http://www.hindawi.com The latest articles from Hindawi Publishing Corporation © 2013 , Hindawi Publishing Corporation . All rights reserved. Mon, 20 May 2013 17:50:35 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2013/814059/ This study utilized data from over 9,300 youth from 11 national or within-nation ethnic groups to evaluate the relationship between youth religiosity and youth social outcomes (social initiative, antisocial behavior) and psychological outcomes (self-esteem and depression) considering the roles of religious tradition, national-ethnic group, and gender. We created national-ethnic group by religious tradition (NEG × RT) combinations, partitioned religiosity into between-group and within-group components, and performed a series of mixed model regressions for each outcome. The levels of all four outcomes of interest differed significantly across NEG × RT groups, and these differences were attributable to national-ethnic group rather than religious tradition. Youth reports of antisocial behavior and self-esteem were predicted by between-group religiosity. Additionally, within-group religiosity predicted all four outcomes, indicating that the protective role of religiosity functions in a comparative, or relative, manner with youth who are more religious than others in their group reaping the most benefits. Heidi E. Stolz, Joseph A. Olsen, Teri M. Henke, and Brian K. Barber Copyright © 2013 Heidi E. Stolz et al. All rights reserved. Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:18:12 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2013/467872/ The present study examined what makes an act a pretense one for adults and preschoolers. Participants watched pretense versus real acts, judged whether each act was pretend or real, and justified their judgment by citing the cues they used. These reported cues are presumed to reflect viewers’ conception of what makes an act a pretense one. The results suggested that like adults, 5-year-olds represented pretense behavior in the form of contrasts between pretense and its real counterpart. However, children placed greater weight on deviant content than on behavioral cues, whereas adults used behavioral cues, especially movement, when content information was not available. These results are discussed in terms of how children’s intuitive theories of pretense might differ from those of adults. Lili Ma and Angeline S. Lillard Copyright © 2013 Lili Ma and Angeline S. Lillard. All rights reserved. Wed, 10 Apr 2013 11:56:08 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2013/763808/ Whereas considerable developmental memory research has examined the contributions of short-term memory, processing efficiency, retention duration, and scope of attention to complex memory span, little is known about the influence of controlled attention. The present study investigated the relative influence of three understudied attention mechanisms on the verbal working memory span of school-age children: memory updating; attention focus switching; and sustained attention. Results of general linear modeling revealed that, after controlling for age, only updating accuracy emerged as a significant predictor of verbal working memory span. Memory updating speed (that subsumed attention focus switching speed) also contributed but was mediated by age. The results extend the developmental memory literature by implicating the mechanism of memory updating and developmental improvement in speed of attention focus switching and updating as critical contributors to children’s verbal working memory. Theoretically, the results provide substantively new information about the role of domain-general executive attention in children’s verbal working memory. Beula M. Magimairaj and James W. Montgomery Copyright © 2013 Beula M. Magimairaj and James W. Montgomery. All rights reserved. Thu, 04 Apr 2013 09:03:47 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2013/203061/ The ability to regulate emotion is a crucial process that humans utilize in order to adapt to the demands of environmental constraints. Individuals exposed to early adverse life events such as being born at an extremely low birth weight (ELBW, 501–1000 g) are known to have problems regulating emotion which have been linked to the development of psychopathology in this population. Recent studies have used psychophysiological measures, such as electroencephalogram (EEG) and cardiac vagal tone, to index emotion regulatory processes. The purpose of this paper was three-fold: (1) to investigate the relation between ELBW and emotion regulation issues (pathway 1), (2) to review studies investigating the relation between early emotion regulation and later internalizing problems (pathway 2); and (3) to provide a model in which two psychophysiological measures (i.e., frontal EEG asymmetry and cardiac vagal tone) are suggested to understand the proposed conceptual pathways in the relation between ELBW and psychopathology. Lauren A. Drvaric, Ryan J. Van Lieshout, and Louis A. Schmidt Copyright © 2013 Lauren A. Drvaric et al. All rights reserved. Sun, 31 Mar 2013 18:21:32 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2013/102860/ The activation relationship theory serves as a complement to Bowlby’s attachment theory to better understand the impact of fathering on child development, focusing