Social Capital as Protection Against the Mental Health Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The corona pandemic has a huge impact on the mental wellbeing of the Dutch population. Based on a large-scale panel survey (N = 22,696) on the social impact of COVID-19, this article firstly examines which social groups are most susceptible to the mental health consequences of the pandemic. Secondly, we examine whether social capital provides protection against this impact. We find that the mental health impact of COVID-19 is considerable and that it increased over the course of 2020. Women, young people, respondents with low incomes and/or poor self-perceived health, experience relatively more fear and stress due to the pandemic. We do not find a difference between respondents with or without a migration background. Social capital (received support, trust in people and in institutions) has the expected effect: the more support and trust, the less fear and stress. There is a mediation effect. Older people, respondents with high incomes and/or good health experience less fear and stress, partly because they have more social capital. This is different for females. They would experience even more fear and stress, compared to men, were it not for the fact that they have more social capital. Hence we conclude that social capital indeed provides some protection against the negative mental health consequences of COVID-19.

Reciprocal relationships between nonword repetition and vocabulary during the preschool years.

The aim of this longitudinal study is to evaluate 3 views on the relationship between nonword repetition and vocabulary: (i) the storage-based view that considers nonword repetition, a measure of phonological storage, as the driving force behind vocabulary development, (ii) the lexical restructuring view that considers improvements in nonword repetition as the result of vocabulary growth, and (iii) the "combined" view that assumes that both storage-based learning and lexical restructuring play a role, resulting in reciprocal relationships between nonword repetition and vocabulary during language development. Data are analyzed from 471 monolingual Dutch children who performed tasks assessing nonword repetition and vocabulary at yearly intervals, from ages 2 to 5. Latent Change Score (LCS) modeling of Item Response Theory-scaled scores was used to investigate the relationships between nonword repetition and vocabulary growth over time. Additionally, the statistical techniques used in earlier work-cross-lagged and latent growth modeling-were applied to see whether the results changed as a function of the analytical technique used. Results from a bivariate LCS model showed positive reciprocal influences from nonword repetition on vocabulary between 2 and 5 years. Such positive cross-influences also emerged from the cross-lagged and latent growth models. Predictive relationships from vocabulary to nonword repetition were stronger than vice versa. These results indicate that both storage-based learning and lexical restructuring play a role in vocabulary learning, at least in early stages of language development, with the clearest support found for lexical restructuring. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Does the development of executive functioning in infants born preterm benefit from maternal directiveness?

OBJECTIVE: Problems in early development of executive functioning may underlie the vulnerability and individual variability of infants born preterm for behavioral and learning problems. Parenting behaviors may aggravate or temper this increased risk for dysfunction. This study assessed how maternal parenting behaviors predict individual differences in early development of executive functioning in infants born preterm, and whether this varies with infant temperament, i.e., self-regulation. METHODS: Participants were 76 infants born preterm (≤36weeks' gestation and <2500g birth weight) and their mothers. Maternal sensitive responsiveness and directiveness were observed during a mother-infant interaction situation at 7, 10 and 14months corrected age. At the same ages, executive functioning was measured using the A-not-B task. An infant self-regulation questionnaire (IBQ-R) was completed by mothers at 7months. RESULTS: After controlling for perinatal risk factors, Multivariate Latent Growth Modeling showed that consistently higher levels of maternal directiveness predicted a stronger increase in A-not-B performance, which did not vary with infant self-regulation. No relationship between maternal sensitive responsiveness and development in A-not-B performance in infants born preterm was found. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that preterm infants' early executive functioning development in the first year of life may benefit from a more and consistent directive approach by their mothers. These findings have important implications for early intervention programs aimed at facilitating preterm infants' development.

Development of exploration of spatial-relational object properties in the second and third years of life.

Within a perception-action framework, exploration is seen as a driving force in young children's development. Through exploration, children become skilled in perceiving the affordances in their environment and acting on them. Using a perception-action framework, the current study examined the development of children's exploration of the spatial-relational properties of objects such as the possibility of containing or stacking. A total of 61 children, belonging to two age cohorts, were followed from 9 to 24 months and from 20 to 36 months of age, respectively. Exploration of a standard set of objects was observed in five home visits in each cohort conducted every 4 months. A cohort-sequential augmented growth model for categorical data, incorporating assumptions of item response theory, was constructed that fitted the data well, showing that the development of exploration of spatial-relational object properties follows an overlapping waves pattern. This is in line with Siegler's model (Emerging Minds, 1996), which suggested that skill development can be seen as ebbing and flowing of alternative (simple and advanced) behaviors. Although the probability of observing the more complex forms of exploration increased with age, the simpler forms did not disappear altogether but only became less probable. Findings support a perception-action view on development. Individual differences in observed exploration and their relations with other variables, as well as future directions for research, are discussed.

