressor that places young children at risk. On the other hand, for some families, maternal employment provides more regularity in children’s lives, a working parent role model, additional income, and connection to positive social and organizational networks in the larger community.

The longstanding concern that maternal work takes time away from children is also being revisited. Some researchers suggest that parents in the aggregate spend more time today with their children than they did in the past, despite working more hours. Employed mothers are mostly sacrificing leisure activities to maximize their time with their children and fathers are more likely than in the past to contribute to homework and childcare. Noncustodial fathers are also more involved with their children today than in the past. These are positive developments.

Divergent Destinies for Chidren in the United States

Arguments about growing chaos in the lives of children, especially chaos created by family changes, must be viewed in the context of growing economic, family, and cultural diversity. Overall rates of poverty, single parenthood, divorce, and other risk factors potentially mask growing social and economic disparities. Poverty rates based on absolute income have remained relatively stable over the past 25 years, but the poor have fallen further behind the middle-class and affluent U.S. population subgroups.

Parental work and marriage go hand-in-hand in shaping the economic trajectories of America’s children. Over the period from 1960-2000, low- and high-educated mothers diverged significantly on median age at childbearing, single motherhood, and employment rates. Women at the top of the education distribution were far more likely than other women to delay childbearing, avoid out-of-wedlock childbearing, and work outside the home. Other studies show that college-educated women are more likely to marry and less likely to divorce than other women. Children living in families supported by single mothers, especially nonworking mothers, show a marked disadvantage. Almost 75 percent of these children were poor in 2006.

While there are potentially positive developments – reduced teen births, increased share of births to college educated mothers, and reduced share of children born to high school dropouts – some segment of American children may be may be falling behind on the road to adult success.

Those that fall behind may be increasingly differentiated by race and ethnicity. Current estimates indicate that one of every five children in America is the child of immigrants. Poverty rates for these children are much greater than the national average. New immigrant families are poorer and less skilled than in the past and often live in impoverished and highly congested urban ethnic enclaves.

A fundamental reason for differentiation between children at the top of the economic distribution and those at the bottom is that the children at the top have parents who are “winners” in the job market. The winners can afford to purchase stability—less chaos—for their children on a number of important dimensions. They are more likely to be married and they have a lower risk for divorce. Their children are more likely to live in stable, low-crime neighborhoods, go to good schools, connect to effective social institutions, and live in relatively stable residential communities that provide good public and private support services. The experiences of poor, unmarried, minority or immigrant mothers and their children are much different and, arguably, are diverging from the experiences of the “typical” native born, white, middle-class child in America.

Conclusion

Chaotic conditions in children’s lives in the early 21st century are manifested in much different ways from the past. Children today are exposed to greater family instability, but fewer risks along other dimensions such as poverty and ill health. Ultimately, questions about whether chaos has increased or decreased over the last century may be less important than questions about whether it has increased or not for different groups in our increasingly multiracial, multicultural society. American children may be on increasingly divergent trajectories, with varying exposure to different forms of “chaos” widening the gap between the life chances of the poorest and richest children.

Further Resources

Chaos and Children's Development: Distance learning panel seminar. June, 17, 2008, 114 MVR Hall, Cornell University or CCE video downlink locations.

Poverty and Chaos: article

Human Development Today e-News

Human Development Outreach & Extension

This article is based on a presentation at the First Urie Bronfenbrenner Conference at Cornell, October 2007.
Gary W. Evans, Department of Human Development and Department of Design and Environmental Analysis, Cornell University

John Eckenrode, Department of Human Development, and Director of the Family Life Development Center, Cornell University

Lyscha Marcynyszyn, Kings County Mental Health, Chemical Abuse, and Dependency Services Division

The first Urie Bronfenbrenner Conference, Chaos and Children’s Development: Levels of Analysis and Mechanisms, was held on the campus of Cornell University in October 2007 in honor of the late Urie Bronfenbrenner, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus, who is internationally known for his contributions to the ecology of human development. The focus of this interdisciplinary conference was on how chaotic environmental settings, characterized by high levels of noise, crowding, instability, and a lack of structure and predictability, influence human development from infancy through adolescence. Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model views child development as occurring within the context of the complex system of relationships in his or her environment. The main tenet of his theory is that development is powerfully shaped by the interactions between the child’s own biology, immediate family, community environment, and the larger society. Four nested levels or systems influence each other and the development of children: Microsystem: Immediate environments such as family, school, peer group, neighborhood, and childcare;

