Developmental Psychology Commons^™

Building An Adaptive Brain Across Development: Targets For Neurorehabilitation Must Begin In Infancy, Jamie O. Edgin, Caron A. C. Clark, Esha Massand, Annette Karmiloff-Smith

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Much progress has been made toward behavioral and pharmacological intervention in intellectual disability, which was once thought too difficult to treat. Down syndrome (DS) research has shown rapid advances, and clinical trials are currently underway, with more on the horizon. Here, we review the literature on the emergent profile of cognitive development in DS, emphasizing that treatment approaches must consider how some “end state” impairments, such as language deficits, may develop from early alterations in neural systems beginning in infancy. Specifically, we highlight evidence suggesting that there are pre- and early postnatal alterations in brain structure and function in DS, …

Attachment Representations And Mother-Child Dialogue, Baiba Barene

Open Access Theses

With the emerging linguistic competencies of the child, dialogue becomes a regular part of mother-child everyday interactions, and may serve as one of the mechanisms of transmission of attachment in early and middle childhood. The goal of this study was to investigate the hypothesis about the co-constructive nature of children's knowledge of secure base script. Formation of the secure base script is a result of child-caregiver interactions that have been consolidated into a unit of knowledge available for use in attachment related situations. Individual attachment narratives and mother-child co-constructed narratives were collected from 86 mother-child dyads when children were 3.7 …

The Eiios Task: Executive Function And Word Learning At 18-Months, Leslie A. Patton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study was an investigation of the association between executive functioning (EF) ability and language development in the latter half of the second year. Fifty-five typically developing 18- month-olds were brought into the lab. The elicited imitation with inappropriate object substitution (EIIOS) task was used as a developmentally sensitive measure of EF. Language acquisition was assessed using a real-time word learning task as well as a parent report measure of vocabulary size (MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences Version). Contrary to expectations, very few statistically significant associations were found between the EF measure and either language measure. Despite these …

Biases In Children's Cognitive Styles: Investigating Local, Global, And Rule-Based Processing In Autism Spectrum Disorders And Typical Development, Sandra Beatriz Vanegas

Dissertations

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is classified as a pervasive developmental disorder that presents a triad of impairments across communication, social behavior, and restricted interests (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). To date, many attempts have been made to explain the cognitive profiles of children and adults with ASD. Three prominent theories, Weak Central Coherence (Frith, 1989), Systemizing (Baron-Cohen, 2002), and Executive Dysfunction Theory (Pennington & Ozonoff, 1996), may together provide a plausible explanation for the cognitive biases of individuals with ASD.

Weak Central Coherence (WCC) Theory proposes that individuals with ASD have difficulty learning new information due to a fixation towards local …

Intact Statistical Word Learning In Autism Spectrum Disorders, Jessica Mayo

Master's Theses

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have impairments in language acquisition, but the underlying mechanism of these deficits is poorly understood. Implicit learning appears potentially relevant to language development, particularly in speech segmentation, which relies on sensitivity to the transitional probabilities between speech sounds. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between implicit learning and current language abilities in school-aged children with autism (n = 17) and typical development (n = 24) using a well-studied artificial language learning task. Results suggest that the ASD and TD groups were equally able to implicitly learn transitional probabilities from a lengthy …

Temperament-Language Relationships During The First Formal Year Of School., Natasha Benfield Gouge

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the current study was to investigate temperament-language relationships among school-age children and across a wider variety of SES. Head Start, Pre-K, and Kindergarten classes of 10 elementary schools located in rural Appalachia were sent information about the study and 35 children were consented to participate. Parents completed a short demographic survey and the Child Behavior Questionnaire Very Short Form (CBQ-VSF). Children were administered the Preschool Language Scale-4 (PLS-4). Participants were split into low and high SES groups so associations between the CBQ and PLS-4 scores could be compared at each SES strata. Both reactivity and self-regulation were …

Trajectories Of Emotion Regulation Into Middle Childhood: An Investigation Of Attachment, Temperament, And Language, Julie Elizabeth Braciszewski

Wayne State University Dissertations

The development of emotion regulation continues to be considered a cornerstone to adaptive child development. However, studies have yet to integrate early relationship, child-centered factors, and socio-demographic factors, from infancy through middle childhood, in an attempt to look at emotional regulation development over time. By utilizing latent growth curve modeling, the current study aimed to extend understanding of how child-centered factors (temperament and language skill) and socio-demographic factors (gender, ethnicity, and family resources) affect the development of emotion regulation from 3rd to 6th grades, within the context of early attachment relationships. Stability in emotion regulation in the general sample, as …

Mother-Child Interactions Among Latino Families And European-American Families In Relation To Children's Language Outcomes, Katie Christiansen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The number of Latino families in the United States is increasing dramatically. For some of the children in these families, the acquisition of reading skills is hampered by inadequate early language development. Early language development is a key predictor of reading success. Identifying ways in which parents in these families can help children acquire early language skills will better prepare them for acquiring reading skills.

This study used a new parenting measure, PICCOLO, to identify parenting behaviors that are related to children's language development. The primary focus of this project was on Spanish-speaking Latino families, but a group of English-speaking …

Temperament, Distraction, And Learning In Toddlerhood, Wallace E. Dixon Jr., Brenda J. Salley, Andrea D. Clements

ETSU Faculty Works

The word- and nonword-learning abilities of toddlers were tested under various conditions of environmental distraction, and evaluated with respect to children's temperamental attentional focus. Thirty-nine children and their mothers visited the lab at child age 21-months, where children were exposed to fast-mapping word-learning trials and nonlinguistic sequential learning trials. It was found that both word- and nonword-learning were adversely affected by the presentation of environmental distractions. But it was also found that the effect of the distractions sometimes depended on children's level of attentional focus. Specifically, children high in attentional focus were less affected by environmental distractions than children low …

Language Proficiency And Stress: Impact On Measured Intelligence And Anxiety For Latino Children, Marlene Baldizon De Naclerio

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

.