Frances E. Aboud

The formation of in-group favoritism and out-group prejudice in young children: Are they distinct attitudes?

Although standardized measures of prejudice reveal high levels of ethnocentric bias in the preschool years, it may reflect in-group favoritism or out-group prejudice. A measure that partially decouples the two attitudes was given to White children between 4 and 7 years of age to examine the reciprocal relation between and the acquisition and correlates of in-group and out-group attitudes. The two attitudes were reciprocally correlated in 1 sample from a racially homogeneous school but not in a 2nd sample from a mixed-race school. In-group favoritism did not appear until 5 years of age but then reached significant levels; it was strongly related to developing social cognitions. Out-group prejudice was weaker, but its targets suffer from comparison with the high favoritism accorded in-group members.

Responsive Feeding Is Embedded in a Theoretical Framework of Responsive Parenting

Children throughout the world are confronted with growth problems ranging from underweight and stunting to overweight and obesity. The development of healthy eating behaviors depends on both healthy food and responsive parenting behaviors. With origins from anthropology, psychology, and nutrition, responsive parenting reflects reciprocity between child and caregiver, conceptualized as a 4-step mutually responsive process: 1) the caregiver creates a routine, structure, expectations, and emotional context that promote interaction; 2) the child responds and signals to the caregiver; 3) the caregiver responds promptly in a manner that is emotionally supportive, contingent, and developmentally appropriate; and 4) the child experiences predictable responses. This paper examines evidence for the practice and developmental benefits of responsive parenting with a view to providing a theoretical basis for responsive feeding. Recommendations are made that future efforts to promote healthy growth and to prevent underweight and overweight among young children incorporate and evaluate responsive feeding.

Developmental Patterns in the Flexibility of Children's Ethnic Attitudes

Developmental patterns in ethnic attitudes were assessed in 232 children aged 5 to 12 years in relation to cognitive development and social desirability responding. English-speaking children assigned 10 positive attributes, 10 negative attributes, and 4 neutral attributes to either an English-speaking child, a French-speaking child, or both an English- and a French-speaking child, depicted by line drawings. Positive attributions to their own ethnic group and negative attributions to the other ethnic group were less frequent in older children. Flexibility of ethnic attitudes, that is, attributions to both groups, increased with age and were inversely related to positive own-group attributions and negative other-group attributions. High flexibility followed the attainment of concrete operational thinking, as measured by conservation but not by ethnic constancy. Flexibility was inversely related to Crandall social desirability responding and unrelated to childrens conformity to the experimenters attitude. These results indicate the importance of cognitive rather than social desirability factors in the development of childrens ethnic attitudes.

Exploring and Evaluating School‐Based Interventions to Reduce Prejudice

Three studies examined ways of talking about race and racial evaluations in order to reduce rather than raise prejudice. The first study evaluated an 11-week classroom program designed to encourage, through teacher-led discussion, the processing of internal attributes of people rather than their race. In a second study, high-prejudice White students were paired with a low-prejudice friend to discuss their racial evaluations. The third study explored ways thatstudents orally respond when they overhear a peers demeaning racial remark and the conflicting pressures influencing their interventions. Results overall support the assumption that talking about race and racial attitudes can reduce prejudice under certain conditions, and that peers may be valuable sources of influence in this dialogue.

The Development of Ethnic Attitudes A Critical Review

Empirical research reported in the literature over the past 18 years was integrated and critically evaluated to determine the age at which ethnic attitudes are formed, their course of development after this age of onset, and psychological factors influencing attitude development. Conclusions were drawn about the effects of age and ethnic status that differed in certain respects from those made a decade ago. The development of ethnic attitudes was found to parallel certain developments in affective, perceptual, and cognitive processes, such as the differentiation between groups and between individuals. Within this framework, differences between majority and minority children were discussed in terms of the effects of social factors on affect, perception, and cognition.

The Resolution of Social Conflict between Friends.

NELSON, JANICE, and ABOUD, FRANCES E. The Resolution of Social Conflict between Friends. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1985, 56, 1009-1017. The major question addressed was whether children respond differently to conflict with a friend than with a nonfriend. Third and fourth graders were pretested on their answers to social problems. They were then randomly assigned to a friend or nonfriend acquaintance who initially agreed or disagreed with their answer to a problem, and asked to discuss this problem with their peer. 2 variables were measured and analyzed: the content of the discussion, and the change in answer to the problem from before to after the discussion. Results indicated that friends gave more explanations of their position and more criticism of their partner than nonfriends. Disagreement provoked more change than agreement. Among the disagreeing pairs, although friends did not differ from nonfriends in the amount of change made to their answers, they changed to a more mature solution than nonfriends. These results support the view that conflict between friends promotes more social development than conflict between nonfriends.