Mesosystem: A system comprised of connections between immediate environments such as a child’s home and school;

Exosystem: External environmental settings which only indirectly affect development such as parent's workplace; and

Macrosystem: The larger cultural context, national economy, political culture. According to this model, human development takes place through proximal processes – increasingly complex reciprocal interactions between the individual and the people, objects, and symbols in his or her immediate environment. Proximal processes are seen as the primary engines of development. Developmental outcomes are the result of the interaction of proximal processes and characteristics of the individual. Context can shape the occurrence of these processes as well as moderate their impacts. The length, frequency and regularity of exposure to proximal processes are also important to consider.

If the proximal processes in the immediate microsystem break down, the child will not have the tools to develop optimally. Using Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model as a theoretical framework, Evans’ presentation at the Bronfenbrenner conference, co-authored with John Eckenrode and Lyscha Marcynyszyn, examines the connections between poverty, chaotic living environments, and child development.
There are many reasons why the lives of low-income children are more chaotic than middle- and high-income households. Low-income parents suffer from many physical and social stressors. Poor parents juggle overlapping time obligations and have fewer resources than wealthier parents to deal with the multitude of demands and obligations they face. Low-income parents are less likely to have a reliable car, they cannot afford high quality and flexible childcare or after school care, they are less likely to have a partner who can share the burdens of household management as well as assisting in parenting, and their children are less likely to be enrolled in structured programs. Residential and school relocations, which erode social networks, are more common, and family disruptions and turmoil are much more frequent among low-income families (Evans, 2004).
Components of chaos that have been associated with socioeconomic status (SES) include household crowding, noise levels, household routines and rituals, residential and school relocation, as well as changes in parental romantic partners.
Crowding. Crowding, typically defined as people per room, contributes to chaotic living and school settings. Crowded settings are often over stimulating, confusing, and have a high degree of unpredictability and uncontrollability. Research shows that low-income and low SES families with children live under more crowded conditions (Evans, Eckenrode, & Marcynyszyn, 2007). High interior density appears to be especially problematic because it makes it extremely difficult to regulate social interaction.
Noise. Noise includes car traffic, airport noise, activities of other people, music, and various appliances. Studies of noise exposure indicate that it over stimulates the brain and when unpredictable can startle as well as interfere with relaxation and sleep. Noise interferes with concentration and often leads to greater expenditure of effort to maintain attention. Noise causes fatigue and is clearly linked to elevated negative affect, including irritability and hostility Evans 2001; 2006). In studies comparing noise exposures between various groups by income, poor children are exposed to between 5 and 10 more decibels on average (Evans et al., 2007). A ten decibel increase is perceived as twice as loud.
Routines. One of the key elements of stability in children's lives is the degree of structure and predictability in daily routines. Research indicates that families with higher SES are more likely to maintain meal, nap, and bedtime routines (Britto, Fuligni, & Brooks-Gunn, 2002). Flexibility and support may be in relatively short supply for parents with fewer economic and/or SES resources to draw upon. For example lower wage jobs, at least in the US, have less regular schedules (Han, 2005). Changes in parental work hours, particularly if frequent or unpredictable can make it difficult to maintain structure and routines in daily life.
Residential relocation. A major contributor to chaos in children's lives are changes in home or school location. Both types of changes disrupt children's social networks and remove them from familiar surroundings. Research suggests that if either type of move is frequent, children may also become reluctant to establish new friendships or to rely upon adults for guidance and support because they may soon have to break those ties and start over again (Adam, 2004). Relocation also disrupts geographic orientation and the ability to explore and extend one's range of activities. When school changes occur, children may also be confronted with unfamiliar academic demands in addition to the change in peers and teachers. Low-income children are more apt to experience changes in residence (Kohen, Hertzman, & Wiens, 1998; Wood, Halfon, Scarlata, Newacheck & Nessim, 1993).
School relocations. Studies indicate that low-income children change schools more often than those from families with higher incomes (Evans et al., 2007). In addition, teachers in low-income schools are more likely to relocate (Rutter et al., 1974), to have less experience and less educational background in their subject areas, and be paid less (Evans, 2004).
Maternal partner change. Family turmoil associated with poverty often leads to dissolution of romantic partnerships. Changes in household composition are highly disruptive for children. Research shows that the levels of divorce and changes in parental partners are strongly linked to SES. For example in the United States, the divorce rate is almost five times higher in the lowest income quintile (25.4%) than among the upper income quintile for households with children (5.7%) (Evans, 2004).
There is abundant evidence that various aspects of chaos are associated with income, education, and social class. Likewise there is evidence to support the adverse effects of chaotic living conditions on children's cognitive, socioemotional, and physical well being. This pattern of inter-relationships suggests the potential for chaotic environments to function as underlying mechanisms in child development, indicating a poverty→chaos→socioemotional outcomes pathway. Indeed studies provide preliminary evidence that the higher levels of adverse socioemotional outcomes, including psychological distress, learned helplessness, and self-regulatory behavior found in low-income households are brought about, in part, by higher levels of chaos in these households (Evans et al., 2007).
Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model of human development provides a theoretical framework to address the question of why chaos is harmful to children's development. One of the key elements of the bioecological model is proximal process. In order for proximal processes to be effective, they must take place regularly, over an extended period of time, and involve progressively more complex, reciprocal interactions (Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998). A fundamental reason that chaos is harmful to the developing child is because it interferes with effective proximal processes.
The predictability and sustained nature of increasingly complex interactions becomes more difficult to maintain in chaotic households. Children cannot develop socially cohesive, meaningful relationships with people unless they see them regularly and can count on them being around.
Not only are proximal processes less likely to occur in chaotic settings, but children and caregivers may respond to their surroundings in ways that exacerbate the negative consequences of chaos. For example, studies indicate that parents may become less responsive (Matheny, Wachs, Ludwig, & Phillips, 1995), exhibit less parental warmth, and adopt harsher parent-child interactions when living in chaotic environments (Coldwell, Pike, & Dunn, 2006). Likewise there is evidence that lack of structure and unpredictability have consequences for children’s feelings of mastery and self efficacy and may also undermine self-regulatory ability (Evans & Stecker, 2004; White, 1959).
Chaotic living conditions can interfere with the processes that are integral to the development of healthy, well adjusted children. Children need an environment that supports regular, sustained, increasingly complex interactions and relationships. Abundant evidence shows that poverty is bad for children's development. Not only are poor children more likely to experience adverse living conditions, such conditions often converge in a manner that undermines predictability and interferes with structure and routines in the daily lives of children.
References

