Chun-Shin Hahn

Social Competence, Externalizing, and Internalizing Behavioral Adjustment from Early Childhood through Early Adolescence: Developmental Cascades

This study used a three-wave longitudinal design to investigate developmental cascades among social competence and externalizing and internalizing behavioral adjustment in a normative sample of 117 children seen at 4, 10, and 14 years. Children, mothers, and teachers provided data. A series of nested path analysis models was used to determine the most parsimonious and plausible cascades across the three constructs over and above their covariation at each age and stability across age. Children with lower social competence at age 4 years exhibited more externalizing and internalizing behaviors at age 10 years and more externalizing behaviors at age 14 years. Children with lower social competence at age 4 years also exhibited more internalizing behaviors at age 10 years and more internalizing behaviors at age 14 years. Children who exhibited more internalizing behaviors at age 4 years exhibited more internalizing behaviors at age 10 years and more externalizing behaviors at age 14 years. These cascades among social competence and behavioral adjustment obtained independent of child intelligence and maternal education and social desirability of responding.

Specific and general language performance across early childhood: Stability and gender considerations.

Altogether 329 children participated in four longitudinal studies of specific and general language performance cumulatively from 1;1 to 6;10. Data were drawn from age-appropriate maternal questionnaires, maternal interviews, teacher reports, experimenter assessments and transcripts of children’s own spontaneous speech. Language performance at each age and stability of individual differences across age in girls and boys were assessed separately and together. Across age, including the important transition from preschool to school, across multiple tests at each age and across multiple reporters, children showed moderate to strong stability of individual differences; girls and boys alike were stable. In the second through fifth years, but not before or after, girls consistently outperformed boys in multiple specific and general measures of language.

Maternal personality, parenting cognitions, and parenting practices.

A community sample of 262 European American mothers of firstborn 20-month-olds completed a personality inventory and measures of parenting cognitions (knowledge, self-perceptions, and reports about behavior) and was observed in interaction with their children from which measures of parenting practices (language, sensitivity, affection, and play) were independently coded. Factor analyses of the personality inventory replicated extraction of the 5-factor model of personality (Openness, Neuroticism, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness). When controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, the 5 personality factors qua variables and in patterns qua clusters related differently to diverse parenting cognitions and practices, supporting the multidimensional, modular, and specific nature of parenting. Maternal personality in the normal range, a theoretically important but empirically neglected factor in everyday parenting, has meaning in studies of parenting, child development, and family process.

Physically Developed and Exploratory Young Infants Contribute to Their Own Long-Term Academic Achievement

A developmental cascade defines a longitudinal relation in which one psychological characteristic uniquely affects another psychological characteristic later in time, separately from other intrapersonal and extrapersonal factors. Here, we report results of a large-scale (N = 374), normative, prospective, 14-year longitudinal, multivariate, multisource, controlled study of a developmental cascade from infant motor-exploratory competence at 5 months to adolescent academic achievement at 14 years, through conceptually related and age-appropriate measures of psychometric intelligence at 4 and 10 years and academic achievement at 10 years. This developmental cascade applied equally to girls and boys and was independent of children’s behavioral adjustment and social competence; mothers’ supportive caregiving, verbal intelligence, education, and parenting knowledge; and the material home environment. Infants who were more motorically mature and who explored more actively at 5 months of age achieved higher academic levels as 14-year-olds.

Contributors to self-perceived competence, satisfaction, investment, and role balance in maternal parenting: A multivariate ecological analysis.

Objective. This study employed an ecological framework to examine the roles of multiple contributors to variations in key maternal perceptions of their own parenting. Design. Maternal socioeconomic status (SES), employment, and parenting support; child gender, language, social competence, and temperament; and maternal intelligence, personality, and parenting knowledge and style were explored in separate predictions of self-perceived competence, satisfaction, investment, and role balance in 234 European American mothers of firstborn, 20-month-old children. Results. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated highly differentiated patterns of unique predictive relations to each domain of self-perceived parenting. Nonetheless, some predictors consistently contributed to individual parenting self-perceptions, most prominently, parenting knowledge and dissonance between actual and ideal maternal and paternal parenting styles. SES, maternal employment, community support, and maternal personality also contributed to self-perceptions, as did child temperament. Conclusions. Although the potential contributors to parenting self-perceptions may be many, prominent contributors to any one self-perception are few, and constellations of contributors differ for different parenting self-perceptions, conclusions that articulate with the modular view of parenting.