A new visualization and conceptualization of categorical longitudinal development: measurement invariance and change.

The Overlapping Waves Model (OWM) is a metaphor introduced by Siegler (1996) to illustrate a typical sequence of increasing and decreasing use of strategies during development. Going beyond metaphor, a new model synthesized from Latent Growth Modeling (LGM) and Item Response Theory (IRT) will be presented to analyze such categorical longitudinal data. Use of strategies can be scored as a variable with only a few ordinal categories. IRT provides the means to relate the usage of strategies to position on an underlying developmental dimension. LGM allows to model movement of individuals along this dimension, acknowledging individual differences both in starting point and in speed of progress. Measuring and modeling such strategy development requires that at each time point the same categories are used, in the sense that item difficulties must remain invariant over time. Whether, discrimination can be relaxed is still an issue. The problem that had to be solved was disentangling the between-person-individual differences from real intra-individual developmental differences. Figures with polytomous or multi-category Item Characteristic Curves (ICC's) resemble the OWM in many respects. However, such figures are usually taken to represent inter-individual differences, whereas the OWM usually represents development (so intra-individual differences), and we cannot have both at the same time. The solution came from creating a framework with ability differences on one axis and the effect of time on another axis, resulting in a 3-D model. These (orthogonal) dimensions make it possible to adequately conceptualize measurement invariance in this complex context. As the result is difficult to conceptualize without extensive visualization, special 3-D figures will be used to illustrate and a dynamic (rotatable and scalable) version will be made available as Computable Document Format object (Mathematica). The model was successfully applied in several microgenetic studies.

The structure of executive functions in children: a closer examination of inhibition, shifting, and updating.

An increasing number of studies has investigated the latent factor structure of executive functions. Some studies found a three-factor structure of inhibition, shifting, and updating, but others could not replicate this finding. We assumed that the task choices and scoring methods might be responsible for these contradictory findings. Therefore, we selected tasks in which input modality was varied, controlled for baseline speed, and used both speed and accuracy scores, in order to investigate whether a three factor model with inhibition, shifting, and updating could still be replicated. In a group of 211 children, who were tested at the beginning of grade 1, at approximately 6 years of age, and again after 18 months, the best fitting model was not the three-factor model, but instead consisted of an updating factor and a combined inhibition and shifting factor, besides two baseline speed factors (verbal and motor). We argue that these results might indicate that the structural organization of executive functions might be different in children than in adults, but that there might also be an alternative explanation: the distinction in executive functions might not accurately represent cognitive structures but instead be a methodological artefact.

Microgenetic patterns of children's multiplication learning: confirming the overlapping waves model by latent growth modeling.

Variability in strategy selection is an important characteristic of learning new skills such as mathematical skills. Strategies gradually come and go during this development. In 1996, Siegler described this phenomenon as "overlapping waves." In the current microgenetic study, we attempted to model these overlapping waves statistically. In addition, we investigated whether development in strategy selection is related to development in accuracy and to what degree working memory is related to both. We expected that children with poor working memory are limited in their possibilities to make the associations that are necessary to progress to more mature strategies. This limitation would explain the often-found relationship between working memory and mathematical abilities. To this aim, the strategy selection and accuracy of 98 children who were learning single-digit multiplication was assessed eight times on a weekly basis. Using latent growth modeling for categorical data, we confirmed Siegler's hypothesis of overlapping waves. Moreover, both the intercepts and the slopes of strategy selection and accuracy were strongly interrelated. Finally, working memory predicted both strategy selection and accuracy, confirming that working memory is related to mathematical problem solving in two ways because it influences both the maturity of strategy choice and the probability of making procedural mistakes.

The development of executive functions and early mathematics: a dynamic relationship.