Adam. E.K. (2004). Beyond quality: Parental and residential stability and children's adjustment. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13, 210-213.

Bronfenbrenner, U., & Evans, G. W. (2000). Developmental science in the 21st century: emerging theoretical models, research designs, and empirical findings. Social Development, 9, 115-125.

Bronfenbrenner, U., & Morris, P. (1998). The ecology of developmental processes. In W. Damon & R. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology (5th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 992-1028). New York: Wiley.

Britto, P. R., Fuligni, A. S., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2002). Reading, rhymes, and routines: American parents and their young children. In N. Halfon (Ed.), Childrearing in America (pp. 117-145). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Coldwell, J., Pike, A., & Dunn, J. (2006). Household chaos - links with parenting and child behaviour. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 47, 116-1122.

Evans, G. W. (2001). Environmental stress and health. In A. Baum, T. Revenson & J. E. Singer (Eds.), Handbook of Health Psychology (pp. 365-385). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Evans, G. W. (2004). The environment of childhood poverty. American Psychologist, 59, 77-92. Evans, G. W. (2006). Child development and the physical environment. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 423-451.

Evans, G. W., Eckenrode, J., & Marcynyszyn, L. (2007, October). Poverty and Chaos. Paper presented at The First Bronfenbrenner Conference, Chaos and Children’s Development: Levels of Analysis and Mechanisms, Ithaca, NY.

Evans, G. W., & Stecker, R. (2004). The motivational consequences of environmental stress. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 24, 143-165.

Han, W. J. (2005). Maternal nonstandard work schedules and child cognitive outcomes. Child Development, 76, 137-154.

Kohen, D. E., Hertzman, C., & Wiens, M. (1998). Environmental changes and children's competencies. Applied Research Branch Strategic Policy, Human Resources Development Canada, Quebec, Canada..

