Browsing by Subject "Institute of Child Development"

Now showing 1 - 14 of 14
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    Adolescents' Coping with Relational Victimization
    (2008-12-01) Bont, Erin M.
    The effect of an intervention on adolescents’ relational victimization coping skills was investigated. Relational victimization refers to the victims of relational aggression--behavior that attempts to harm others through the manipulation of relationships
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    Adult Attachment and the Perception of Facial Expressions of Emotion: Activating the Attachment System with a Distress Manipulation
    (2011-04-13) Steele, Ryan
    Past research on attachment theory and the perception of facial expressions of emotion has revealed that individuals who exhibit higher attachment anxiety process facial emotions more quickly than do less anxiously attached individuals. In this study, I attempted to replicate and extend this previous research by adding a distress component to an experiment. Using a movie morph paradigm, participants viewed movies of faces in which emotional expressions changed from displaying an emotion to displaying no emotion. Participants were asked to indicate the point at which they could no longer tell that an emotional expression was present. Results revealed that participants who scored higher in attachment anxiety in the no-distress condition perceived the offset of angry emotions earlier than did less anxious participants in the no-distress condition. With respect to the offsetting of happy emotions, highly anxious participants in the distress condition perceived the offset of happy emotions later than did less anxious participants in the distress condition. These results suggest that the perception of facial expressions of emotion is dependent on the level of distress that an individual feels.
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    Assessing Passivity/Initiative in Post-Institutionalized Children
    (2011-08-11) Pintar, Alyssa
    Fearfulness is a significant factor in the development of young children. However, the extent to which a child anticipates being able to control or affect frightening/novel stimuli lessens the risk of fearful or freezing behaviors leading to future psychopathology (Buss, 2010). Institutional care provides children with few response-contingent experiences, thus we hypothesize that a longer, more physically and socially deprived environment will lead to the development of more passive behaviors.
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    The Development of Model-Driven Perception
    (2010-04-21) Gregg, Kelly
    When in life does the ability to make and utilize visual models develop? Are infants able to use visual models? In my experiment, six-month-olds are presented with different forms of the common “face/vase illusion.” The stimulus used consists of three formats of the illusion that differ in motion. The intention is to prime the infants to see either the face or the vase so that when the stimulus is presented in the ambiguous form, the infants will perceive it as the stimulus he/ she was primed with. For each participant, there are eight sets of five trials each. The first two trials of each set are five seconds long and present the ambiguous stimulus and either the face or vase to establish a base looking time at each. The third trial of each set is the ten second priming phase that presents the face or vase stimulus. The fourth and fifth trials are the same as the first and second were. Comparing looking times from the first and last two trials will allow us to learn more about the ability of six month olds to make and use visual models.
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    Effects of Depressed Adoptive Mothers on Adopted Post-Institutionalized Children
    (2012-04-18) Cho, Yoobin
    Post-Institutionalized (PI) children, who have been adopted from institutional, hospital, or orphanage settings, often have struggles with various aspects of development. Much research has focused on the positive intervention of adoption on PI children, as adopted PI children show greater improvement compared to children who were maintained in institutions. Nevertheless, there are differences in the magnitude of recovery after adoption among PI children. There are many possible reasons that some children recover from their early depriving experiences more than others. Some of these possible moderators might be related to individual differences between adoptive parents, such as mental illnesses like depression. Maternal depression is known to have detrimental effects on children such as increased risk of psychopathology in adolescents with depressed mothers. However, there are not many studies that have looked at the effective of maternal depression on adopted children. In this study, it was predicted that the PI children of depressed adoptive mothers would show lower attachment security, degree of secure relationship between caregivers and their children, and higher indiscriminate friendly behavior, the affectionate and friendly behavior of all children towards all adults including strangers without typical cautionary or fearful behavior , in two aspects: physical and social. Results showed a significant positive correlation between the maternal depression scores and social aspects of indiscriminate friendly behavior. Other factors in the study were not related to maternal depression. Understanding these effects of depressed adoptive mothers on their adopted PI children will help in fostering an adequate nurturing environment through appropriate intervention.
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    Effects of Iron Deficiency on Social-Emotional Behavior of Internationally Adopted Children
    (2010-04-21) Zuck, Taylor
    Iron Deficiency Anemia affects 20-25% of infants around the world, and even more are experiencing iron deficiency without anemia. Iron Deficiency has been reported in internationally adopted children, including those from Eastern Europe, China and Guatemala. Infants with iron deficiencies are known to test lower on various measures of development as well as show differences in affect. Infants' social-emotional behavior has been shown to be adversely affected by iron deficiency with or without anemia. The aim of this study is to assess the differences between post-institutionalized children with iron deficiency and those without on measures of social-emotional behavior.