Iodine and Mental Development of Children 5 Years Old and Under: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Several reviews and meta-analyses have examined the effects of iodine on mental development. None focused on young children, so they were incomplete in summarizing the effects on this important age group. The current systematic review therefore examined the relationship between iodine and mental development of children 5 years old and under. A systematic review of articles using Medline (1980–November 2011) was carried out. We organized studies according to four designs: (1) randomized controlled trial with iodine supplementation of mothers; (2) non-randomized trial with iodine supplementation of mothers and/or infants; (3) prospective cohort study stratified by pregnant women’s iodine status; (4) prospective cohort study stratified by newborn iodine status. Average effect sizes for these four designs were 0.68 (2 RCT studies), 0.46 (8 non-RCT studies), 0.52 (9 cohort stratified by mothers’ iodine status), and 0.54 (4 cohort stratified by infants’ iodine status). This translates into 6.9 to 10.2 IQ points lower in iodine deficient children compared with iodine replete children. Thus, regardless of study design, iodine deficiency had a substantial impact on mental development. Methodological concerns included weak study designs, the omission of important confounders, small sample sizes, the lack of cluster analyses, and the lack of separate analyses of verbal and non-verbal subtests. Quantifying more precisely the contribution of iodine deficiency to delayed mental development in young children requires more well-designed randomized controlled trials, including ones on the role of iodized salt.

Challenges to changing health behaviours in developing countries: A critical overview

This overview of recent research on health behaviour change in developing countries shows progress as well as pitfalls. In order to provide guidance to health and social scientists seeking to change common practices that contribute to illness and death, there needs to be a common approach to developing interventions and evaluating their outcomes. Strategies forming the basis of interventions and programs to change behaviour need to focus on three sources: theories of behaviour change, evidence for the success and failure of past attempts, and an in-depth understanding of ones audience. Common pitfalls are a lack of attention to the wisdom of theories that address strategies of change at the individual, interpersonal, and community levels. Instead, programs are often developed solely from a logic model, formative qualitative research, or a case-control study of determinants. These are relevant, but limited in scope. Also limited is the focus solely on ones specific behaviour; regardless of whether the practice concerns feeding children or seeking skilled birth attendants or using a latrine, commonalities among behaviours allow generalizability. What we aim for is a set of guidelines for best practices in interventions and programs, as well as a metric to assess whether the program includes these practices. Some fields have approached closer to this goal than others. This special issue of behaviour change interventions in developing countries adds to our understanding of where we are now and what we need to do to realize more gains in the future.

A Cluster-Randomized Evaluation of a Responsive Stimulation and Feeding Intervention in Bangladesh

OBJECTIVES: The goal of this study was to determine if a responsive stimulation and feeding intervention improved developmental and nutritional outcomes compared with a regular information-based parenting program. The hypothesis was that mothers in the intervention would exhibit better parenting skills and children would exhibit better developmental and nutritional outcomes than controls. METHODS: A cluster-randomized field trial was conducted with 302 children aged 8 to 20 months and their mothers in rural Bangladesh who were randomly assigned according to village to 1 of 3 groups. The control mothers received 12 informational sessions on health and nutrition. The intervention groups received an additional 6 sessions delivered by peer educators who included modeling and coached practice in self-feeding and verbal responsiveness with the child during play. A second intervention group received, along with the sessions, 6 months of a food powder fortified with minerals and vitamins. Developmental outcomes included the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) Inventory, mother-child responsive talk, and language development. Nutritional outcomes included weight, height, self-feeding, and mouthfuls eaten. We used analysis of covariance to compare the 3 groups at the posttest and at follow-up, covarying the pretest levels and confounders. RESULTS: At follow-up, responsive stimulation-feeding groups had better HOME inventory scores, responsive talking, language, mouthfuls eaten, and hand-washing. Micronutrient fortification resulted in more weight gain. CONCLUSIONS: A brief behavior-change program that focused on modeling and practice in stimulation and feeding was found to benefit childrens nutrition and language development. Micronutrients benefited childrens weight but not length.

Global Health and Development in Early Childhood

Health and nutritional risks co-occur in the lives of children under the age of 2 years who live in developing countries. We review evidence showing how these risks, in addition to inadequate psychosocial stimulation, prevent children from developing expected cognitive and language abilities. A systematic review and meta-analysis of 21 interventions aimed at enhancing stimulation and 18 interventions that provided better nutrition--all conducted since 2000--revealed that stimulation had a medium effect size of 0.42 and 0.47 on cognitive and language development, respectively, whereas nutrition by itself had a small effect size of 0.09. The implementation processes of these interventions are described and compared. A number of unresolved issues are outlined and discussed, including ways to maximize parental health behavior change, assess mediators that account for intervention effects, and expand the assessment of young childrens brain functions that underlie language and cognition and are affected by nutrition and stimulation.