Matheny, A., Wachs, T. D., Ludwig, J., & Phillips, K. (1995). Bringing order out of chaos: Psychometric characteristics of the confusion, hubbub, and order scale. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 16, 429-444.

Rutter, M., Yule, B., Quinton, D., Rowland, O., Yule, W., & Berger, M. (1974). Attainment and adjustment in two geographic areas: III. Some factors accounting for area differences. British Journal of Psychiatry, 125, 520-533.

White, R. (1959). Motivation reconsidered: The concept of competence. Psychological Review, 66, 297-333.

Wood, D., Halfon, N., Scarlata, D., Newacheck, P., & Nessim, S. (1993). Impact of family relocation on children's growth, development, school function, and behavior. Journal of the American Medical Association, 270, 1334-1338.

Further Resources

Chaos and Children’s Development: Distance learning panel seminar. June, 17, 2008, 114 MVR Hall, Cornell University or CCE video downlink locations.

Chaos Amidst Stability: The Diverging Fortunes of American Children in Historical Perspective: article

Human Development Today e-News

Human Development Outreach & Extension

Kimberly Kopko, Ph.D., Extension Associate

What is clear to anyone who enters Dr. Marianella Casasola’s Infant Studies Laboratory, or “baby lab” is that Dr. Casasola is very interested in babies. Except for the computers and other technical equipment, the space resembles an open, baby-friendly play area. And it is in this space that Dr. Casasola, Associate Professor in the Department of Human Development at Cornell University, conducts her research on infant cognitive development and early word learning in pre-verbal babies.

Dr. Casasola’s research provides a window into how babies learn and develop language skills during the first 2 years of life. Her findings demonstrate that infants are learning about their language well before they speak their language. Parents of infants no doubt agree that babies recognize words before they are able to verbalize words. What is apparent from Casasola’s research, however, is the degree of complexity that babies possess in learning language and how the use of novel words and events promotes learning.

Dr. Casasola is particularly interested in the interaction between cognition and language development during the first 2 years of development and there are 3 questions that drive her research: 1) How do babies learn? 2) How do babies develop language? and 3) How do the two areas intersect? Studying how infants learn and what they already know requires an understanding of the manner in which babies develop abstract concepts, generalize information from one situation to another, and form categories, all of which provide coherence to a baby’s world. Studying how infants develop language requires an understanding of how babies develop words for objects and actions. Finally, in collaboration with colleagues and students, Dr. Casasola examines how language and learning interact in everyday circumstances. She seeks to understand how babies learn words and how learning language helps to solidify what babies already know and, perhaps, how it leads babies to learn what they may not have learned otherwise.

Research Studies

One strategy that adults use to develop babies’ language acquisition is labeling. By labeling an object, a parent or caregiver identifies the names of specific objects for the baby. For example, when a baby picks up a ball, a parent may respond, “that’s a ball.” Researchers assert that babies’ early vocabulary development is stimulated when adults label items, thereby facilitating babies’ ability to associate words with objects.

In one experiment, Casasola & Bhagwat examined the extent to which labeling objects helps babies learn. In this study, 18-month-old infants were shown 4 different videos of a support relation (two objects placed together): a car placed on top of another car, a cup placed on an inverted bowl, a Duplo figure placed on a Duplo car, and a turtle placed on a pole. One group of infants heard a novel word to describe the objects occupying the space as they viewed these events: “Wow! She puts it toke.” A second group of infants received the same novel word as a count noun (“Wow! It is a toke.”) A third group simply viewed the events in silence to establish how infants attend to the support relation when not hearing any language.

Results showed that infants who heard the novel spatial word looked significantly longer at the novel relation than the familiar spatial relation indicating that the infants learned to recognize the support relation as familiar relative to the containment relation. In contrast, infants who viewed the events in silence and most infants who heard the novel word as a count noun did not. The results demonstrate that providing a label to an event helps infants learn about what they see. Providing a spatial word, even an unfamiliar one, can aid 18-month-old infants in recognizing a support relation as familiar.

Infants learn language according to a highly organized set of rules containing five systems: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics (see further detail at end). Semantics refers to the meaning system. The meanings of words or actions may differ across languages and vary according to what’s relevant to a baby’s native language. For example, in the English language there is a distinction between the categories of in and on such that we say the clown is in the car and the tire is on the car. Whereas in the Korean language, there is no distinction between in and on, but rather a distinction between loose-fitting events and tight-fitting events with a loose-fitting event being similar to on and a tight-fitting event being similar to in.