Stability in Cognition Across Early Childhood A Developmental Cascade

Children confront the formidable task of assimilating information in the environment and accommodating their cognitive structures to that information. Developmental science is concerned equally with two distinctive features of these processes: childrens group mean level of performance through time and the standing of individual children through time. Prevailing opinion since the inception of the mental-measurement movement has been that individual development is unstable—that individual children change unpredictably in their abilities. We report results of a large-scale controlled, multivariate, prospective, microgenetic, 4-year longitudinal study that reveals a statistically significant cascade of species-typical cognitive abilities from infancy to childhood. Infancy is a recognizable starting point of life; we find that to a small but significant degree, infancy also represents a setting point in the life of the individual.

Systems and Cascades in Cognitive Development and Academic Achievement

A large-scale (N = 552) controlled multivariate prospective 14-year longitudinal study of a developmental cascade embedded in a developmental system showed that information-processing efficiency in infancy (4 months), general mental development in toddlerhood (18 months), behavior difficulties in early childhood (36 months), psychometric intelligence in middle childhood (8 years), and maternal education either directly or indirectly (or both) contribute to academic achievement in adolescence (14 years).

Language and Internalizing and Externalizing Behavioral Adjustment: Developmental Pathways from Childhood to Adolescence

Two independent prospective longitudinal studies that cumulatively spanned the age interval from 4 years to 14 years used multiwave designs to investigate developmental associations between language and behavioral adjustment (internalizing and externalizing behavior problems). Altogether 224 children, their mothers, and teachers provided data. Series of nested path analysis models were used to determine the most parsimonious and plausible paths among the three constructs over and above stability in each across age and their covariation at each age. In both studies, children with poorer language skills in early childhood had more internalizing behavior problems in later childhood and in early adolescence. These developmental paths between language and behavioral adjustment held after taking into consideration childrens nonverbal intellectual functioning, maternal verbal intelligence, education, parenting knowledge, and social desirability bias, as well as family socioeconomic status, and they applied equally to girls and boys.

Maternal personality and parenting cognitions in cross-cultural perspective

A total of 467 mothers of firstborn 20-month-old children from 7 countries (103 Argentine, 61 Belgian, 39 Israeli, 78 Italian, 57 Japanese, 69 Korean, and 60 US American) completed the Jackson Personality Inventory (JPI), measures of parenting cognitions (self-perceptions and knowledge), and a social desirability scale. Our first analysis showed that the Five-Factor structure of personality (Openness, Neuroticism, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness) could be extracted from the JPI scales when cross-cultural data from mothers in the 7 countries were analyzed; it was also replicable and generalizable in mothers from so-called individualist and collectivist cultures. Our second analysis showed that the five personality factors relate differently to diverse parenting cognitions in those individualist versus collectivist cultures. Maternal personality has significance in studies of normative parenting, child development, and family process across cultural contexts.

Long-Term Cumulative Effects of Childcare on Children's Mental Development and Socioemotional Adjustment in a Non-Risk Sample: The Moderating Effects of Gender.

We studied the long‐term cumulative effects of two common indices of childcare—the total number of hours of non‐maternal care and the mean hour‐weighted child‐to‐caregiver ratio per caregiving situation—on mental development and socioemotional adjustment from birth to 4.5 years old in a non‐risk middle‐class sample of girls and boys after taking into consideration child (gender and sibling status), maternal (education and concepts of child development), and family selection (socioeconomic status [SES] factors. Childcare indices did not differ in girls and boys year by year. Children experienced less non‐maternal care in their first year of life, but afterward children encountered more children in their caregiving situations in proportion to the number of caregivers. At age 4.5 years, girls scored higher on cognitive and language measures than boys, and boys exhibited more externalizing problem behaviors than girls. Hours of non‐maternal care were not a predictor of mental development or socioemotional adjustment; however, the child‐to‐caregiver ratio was. For cognitive outcomes, the ratio exerted a positive effect on children from higher SES backgrounds versus no effect on children from average or lower SES backgrounds. For behavioral adjustment outcomes, a higher ratio was associated with fewer behavioral problems in girls and more behavioral problems in boys. Different basic indices of childcare appear to have different long‐term cumulative effects for different domains of development in girls and boys.