primarily on parental stimulation of risk taking and control during children’s exploration. The first aim of this study was to confirm that the activation relationship as assessed with the observational procedure, the Risky Situation, is primarily determined by paternal stimulation of risk taking as assessed by questionnaire. The second aim was to verify the link between the activation relationship and attachment disorganization. The third aim was to verify the existence of a sex difference in father-toddler dyad activation relationships. The Strange Situation procedure and the Risky Situation procedure were conducted with 58 father-toddler dyads. Fathers completed questionnaires on child temperament and parental behavior. Paternal stimulation of risk taking explains activation once child sex and temperament, the attachment relationship, and emotional support are taken into account. Moreover, there is no relation between the father-child activation relationship and attachment disorganization. Finally, data confirm the existence of a sex difference in the activation relationship in toddlers: fathers activate their sons more than their daughters. Daniel Paquette and Caroline Dumont Copyright © 2013 Daniel Paquette and Caroline Dumont. All rights reserved. Wed, 27 Mar 2013 17:12:06 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2013/831591/ Students face various learning challenges in their daily life. Teachers should teach them learning strategies to accommodate demands. One hundred ten fifth graders were randomly assigned to three groups: strategic notetaking, partial strategic notetaking, and control group, with three levels (high versus medium versus low) according to their prior science achievement. The levels also functioned as one independent variable in the MANCOVA analysis, with writing speed as covariate. The results showed significant treatment main effects in support of strategic and partial strategic groups on the measurements of board cued, verbal cued, and noncued information units. The high science achievement group outperformed the low one on the task of verbal cued, whereas the medium outperformed the low one on comprehension multiple-choice test. The study suggested notetaking as an effective learning strategy that can be taught to elementary students. Pai-Lin Lee, Chiao-Li Wang, Douglas Hamman, Ching-Hsiang Hsiao, and Chuang-Hua Huang Copyright © 2013 Pai-Lin Lee et al. All rights reserved. Sat, 16 Mar 2013 14:23:38 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2013/390256/ This paper presents the validation of Preschool Competition Questionnaire (PCQ). The PCQ was completed by the childcare teachers of 780 French-speaking children between the ages of 36 and 71 months. The results of exploratory factor analysis suggest three dimensions involving neither physical nor relational aggression: other-referenced competition, task-oriented competition, and maintenance of dominance hierarchy. The three dimensions are positively correlated with dominance ratings and are linked to social adjustment. Girls are just as competitive as boys in the dimensions of other-referenced competition and dominance hierarchy maintenance. Task-oriented competition is relatively more important in older children and girls. Classification analysis reveals that the children who obtain the highest dominance ratings are the ones who employ a variety of competition strategies. Daniel Paquette, Marie-Noëlle Gagnon, Luc Bouchard, Marc Bigras, and Barry H. Schneider Copyright © 2013 Daniel Paquette et al. All rights reserved. Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:48:12 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2013/786862/ We report a generalization experiment in which 72 18-month-old infants were tested in the elicited imitation paradigm. Two questions were addressed: (1) whether infants' were able to generalize to differently looking (shape and color changes) but functionally equivalent props and (2) whether narrative support at both encoding and retrieval would facilitate memory. The results revealed that the 18-month-old infants were indeed capable of generalizing to differently looking but functionally equivalent props across a retention interval of two weeks. However, contrary to expectations, narrative support did not facilitate memory or generalization. Osman S. Kingo and Peter Krøjgaard Copyright © 2013 Osman S. Kingo and Peter Krøjgaard. All rights reserved. Wed, 06 Mar 2013 12:07:32 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2013/530396/ This paper examined the general trend of timing of breastfeeding initiation among nursing mothers in Nigeria. The time of initiating the first breast milk to an infant by his/her mother is measured as whether it is immediate (before the first hour of birth) or delayed (after the first hour of birth), and the impacts of some socioeconomic and maternal factors on this are determined. Results from this study showed that mother’s age at birth, her enhanced educational status, mothers’ domiciling in urban areas, singleton birth, and mother’s frequent antenatal visits among others contributed positively to early initiation of breastfeeding by Nigerian nursing mothers (). In the contrary, delivery through caesarean operation, nursing mothers that delivers at homes instead of hospitals, and the current