In a separate experiment, Casasola and her colleagues explored whether 21-22 month-old toddlers who were learning the English language could acquire a novel word to describe a “tight-fit” relationship between two objects, a relationship that is identified by a word in Korean language, kkita, but not by a word in the English language. In the training session, four pairs of objects were selected to depict actions resulting in a tight-fit relation. Results from this study indicate that toddlers can map and generalize a novel word onto actions resulting in a tight-fit relation, despite having limited experience with the novel word. These findings indicate that toddlers can “apply” an unfamiliar word to an event that is similar to one they recognize (i.e. tight-fitting is similar to in) and provide insight into how young English word learners begin to form language-specific categories to represent spatial relationships.

Despite the number of different languages in the world, infants learn language in a universal, relatively predictable pattern. Milestones in infant language development include communicating at birth by crying, cooing at 1-2 months, babbling at 6 months, use of gestures and word comprehension at 8-12 months, speaking first words at 13 months, a rapid growth in vocabulary by 18 months, and significant increased word understanding and speaking of two-word utterances such as “my toy” between 18-24 months.

Parents and caregivers are the most significant adults that babies interact with and communicate their needs to. The ways in which adults respond to and engage babies will aid language development during these very important early years.

Tips For Parents

1) Attach words to objects. Labeling helps babies learn. Sometimes it is easier to engage your child if you label what is already the focus of their interest rather than trying to redirect their attention.

2) Use words to describe your actions: “Mommy is putting the milk in the refrigerator.”

3) Use words to describe your child’s actions: “You are putting the blue car next to the red car.”

4) Explore books with your baby (board books are ideal for infants and toddlers) and use action words to describe the story.

5) Read to your child! Reading not only promotes language development, but also creates special time with you and your child.

6) Talk to your baby often. Research demonstrates that frequent communication with infants and toddlers is directly related to the amount of words babies learn.

7) Act out songs (e.g., “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands”). Babies will learn to share in the songs' movements with you (and may help them learn new words).

8) Play word games such as “Pat a Cake.” Doing so will facilitate infants' ability to hear and learn language in a playful context.

9) Understand that many factors affect language development—for example, simultaneous exposure to more than one language and a focus on physical activities, like walking, may briefly divert your baby’s attention from learning to speak.

10) Have fun with your child. As Dr. Casasola’s colleagues note in the title of one of their books, Einstein Never Used Flashcards! Your child does not need to either. Children learn by engaging with others and with their surroundings. Simply spending a little time playing with your baby will help promote their development.

For Further Information

Cornell Infant Studies Laboratory: http://www.human.cornell.edu/che/HD/CISL/index.cfm

Family Reading Partnership http://www.familyreading.org/

Speech and Language Developmental Milestones: http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/speechandlanguage.asp

Use of baby DVDs and videos and infants’ language development: http://uwnews.washington.edu/ni/article.asp?articleID=35898

Zero to Three: Early Language and Literacy: http://www.zerotothree.org/site/PageServer?pagename=key_language

The Sounds of Language (from the National Center for Family Literacy): http://www.famlit.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=gtJWJdMQIsE&b=1988675&ct=2084703

Five Systems of Language Rules

Phonology—refers to the sound system of language. A phoneme is the most basic unit of sound that affects meaning. The word cat, for example, has 3 phonemes: /c/ /a/ and /t/ that when combined produce the word “cat.”

Morphology—refers to the units of meaning in a language. Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning that cannot be broken into smaller meaningful parts. The word work, for example, cannot be broken down and still have meaning. However, it can be combined with the suffix ing to form the word “working” which consists of two morphemes.

Syntax—refers to the way words are ordered and combined into appropriate phrases and sentences. For example, the word order “Dan kicked the ball” has a different meaning than “The ball kicked Dan.”

Semantics—refers to how the meaning of language is created by the use of words and sentences. Every word has a semantic characteristic. For example, sapling and tree share semantic qualities, but they differ in degree by size.

Pragmatics—refers to a set of rules for language use in different contexts. Pragmatics is concerned with social interaction and effective communication. For example, a child learns to speak politely to his teacher at school (“May I play with the blocks?”) but may not speak politely to his younger sister at home (“Those blocks are mine, not yours!”).