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    Gender Differences in Developing Romantic Relationships: Intimacy and Commitment
    (2009-10-07) Steele, Ryan D.
    Are there gender differences in the relation between adolescent romantic relationship intimacy and later romantic relationship functioning?
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    Premorbid Deviations in Cerebral Cortex: Examining Indicators of Risk for Substance Abuse in a High-Risk Family Study Design
    (2020) Lei, Sheng
    Substance use disorder, or SUDs, have been a significant public health concern that links to multiple neurological impairments. Most of the research on SUDs has been done on individuals that have already been exposed to SUDs for a substantial period of time, and hardly examined are the neurological changes in young, substance-naïve children of parents with SUDs, who are at high risk for developing SUDs. In the study covered by this report, a high-risk family study design was used to examine whether children at high familial risk (by virtue of a parent with a SUD) show brain deviations relative to children at low familial risk. Cortical thickness in key brain regions previously mapped to functionally defined networks was measured and compared, but only the cortical thickness in the somatomotor cortex showed significant differences (p < .05). No significant sex interactions were found. These results may point to the possibility that SUD-related brain deviations are more related to substance use rather than premorbid familial liability, but this possibility will need to be examined by further research with larger samples.
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    Prospective Longitudinal Links between Unemployment and Depressive Symptoms in Young Adults
    (2010-04-21) Steele, Ryan D.
    Since 2006, the national unemployment rate has steadily increased, from 4% to nearly 10% in 2009. Meta-analytic data suggest there is inverse correlation between unemployment and concurrent depression symptoms. However, only a few studies have examined the longitudinal links between employment status and depression. Presence of a romantic partner has been shown to buffer the negative consequences of unemployment. Research questions: Does earlier employment status predict changes in depressive symptoms controlling for concurrent employment status? Do changes in employment status relate to changes in depressive symptoms? Does involvement in a romantic relationship at age 26 moderate the relation between changes in employment status and depressive symptoms?
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    Social-Communication Skills (Status) of Post-Institutionalized Children
    (2010-04-21) Wert, Lindsay
    The aim of this study is to assess the differences between postinstitutionalized children and the controls on measures social communication skills. Hypothesis: Post-institutionalized children will be significantly lower in initiating social interactions associated with positive emotions including joint attention and social referencing compared to the control group.
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    Sociodemographic Risk and Teacher-Child Relationships in Children Experiencing Homelessness
    (2020) Heinz, Anna R.; Masten, Ann S.; Lucke, Cara M.
    Children experiencing homelessness face many adversities that can negatively impact their well-being but many have the capacity for resilience. Since teacher-child relationships can support child resilience, we examined how cumulative and specific sociodemographic risk factors were related to teacher-child closeness and conflict. Data were drawn from a larger data set collected from two homeless shelters during 2012. Participants were recruited from two shelters during 2012, including 83 caregivers (89.2% biological mothers; Female 95.2%, M(age) = 30.3 years, range = 19-49; 61.4% African American, 3.6% African Native, 14.5% Caucasian, 9.6% Multiracial, 10.8% other) and their children (54.2% male, M(age) = 5.9, range= 4.5-6.92; 66.3% African American, 1.2% African Native, 4.8% Caucasian, 22.9% Multiracial, 4.8% other). Parents provided demographic information and teachers subsequently reported on their relationships with the children. Higher cumulative sociodemographic risk was associated with higher teacher-child conflict for females but not males. Child IQ predicted teacher-child closeness while gender (male) predicted teacher-child conflict. Exploratory analyses suggest that the specific risk indicators differentially predict teacher-child closeness and conflict. These findings highlight how specific child characteristics and sociodemographic risk factors may be related to teacher-child relationships. Individual and contextual characteristics may impact specific features of the teacher-child relationship, with possible implications for school success.
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    Understanding Children’s In-group Biases: Does Group Membership Affect Children's Acceptance of Counter-intuitive Information?
    (2020) Ly, Kevin; Han Li, Pearl; Koenig, Melissa; Berry, Daniel
    Previous developmental work has shown that children have a robust preference for their own group members. Another line of research has found that children are able to track the reliability of others and selectively learn from individuals who appear to be more knowledgeable. In the current study, we aim to build on past research and test how group membership and epistemic trust interact. Specifically, using behavioral measures to explore how group membership and plausibility of the speakers’ claims may affect children’s learning decisions and social preferences. To examine these questions, 48 four- to five-year-old children were recruited, assigned to a color group using the minimal group membership paradigm and then presented with claims about novel and familiar objects. All participants were randomly assigned to one of two between-subject conditions: (1) an in-group condition where the in-group member provided counter-intuitive information; and (2) an out-group condition where an out-group member provided countervailing claims. To measure children’s social and learning preferences, we used selective learning, explicit liking, and resource allocation tasks.