birth being the first from a mother are all found to militate against early initiation of breastfeeding () among others. General results showed that early breastfeeding initiation experience among nursing mothers in Nigeria significantly improves over time between 1990 and 2008 (), although following a sinusoidal pattern. Four waves of national data from the Nigerian Demographic and Health Surveys for 1990, 1999, 2003, and 2008 were employed in the study. Waheed Babatunde Yahya and Samson Babatunde Adebayo Copyright © 2013 Waheed Babatunde Yahya and Samson Babatunde Adebayo. All rights reserved. Mon, 17 Dec 2012 18:32:37 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/975670/ An understanding of the development of emotional knowledge can help us determine how children perceive and interpret their surroundings and color-emotion associations are one measure of the expression of a child’s emotional interpretations. Emotional understanding and color-emotion associations were examined in a sample of UK school children, aged 7-8 years. Forty primary school children (mean age = 7.38; SD = 0.49) were administered color assessment and emotional understanding tasks, and an expressive vocabulary test. Results identified significant gender differences with girls providing more appropriate and higher quality expressions of emotional understanding than boys. Children were more able to link color to positive rather than negative emotions and significant gender differences in specific color preferences were observed. The implications of adult misinterpretations of color-emotion associations in young children are discussed. Debbie J. Pope, Hannah Butler, and Pamela Qualter Copyright © 2012 Debbie J. Pope et al. All rights reserved. Tue, 11 Dec 2012 19:07:27 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/748532/ The current study used dominance analysis to investigate the relative importance of multiple factors on children's (ages 3–5; mean age of 47.3 months) name writing skill when they enter preschool. Children () were tested individually at the beginning of preschool on six factors thought to be important for name writing success: letter knowledge, decoding, motor skills, problem behaviors, self-regulation, and home literacy environment. Collectively, these variables explained 37.1% of the variation in children's name writing, but the importance of each factor differed widely. Children’s knowledge of capital letters (11.8%) and their motor development (11.8%) were the most important for children’s name writing whereas the home learning environment (2.3%) and reported problem behaviors (1.5%) were the least important factors. These findings suggest that researchers and teachers should focus on letter knowledge and motor development in understanding and promoting children’s name writing skills. Hope K. Gerde, Lori E. Skibbe, Ryan P. Bowles, and Tiffany L. Martoccio Copyright © 2012 Hope K. Gerde et al. All rights reserved. Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:55:10 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/238435/ Ann Dowker, Mark Ashcraft, and Helga Krinzinger Copyright © 2012 Ann Dowker et al. All rights reserved. Tue, 04 Dec 2012 11:06:03 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/728104/ Home-visiting support during pregnancy or soon after the birth of an infant can be advantageous for maternal well-being and infant development. The best results have been identified when home visitors are professionals, especially nurses, and if a theoretically driven curriculum is followed with fidelity. Some suggest that disadvantaged families, who may avoid professional services, respond well to support from community volunteers, but there is less evidence about their impact. This study identified potentially vulnerable mothers during pregnancy in randomly allocated neighbourhoods where local volunteer home-visiting schemes agreed to offer proactive volunteer support and control areas where the local home-visiting schemes did not offer this proactive service. Taking demographic, child, and family factors into account, there were no significant differences in infant cognitive development at 12 months of age between families who had been supported by a volunteer and those who had not. Better cognitive development was predicted by less reported parenting stress when infants were 2 months and a more stimulating and responsive home environment at 12 months. The results suggest that unstructured proactive volunteer support for potentially vulnerable families is not likely to enhance infant development. Limitations of the cluster-randomised design are discussed. Jacqueline Barnes Copyright © 2012 Jacqueline Barnes. All rights reserved. Mon, 26 Nov 2012 09:09:12 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/610192/ Math anxiety is a relatively frequent phenomenon often related to low mathematics achievement and dyscalculia. In the present study, the German and the Brazilian versions of the Mathematics Anxiety Questionnaire (MAQ) were examined. The two-dimensional structure originally reported for the German MAQ, that includes both affective and cognitive components of math anxiety was reproduced in the Brazilian version. Moreover, mathematics anxiety also was found to increase with age in both populations and was particularly associated with basic