References

Casasola, M., & Bhagwat, J. (2007). Does a novel word facilitate 18-month-olds’ categorization of a spatial relation? Child Development, 78, 1818-1829.

Casasola, M., Wilbourn, M.K., & Yang, S. (2006). Can English-learning toddlers acquire and generalize a novel spatial word? First Language, 26(2), 187-205.

Human Development Today e-News

Human Development Outreach & Extension Home Page

Kimberly Kopko, Ph.D., Associate Director of Cornell Cooperative Extension and Associate Director of Extension and Outreach in the College of Human Ecology

John Eckenrode, Ph.D., Professor of Human Development and Associate Director of the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, conducts research and participates in extension-related activities in the area of child abuse and neglect. Dr. Eckenrode has spent part of his academic career examining the long-term effects of the Nurse-Family Partnership program (NFP) on the life-course of high-risk mothers and the development of their children. This research-based and theory driven early intervention program has been successful in reducing the incidence of child abuse and neglect in at-risk families and has evolved into a nationally-known and recognized applied program with both practice and policy applications.

Nurse-Family Partnership

Dr. David Olds, who received his Ph.D. in Human Development, initially conducted the Nurse-Family Partnership Project in 1977 in Elmira, New York. Four hundred young women, most of whom were young, unmarried, low-income and pregnant for the first time, participated in this study. The participants were assigned to different groups: a treatment group of mothers who received an average of 9 nurse home visits during pregnancy and 23 home visits from the child’s birth until the child’s second birthday, and a control group of mothers who did not receive nurse visits. During the visits, the nurses discussed 1) health-related behaviors during pregnancy and the early years of the child’s life; 2) the care parents provide to their children; and 3) personal life course development for mothers (family planning, educational achievement, and work force participation).

Fifteen-Year Follow-up Studies

Fifteen years following the original study, Eckenrode joined Dr. Olds and his colleagues to investigate the long-term effects of this intervention on the health and development of these women and children. Results from this study revealed the beneficial, long-term effects of the nurse home visitation program, including a reduction in the number of reports of child abuse and neglect, the number of subsequent pregnancies and births, use of welfare, fewer behavioral problems resulting from drug and alcohol abuse and a reduction in criminal behavior among the study participants.

A separate study headed by Eckenrode sought to answer a specific question: whether the presence of domestic violence limited the effects of nurse home visitation in reducing reports of child abuse and neglect. Findings showed that reports of child maltreatment did not decrease in those households where domestic violence was the highest during the 15-year period following the birth of the first child. This finding prompted the researchers to conclude that the presence of domestic violence may limit the effectiveness of interventions to reduce the incidence of child abuse and neglect. However, it is important to note that the impact of domestic violence did not affect the other program outcomes (e.g. subsequent birth rate, use dependence on welfare) but rather was specific to child abuse and neglect.

In addition to the positive maternal outcomes, analyses using the same 15-year follow up data revealed that nurse home visitation also reduced the prevalence of certain problematic behaviors—including arrests, alcohol use, and promiscuous sexual behavior—among the 15-year-old children born to the high risk mothers.

The positive outcomes for youth in the nurse-visited group prompted a further study in which Eckenrode and his colleagues examined the early onset of antisocial behaviors for the 15-year-old youth. Findings revealed a relationship between child maltreatment and early-onset problem behaviors for youth who did not receive home visits. However, no relationship between maltreatment and early onset problem behaviors was found for the youth in the nurse-visited group.

Eckenrode and his collaborators suggest that the nurse home visits prevented the occurrence of many types and chronic forms of maltreatment and also prevented maltreatment that extended across several important development stages (e.g., maltreatment that occurred both in childhood and early adolescence). The maltreatment that did occur in the treatment group children tended to occur earlier in the children’s lives and did not continue over long periods of time. These findings suggest that home visiting by nurses reduces the risk of child maltreatment as well as potential future conduct problems and antisocial behavior among children and youth born into at-risk families.

