What we fear most: A developmental advantage for threat-relevant stimuli
Publication date: December 2013 Source:Developmental Review, Volume 33, Issue 4 Author(s): Vanessa LoBue , David H. Rakison Fear is one of our most basic emotions. It is an important social signal and alerts us to when a situation is safe or risky. Interestingly, not all fears are created equal: Several researchers have proposed that humans develop specific fears, such as fear of threatening stimuli, more readily than others. Here we discuss three major theories of fear acquisition, and consider the possibility that some fears are privileged in learning. Second, we review a growing literature that suggests that human...
Source: Developmental Review - November 4, 2014 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Priming as a way of understanding children’s mental representations of the social world
Publication date: March 2014 Source:Developmental Review, Volume 34, Issue 1 Author(s): Brandi Stupica , Jude Cassidy Priming is a well established tool for experimental examination of how mental representations drive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that has been widely used in adult research. Priming is also a well established technique in cognitive development research. Social development research, however, has rarely used priming as a research method despite evidence that this technique is promising for helping researchers untangle causal connections between children’s mental representations and children’s s...
Source: Developmental Review - November 4, 2014 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Evaluating information processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder: The case for Fuzzy Trace Theory
Publication date: March 2014 Source:Developmental Review, Volume 34, Issue 1 Author(s): Haylie L. Miller , Timothy N. Odegard , Greg Allen Literature on the developmental trajectory of cognition in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) presents several inconsistent findings. In this review, we focus on information processing, and specifically, the use of gist and verbatim representations to guide memory, reasoning, and concept formation. The added perspective of Fuzzy Trace Theory may help to resolve mixed results regarding the frequency, nature, and effectiveness of gist processing in ASD by providing established process...
Source: Developmental Review - November 4, 2014 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
The infant EEG mu rhythm: Methodological considerations and best practices
Publication date: March 2014 Source:Developmental Review, Volume 34, Issue 1 Author(s): Kimberly Cuevas , Erin N. Cannon , Kathryn Yoo , Nathan A. Fox The EEG mu rhythm, recorded from scalp regions overlying the sensorimotor cortex, appears to exhibit mirroring properties: It is reactive when performing an action and when observing another perform the same action. Recently, there has been an exponential increase in developmental mu rhythm research, partially due to the mu rhythm’s potential role in our understanding of others’ actions as well as a variety of other social and cognitive processes (e.g., imitation...
Source: Developmental Review - November 4, 2014 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Two core systems of numerical representation in infants
Publication date: March 2014 Source:Developmental Review, Volume 34, Issue 1 Author(s): Yi Mou , Kristy vanMarle Two nonverbal representation systems, the analog magnitude system (AMS) and the object tracking system (OTS), have been proposed to explain how humans and nonhuman animals represent numerosities. There has long been debate about which of the two systems is responsible for representing small numerosities (<4). This review focuses on findings with human infants to inform that debate. We argue that the empirical data cannot all be explained by a single system, and in particular, infants’ failures to ...
Source: Developmental Review - November 4, 2014 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Cover 2/Editorial Board
Publication date: March 2014 Source:Developmental Review, Volume 34, Issue 1 (Source: Developmental Review)
Source: Developmental Review - November 4, 2014 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Theory and teen dating violence victimization: Considering adolescent development
Publication date: June 2014 Source:Developmental Review, Volume 34, Issue 2 Author(s): Deinera Exner-Cortens Teen dating violence is an important public health problem, with implications for the future health and well-being of adolescents. However, most work on teen dating violence has developed separately from literature on normative adolescent romantic relationships and development; understanding teen dating violence within the framework of adolescent psychosocial development may provide new areas for research. Thus, the present paper summarizes five theories of adolescent development that are relevant to the study ...
Source: Developmental Review - November 4, 2014 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Emotional availability (EA): Theoretical background, empirical research using the EA Scales, and clinical applications
Publication date: June 2014 Source:Developmental Review, Volume 34, Issue 2 Author(s): Zeynep Biringen , Della Derscheid , Nicole Vliegen , Lia Closson , M. Ann Easterbrooks Emotional availability (EA), as a construct, refers to the capacity of a dyad to share an emotionally healthy relationship. The Emotional Availability (EA) Scales assess this construct using a multi-dimensional framework, with scales measuring the affect and behavior of both the child and adult partner (caregiver). The four caregiver components are sensitivity, structuring, non-intrusiveness, and non-hostility. The two child components are the...