numeric competencies and more complex arithmetics. The present results suggest that mathematics anxiety as measured by the MAQ presents the same internal structure in culturally very different populations. Guilherme Wood, Pedro Pinheiro-Chagas, Annelise Júlio-Costa, Letícia Rettore Micheli, Helga Krinzinger, Liane Kaufmann, Klaus Willmes, and Vitor Geraldi Haase Copyright © 2012 Guilherme Wood et al. All rights reserved. Sun, 25 Nov 2012 11:45:40 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/396071/ Mathematics anxiety has been the subject of several books and numerous research papers, suggesting that it is a significant issue for many people. Children and adults develop strategies to cope with this anxiety, one of which is avoidance. This paper presents data taken from over 2500 mathematics test papers in order to compare the levels of accuracy and the frequency of the use of the “no attempt” strategy, that is, avoidance, for arithmetic problems given to children aged from 10 years to adults aged up to 49 years from across the UK. Steve Chinn Copyright © 2012 Steve Chinn. All rights reserved. Thu, 22 Nov 2012 15:54:29 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/124939/ 44 Grade 3 children and 45 Grade 5 children from English primary schools were given the British abilities scales basic number skills subtest, and a Mathematics Attitude and Anxiety Questionnaire, using pictorial rating scales to record their Self-rating for maths, Liking for maths, Anxiety about maths, and Unhappiness about poor performance in mathematics. There were few year group differences in attitudes. Boys rated themselves higher than girls, but did not differ significantly in actual performance. Overall, Anxiety was not related to actual performance, but Self-rating was. This relationship between Self-rating and actual performance seemed to develop between Grade 3 and Grade 5. Implications of the findings are discussed. Ann Dowker, Karina Bennett, and Louise Smith Copyright © 2012 Ann Dowker et al. All rights reserved. Tue, 20 Nov 2012 07:27:25 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/813920/ Using a person-centered research approach, the present study explored individual differences in students' perceptions of instructional quality in secondary school mathematics classes and their relations to students' self-concept and interest in mathematics. Drawing on data collected from 425 high school students from ten schools in Berlin, Germany (male: 53.2%; female: 46.3%), latent class analyses (LCA) revealed four distinct patterns of perceived quality of instruction. Almost half of the sample (46%) had a high likelihood of perceiving an overall low quality in mathematics classes. Those students reported particular low self-concept and interest in mathematics. Compared to male students, female students were significantly more likely to belong to this “challenging pattern.” Consequences for educational practice are discussed and suggest that instruction in mathematics should take into account learners' highly individual ways of perceiving and evaluating their learning environment. Rebecca Lazarides and Angela Ittel Copyright © 2012 Rebecca Lazarides and Angela Ittel. All rights reserved. Wed, 14 Nov 2012 11:04:54 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/401680/ How much morphological variation can children tolerate when identifying familiar words? This is an important question in the context of the acquisition of richly inflected languages where identical word forms occur far less frequently than in English. To address this question, we compared children’s (, mean age 4;1, range 2;11–5;1) and adults’ (, mean age 21 years) tolerance of word-onset modifications (e.g., for stug: wug and wastug) and pseudoaffixes (e.g., kostug and stugko) in a label-extension task. Word-form modifications were repeated within each experiment to establish productive inflectional patterns. In two experiments, children and adults exhibited similar strategies: they were more tolerant of prefixes (wastug) than substitutions of initial consonants (wug), and more tolerant of suffixes (stugko) than prefixes (kostug). The findings point to word-learning strategies as being flexible and adaptive to morphological patterns in languages. Paul R. Bruening, Patricia J. Brooks, Louis Alfieri, Vera Kempe, and Ineta Dabašinskienė Copyright © 2012 Paul R. Bruening et al. All rights reserved. Mon, 12 Nov 2012 11:12:44 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/290862/ Breastfeeding is known to benefit both the mother’s and the child’s health. Our aim was to test the interactive effects between estrogen receptor 1 (ESR1) rs2234693 and breastfeeding when predicting the child’s later depression in adulthood. A sample of 1209 boys and girls from the Young Finns Study were followed from childhood over 27 years up to age 30–45 years. Adulthood depressive symptoms were self-reported by the participants using the Beck Depression Inventory. Breastfeeding as well as several possibly confounding factors was reported by the parents in childhood or adolescence. Breastfeeding tended to predict lower adult depression, while ESR1 rs2234693 was not associated with depression. A significant interaction between breastfeeding and ESR1 was found to predict participants’ depression () so that C/C genotype carriers who had