Many of the beneficial effects of the program found in the Elmira trial and concentrated in higher risk groups were reproduced in a trial in Memphis, Tennessee (1988). Similar results were likewise found in a Denver, Colorado trial (1994). Consistent program effects from the Elmira and Memphis trials include: improvement in women’s prenatal health, fewer childhood injuries, fewer subsequent pregnancies, increased intervals between births, increased employment for mothers, reductions in welfare and food stamps, and improved school readiness for children. Overall, The Elmira and Memphis trials demonstrate that the nurse home visitation program achieved two of its most important goals—improved prenatal and subsequent care of children and improved effects on women’s life course. Findings from NFP research has received national attention from the United States Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect which recommended the availability of home visitation services to all parents of newborns as a preventive measure against child abuse and neglect.

From Science to Practice

The National Center for Children, Families, and Communities was established at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center to help new communities develop the Nurse-Family Partnership. The National Center is organized around nurturing community and state development of the capacities necessary for the success of the program. As of 2006, the Nurse-Family Partnership served clients in approximately 150 sites across 21 states.

This program of prenatal and infancy home visiting by nurses shows considerable promise for reducing some of the most damaging and widespread problems faced by low-income children and families in our society.

For Further Information:

Family Life Development Center: http://www.human.cornell.edu/fldc/

Nurse-Family Partnership: www.nursefamilypartnership.org

Nurse-Family Partnership Newsletter:  http://www.nursefamilypartnership.org/about/news/nfp-newsletter

National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect: http://www.ndacan.cornell.edu/

Child Abuse Prevention Network: http://child.cornell.edu/

Child Abuse Recovery Programs: http://www.recovery.org/topics/choosing-the-best-inpatient-child-abuse-and-addiction-recovery-center/

STATISTICS: 15-YEAR FOLLOW-UP STUDIES

Long-term effects of nurse home visitation on low-income, unmarried mothers’ behavior:

79% fewer verified reports of child abuse and neglect
32% fewer subsequent births 30 fewer months of welfare use
44% fewer behavioral problems due to alcohol and drug abuse
61% fewer arrests

Long-term effects of nurse home visitation on children’s criminal and antisocial behavior:

59% fewer arrests
69% fewer convictions
58% fewer sexual partners
28% fewer cigarettes smoked per day
51% fewer days having consumed alcohol (last 6 months)

References

Eckenrode, J., Ganzel, B., Henderson, C.R., Smith, E., Olds, D., Powers, J., Cole, R., Kitzman, H., & Sidora, K. (2000). Preventing child abuse and neglect with a program of nurse home visitation: The limiting effects of domestic violence. Journal of the American Medical Association, 284, 1385-1391.

Eckenrode, J., Zielinski, D., Smith, E., Marcynyszyn, L.A., Henderson, C.R., Jr., Kitzman, H., Cole, R., Powers, J., & Olds, D.L. (2001). Child maltreatment and the early onset of problem behaviors: Can a program of nurse home visitation break the link? Development and Psychopathology, 13, 873-890.

Olds, D.L. (2002). Prenatal and infancy home visiting by nurses: From randomized trials to community replication. Prevention Science, 3, 153-172.

Olds, D.L., Eckenrode, J., Henderson, C.R., Jr., Kitzman, H., Powers, J., Cole, R., Sidora, K., Morris, P., Pettitt. L.M., & Luckey, D. (1997). Long-term effects of home visitation on maternal life course and child abuse and neglect: 15-year follow-up of a randomized trial. Journal of the American Medical Association, 278, 637- 643.

During the last decade of his life, Urie Bronfenbrenner became increasingly concerned about the potential role of growing levels of chaos as it contributed to developmental disarray in children. Gary Evans, Departments of Human Development and Design and Environmental Analysis, organized with Ted Wachs, Department of Psychological Sciences at University of Purdue, the First Biennial Bronfenbrenner Conference on the ecology of human development. The conference theme was Chaos and Children's Development. The conference took place October 25-27, 2007 at the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center, Cornell University.

Multidisciplinary groups of scholars from as distant as Istanbul, Turkey and as proximate as down the hall within the College of Human Ecology came together for two and half days to examine what we currently know about the role of chaotic living conditions in children's development and to utilize Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological Model of Human Development to conceptualize bridges between existing areas of developmental scholarship and the concept of chaos. Another objective of the conference was to formulate a research agenda to help illuminate the potential importance of the concept of chaos both to scholars as well as practitioners interested in children's well being. Cornell faculty Gary Evans, Dan Lichter, John Eckenrode, and Elaine Wethington presented papers at the conference. An edited volume will be forthcoming.

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