BACKGROUND: The relationship between executive functions and mathematical skills has been studied extensively, but results are inconclusive, and how this relationship evolves longitudinally is largely unknown. AIM: The aim was to investigate the factor structure of executive functions in inhibition, shifting, and updating; the longitudinal development of executive functions and mathematics; and the relation between them. SAMPLE: A total of 211 children in grade 2 (7-8 years old) from 10 schools in the Netherlands. METHOD: Children were followed in grade 1 and 2 of primary education. Executive functions and mathematics were measured four times. The test battery contained multiple tasks for each executive function: Animal stroop, local global, and Simon task for inhibition; Animal Shifting, Trail Making Test in Colours, and Sorting Task for shifting; and Digit Span Backwards, Odd One Out, and Keep Track for updating. The factor structure of executive functions was assessed and relations with mathematics were investigated using growth modelling. RESULTS: Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) showed that inhibition and shifting could not be distinguished from each other. Updating was a separate factor, and its development was strongly related to mathematical development while inhibition and shifting did not predict mathematics in the presence of the updating factor. CONCLUSIONS: The strong relationship between updating and mathematics suggest that updating skills play a key role in the maths learning process. This makes updating a promising target for future intervention studies.

The role of adolescents' morality and identity in volunteering. Age and gender differences in a process model.

The aim of this study was to explain adolescents' volunteering in terms of their morality and identity and to examine the moderation effect of gender and age in this process. Data were collected among 698 Dutch adolescents aged 12 to 20 (M = 15.19; SD = 1.43). Adolescents' moral reasoning was positively associated with understanding moral issues and thinking about public responsibility towards these issues. In turn, moral understanding, along with being personally committed to act upon moral issues, were positively associated with identity. Extending the number of identity contexts tended to be related to being more likely to volunteer and to more volunteering involvement. Adolescents' identity integration was not related to how likely they were to volunteer, and was negatively related to their volunteering involvement. Clearer effects were found when differentiating between adolescent gender and age groups. Future research could examine this process over time, along with additional factors that may further explain adolescents' volunteering, and examine their age and gender specific effects.

Individual differences in developmental trajectories of A-not-B performance in infants born preterm.

Because early executive functioning is a potentially important predictor of developmental delay and learning difficulties in infants born preterm, this study assessed the effect of several perinatal predictors on the development of A-not-B performance between 7 and 14 months corrected age in 76 infants born preterm, and its relationship to subsequent global cognitive functioning. Latent Growth Modeling showed that gestational age was a predictor of initial level, and that birth weight and gender were predictors of the rate of developmental change in A-not-B performance. Moreover, initial level and rate of developmental change in A-not-B performance were predictive of global cognitive functioning.

Phonotactic probability effect in nonword recall and its relationship with vocabulary in monolingual and bilingual preschoolers.

The current study examined to what extent information in long-term memory concerning the distribution of phoneme clusters in a language, so-called long-term phonotactic knowledge, increased the capacity of verbal short-term memory in young language learners and, through increased verbal short-term memory capacity, supported these children's first and second language vocabulary acquisition. Participants were 67 monolingual Dutch and 60 bilingual Turkish-Dutch 4-year-olds. The superior recall of nonwords with high phonotactic probability compared with nonwords with low phonotactic probability indicated that phonotactic knowledge was supportive for verbal short-term recall in both languages. The extent of this support depended on prior experiences with the language: The Turkish-Dutch children showed a greater phonotactic probability effect in their native language Turkish compared with their Dutch peers, and the monolingual Dutch children outperformed the bilingual Turkish-Dutch children in their native language Dutch. Regression analyses showed that phonotactic knowledge, indicated by the difference in recall of nonwords with high versus low phonotactic probability, was an important predictor of vocabulary in both languages.

Can at-risk young adolescents be popular and anti-social? Sociometric status groups, anti-social behaviour, gender and ethnic background.

This study aimed to extend the understanding of anti-social behaviour and its association with popularity and sociometric status in a sample of at-risk adolescents from diverse ethnic backgrounds (n = 1491, average age 14.7 years). Both overt and covert types of anti-social behaviour were used to distinguish subgroups. These subgroups were created on the basis of anti-social behaviour profile scores, using Latent Class Analysis. Moderator effects of gender and ethnic background were investigated using a log-linear analysis. The main finding was that each sociometric status group consisted of subgroups that differed in terms of prevalence of self-reported anti-social behaviour. At-risk young adolescents who reported involvement in anti-social behaviour appeared in every status group, including the popular group. Implications for school prevention programmes for anti-social behaviour are discussed.