not been breastfed had higher risk of depression than T-allele carriers (40.5% versus 13.0%) while there were no genotypic differences among those who had been breastfed. In sex-specific analysis, this interaction was evident only among women. We conclude that child’s genes and maternal behavior may interact in the development of child’s adult depression so that breastfeeding may buffer the inherited depression risk possibly associated with the C/C genotype of the ESR1 gene. Päivi Merjonen, Markus Jokela, Johanna Salo, Terho Lehtimäki, Jorma Viikari, Olli T. Raitakari, Mirka Hintsanen, and Liisa Keltikangas-Järvinen Copyright © 2012 Päivi Merjonen et al. All rights reserved. Mon, 22 Oct 2012 07:17:24 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/359089/ We investigated whether 9-year-olds experience math and/or literacy worries and, if they do, whether it is related to problem-solving abilities. Fifty-eight children judged the correctness of math, literacy, and mental rotation problems that differed in difficulty and rated their worry level about the correctness of judgments. Nonverbal IQ, general math, and literacy abilities were also assessed. Results showed children's worry ratings varied as a function of task and problem difficulty. Latent class analyses of math and literacy worry ratings revealed high-, moderate- and low-worry subgroups in both domains. The high-worry math subgroup exhibited poorer math performance than the other math subgroups, demonstrating a link between math worry and math performance. No relationship was found between worry literacy subgroups and literacy performance. Moreover, no relationship was found between teachers’ rating of children's academic and general worry and children’s own worry ratings. The relevance of the findings for understanding math and literacy worry is discussed. Laura Punaro and Robert Reeve Copyright © 2012 Laura Punaro and Robert Reeve. All rights reserved. Mon, 15 Oct 2012 09:19:32 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/170310/ To longitudinally explore children's developing beliefs towards mathematics, we asked 207 children to define “math” and “reading” at grades 2 and 3 and coded for spontaneous references to likability or difficulty of math (or reading) in their definitions. We found that children attributed more difficulty to math than to reading despite their relatively neutral comments on the likability of either subject. Children described math and reading with comparable degrees of specificity, but girls' definitions were more specific than boys'. Relative to their peers, children with mathematics learning disability (MLD) provided less specific definitions overall, were more likely to describe math as more difficult than reading, and were more likely to show a decrease in likability ratings of math (but not reading) from grades 2 to 3. Grade 2 ratings predicted math ability at grade 3, more so than predictors from grade 3. These findings, although based on informal analyses not intended to substitute for validated assessments of disposition, support the notions that distinct aspects of dispositions towards math emerge in early childhood, are revealed through casual discourse, and are predictive of later math achievement outcomes. This further supports current interests in developing formal measures of academic disposition in early childhood. Michèle M. M. Mazzocco, Laurie B. Hanich, and Maia M. Noeder Copyright © 2012 Michèle M. M. Mazzocco et al. All rights reserved. Wed, 10 Oct 2012 16:59:30 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/982672/ Mathematics anxiety has been associated to performance in school mathematics. The association between math anxiety and psychosocial competencies as well as their specific contribution to explain school mathematics performance are still unclear. In the present study, the impact of sociodemographic factors, psychosocial competencies, and math anxiety on mathematics and spelling performance was examined in school children with and without mathematics difficulties. The specific contributions of psychosocial competencies (i.e., general anxiety and attentional deficits with hyperactivity) and math anxiety (i.e., self-assessment in mathematics) to school mathematics performance were found to be statistically independent from each other. Moreover, psychosocial competencies—but not math anxiety—were related also to spelling performance. These results suggest that psychosocial competencies are more related to general mechanisms of emotional regulation and emotional response towards academic performance, while mathematics anxiety is related to the specific cognitive aspect of self-assessment in mathematics. Vitor Geraldi Haase, Annelise Júlio-Costa, Pedro Pinheiro-Chagas, Lívia de Fátima Silva Oliveira, Letícia Rettore Micheli, and Guilherme Wood Copyright © 2012 Vitor Geraldi Haase et al. All rights reserved. Wed, 10 Oct 2012 16:16:51 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/851657/ This study explored associations between parents’ beliefs about children’s development and children’s reported math activities at home. Seventy-three parents were interviewed about the frequency of their children’s participation in a broad array of math activities, the importance of children doing math activities at home, how children learn math, parents’ role in their children’s math learning, and parents’ own math skills. Although the sample consisted of African Americans, Chinese, Latino, and Caucasian parents in the United States, the majority were Chinese or Caucasian. Several important findings emerged from this study. Parents’ beliefs about math development and their role in fostering it were significantly related to children’s math activities. There was important variability and relatively limited participation of children in math activities at home. There were age-related differences in children’s engagement in math activities. Chinese and Caucasian parents showed somewhat similar beliefs about how children developed math. Although further research is needed to confirm the findings with a larger sample and to include measures of children’s math competencies, these findings are an important step for developing home-based interventions to facilitate children’s math skills. Susan Sonnenschein, Claudia Galindo, Shari R. Metzger, Joy A. Thompson, Hui Chih Huang, and Heather Lewis Copyright © 2012 Susan Sonnenschein et al. All rights reserved. Thu, 04 Oct 2012 13:34:30 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/459385/ Current models of strategy choice do not account for children's attitudes towards different problem solving strategies. Grade 2, 3, and 4 students solved three sets of three-term addition problems. On inversion problems (e.g., 4 + 8 − 8), if children understand the inverse relation between the operations, no calculations are required. On associativity problems (e.g., 5 + 27 − 23), if children understand the associative relation between the operations, problem solving can be facilitated by performing subtraction before addition. A brief intervention involving demonstrations of different problem solving strategies followed the first problem set. Shortcut use increased after the intervention, particularly for students who preferred shortcuts to the left-to-right algorithm. In the third set, children were given transfer problems (e.g., 8 + 4 − 8, 4 − 8 + 8, 27 + 5 − 23). Shortcut use was similar to first set suggesting that transfer did occur. That shortcut use increased the most for students who had positive attitudes about the shortcuts suggests that attitudes have important implications for subsequent arithmetic performance. Katherine M. Robinson and Adam K. Dubé Copyright © 2012 Katherine M. Robinson and Adam K. Dubé. All rights reserved. Thu, 04 Oct 2012 11:34:46 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/876028/ This paper aims to understand how certain different but interrelated variables such as background, motivation, and social support could lead to an explanation of student attitudes towards math and to an understanding of the defining characteristics of these attitudes in the school environment. Participants consisted of 1719 Portuguese students, from fifth-to-twelfth grade. The study utilizes an adaptation of the “Intrinsic Motivation Inventory” assessing main determinants of intrinsic motivation. One section of the questionnaire—“In my Math Class”—also assesses student perceptions of teacher and peer support as well as student attitudes. The results revealed that, in general, students held positive attitudes towards mathematics and also highlighted the main effects of grade and math achievement on these attitudes. No gender effect was identified although the girls showed a continuous decline in attitudes the further they progressed in school. A hierarchical analysis using structural equation modeling showed that motivation-related variables are the main predictors of attitudes towards mathematics and that teachers and the social support of peers are also highly significant in understanding these attitudes. Maria de Lourdes Mata, Vera Monteiro, and Francisco Peixoto Copyright © 2012 Maria de Lourdes Mata et al. All rights reserved. Thu, 13 Sep 2012 11:56:12 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/393914/ Interactions with parents are known to have a significant impact on children's self-esteem. In this study, designed to test propositions derived from Achievement Goal Theory and Self-Determination Theory, we assessed the influence of perceived parent-initiated mastery and ego motivational climates on self-esteem and self-esteem change in competitive youth swimmers over the course of a 32-week sport season. At each of three measurement points (early, mid, and late season), mastery climate scores on the Parent-Initiated Motivational Climate Questionnaire-2 scale were positively related to global self-esteem scores and to a measure of relative motivational autonomy that reflects the intrinsic-extrinsic motivation continuum, whereas ego climate scores were negatively related to self-esteem and autonomy. Longitudinal analyses revealed that early-season mastery climate predicted positive changes in self-esteem over the course of the season, whereas ego climate predicted decreased self-esteem. Consistent with predictions derived from Self-Determination Theory, a meditational analysis revealed that these self-esteem changes were mediated by changes in autonomous motivation. Daniel J. O'Rourke, Ronald E. Smith, Frank L. Smoll, and Sean P. Cumming Copyright © 2012 Daniel J. O'Rourke et al. All rights reserved. Thu, 05 Jul 2012 10:48:18 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/427364/ We examined how spatial language affected search behavior in a landmark spatial search task. In Experiment 1, two- to six-year-old children were trained to find a toy in the center of a square array of four identical landmarks. Children heard one of three spatial language cues once during the initial training trial (“here,” “in the middle,” “next to this one”). After search performance reached criterion, children received a probe test trial in which the landmark array was expanded. In Experiment 2, two- to four-year-old children participated in the search task and also completed a language comprehension task. Results revealed that children’s spatial language comprehension scores and spatial language cues heard during training trials were related to children’s performance in the search task. Amber A. Ankowski, Emily E. Thom, Catherine M. Sandhofer, and Aaron P. Blaisdell Copyright © 2012 Amber A. Ankowski et al. All rights reserved. Wed, 27 Jun 2012 09:29:04 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/863242/ The dopamine receptor D4 gene (DRD4) 7-repeat allele has been found to interact with environmental factors such as parenting in children and peer attitudes in adults to influence aspects of behavior such as risk taking. We previously found that in toddlers, lower-quality parenting in combination with the 7-repeat allele of the DRD4 gene was associated with greater parent-reported Sensation Seeking (SS), but was unrelated to Effortful Control (EC). We now report findings from a followup assessment with the same sample of children showing that parenting quality interacts with the presence of the 7-repeat allele to predict EC in 3- to 4-year-old children. The change in these patterns of results may reflect the increased role of the executive attention network in older children and adults. However, due to the small sample size (𝑁=52) and the novelty of the results, these findings should be treated with caution and considered preliminary until they are replicated in an independent sample. Brad E. Sheese, Mary K. Rothbart, Pascale M. Voelker, and Michael I. Posner Copyright © 2012 Brad E. Sheese et al. All rights reserved. Tue, 26 Jun 2012 14:07:40 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/684157/ This study explored the extent to which adolescents’ motives for leisure activity participation are related to their perceptions of competence and relatedness in different kinds of activities and aimed to provide new insight into boys’ and girls’ leisure experiences and their motivational orientations for activity participation. These proposed associations were based on previous empirical work and the theoretical frameworks of motive disposition approach and were tested in a nationally representative sample of Norwegian adolescents (𝑁=3273) aged 15 and 16 years (51.8% boys) from the World Health Organization’s cross-sectional survey, Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children 2005/06. The findings in the current study supported the hypothesis regarding matched correlations between specific motives and specific outcomes in that the adolescents seem to get (perceived competence and relatedness) what they want (competence and social motives) within leisure activities. Furthermore, the analysis using structural equation modeling indicated different motivational orientations in types of leisure activity participation between girls and boys, although the mediating effects of leisure activity participation in different types of activities were not significant. Ingrid Leversen, Anne G. Danielsen, Bente Wold, and Oddrun Samdal Copyright © 2012 Ingrid Leversen et al. All rights reserved. Mon, 25 Jun 2012 15:26:26 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/465458/ Recent neurophysiological studies have shown that several human brain regions involved in executing actions are activated by merely observing such actions via a human, and not by a mechanical hand. At a behavioral level, observing a human’s movements, but not those of a robot, significantly interferes with ongoing executed movements. However, it is unclear whether the biological tuning in the observation/execution matching system are functional during infancy. The present study examines whether a human’s actions, and not a mechanical action, influence infants’ execution of the same actions due to the observation/execution matching system. Twelve-month-old infants were given a searching task. In the tasks, infants observed an object hidden at location A, after which either a human hand (human condition) or a mechanical one (mechanical condition) searched the object correctly. Next, the object was hidden at location B and infants were allowed to search the object. We examined whether infants searched the object at location B correctly. The results revealed that infants in the human condition were more likely to search location A than those in the mechanical condition. Moreover, the results suggested that infants’ searching behaviors were affected by their observations of the same actions by a human, but not a mechanical hand. Thus, it may be concluded that the observation/execution matching system may be biologically tuned during infancy. Yusuke Moriguchi, Reiko Matsunaka, Shoji Itakura, and Kazuo Hiraki Copyright © 2012 Yusuke Moriguchi et al. All rights reserved.