Source: Developmental Review - November 4, 2014 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Awareness of aging: Theoretical considerations on an emerging concept
Publication date: June 2014 Source:Developmental Review, Volume 34, Issue 2 Author(s): Manfred Diehl , Hans-Werner Wahl , Anne E. Barrett , Allyson F. Brothers , Martina Miche , Joann M. Montepare , Gerben J. Westerhof , Susanne Wurm Humans are able to reflect on and interpret their own aging. Thus, as individuals grow older, calendar age may become increasingly a subjective variable. This theoretical paper proposes the concept of Awareness of Aging (AoA) as a superordinate construct that can serve an integrative function in developmental research on subjective aging. It is argued that the AoA construct can inc...
Source: Developmental Review - November 4, 2014 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
The development of prospective memory in children: An executive framework
Publication date: Available online 22 August 2014 Source:Developmental Review Author(s): Caitlin E.V. Mahy , Louis J. Moses , Matthias Kliegel Prospective memory (PM), the ability to remember to carry out one's intentions in the future, is critical for children's daily functioning and their ability to become independent from caregivers. This review assesses the current state of research on children's prospective memory. Using an executive functioning framework the literature can be organized into studies examining four factors that influence PM. We discuss studies that have manipulated the nature of the intention, t...
Source: Developmental Review - November 4, 2014 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Post hoc versus predictive accounts of children’s theory of mind: A reply to Ruffman
Publication date: September 2014 Source:Developmental Review, Volume 34, Issue 3 Author(s): Rose M. Scott Ruffman (2014) argues for a minimalist account of infants’ performance on theory of mind tasks. This commentary argues that because Ruffman’s minimalist account is post hoc, it neither generates testable predictions about how infants will respond in new situations, nor does it offer a coherent explanation for existing false-belief findings. An alternative, mentalist account is presented. This account integrates infancy findings with prior theory of mind literature and generates novel predictions about childre...
Source: Developmental Review - November 4, 2014 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Commentary on Ted Ruffman’s “Belief or not belief: …”
Publication date: September 2014 Source:Developmental Review, Volume 34, Issue 3 Author(s): Josef Perner I applaud Ruffman for cautioning us against interpreting early sensitivity to others’ beliefs as evidence for an innate theory of mind and for making room for learning. In turn, however, I caution against his claim that all infants need is to understand that people act depending on what they perceive. Instead, infants may keep experiential records (Perner & Roessler, 2010) for other people or records of what they have registered (Apperly & Butterfill, 2009), which makes it less obvious that all re...
Source: Developmental Review - November 4, 2014 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
To belief or not belief: Children’s theory of mind
Publication date: September 2014 Source:Developmental Review, Volume 34, Issue 3 Author(s): Ted Ruffman This paper provides a minimalist framework for understanding the development of children’s theory of mind (ToM). First, I provide a critical analysis of rich interpretations of ToM tasks tapping infants’ understanding of perception, goals, intentions, and false beliefs. I argue that the current consensus that infants understand mental states is premature, and instead, that excellent statistical learning skills and attention to human faces and motion enable infants’ very good performance, and reflect an implici...
Source: Developmental Review - November 4, 2014 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Children, childhood, and development in evolutionary perspective
Publication date: September 2014 Source:Developmental Review, Volume 34, Issue 3 Author(s): David F. Bjorklund , Bruce J. Ellis We examine children, childhood, and development from an evolutionary perspective. We begin by reviewing major assumptions of evolutionary–developmental psychology, including the integration of “soft” developmental systems theory with ideas from mainstream evolutionary psychology. We then discuss the concept of adaptive developmental plasticity and describe the core evolutionary concept of developmental programming and some of its applications to human development, as instantiated in li...
Source: Developmental Review - November 4, 2014 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
The development of adaptive competence: Why cultural psychology is necessary and not just nice
Publication date: September 2014 Source:Developmental Review, Volume 34, Issue 3 Author(s): Robert J. Sternberg I argue that developmental psychologists need to view cultural approaches to cognitive development as necessary and not just nice. Cultural psychology enables one to study problems one otherwise might not be able to study and also to identify solutions to problems that might be obscured or even distorted if one looked only at results within a single culture (usually, one’s own). I describe work my colleagues and I have done around the world addressing specific problems such as what does it mean to be adapt...
Source: Developmental Review - November 4, 2014 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
