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Social skills and symbol skills are positively associated in middle childhood, but the relation between these domains is less clear in newly verbal toddlers. Vygotsky proposed that symbols are both tools for interaction and mental tools for thought. Do symbols help even very young children build skills for interacting with and conceptualizing the social world? Longitudinal data from 108 children and mothers were collected when children were 14, 24, and 36 months. Children's gestures and words during mother-child interactions were used as symbol skill indicators to predict children's abilities to engage others and the number of social-emotional concepts children portray during play. In a series of growth models, words had a stronger effect on engagement skills whereas early gesture use predicted later development of social-emotional concepts. Therefore, even in early development, symbols serve as both communication tools and mental tools to construct understanding of the social-emotional world.

Despite the promise of scientific knowledge contributing to issues facing vulnerable children, families, and communities, typical approaches to research have made applications challenging. While contemporary theories of human development offer appropriate complexity, research has mostly failed to address dynamic developmental processes. Research typically fragments or splits the human organism into "investigatable" units--biology, behavior, culture, genetics, relationships, innate modules of mind, etc.--resulting in the inevitable loss of the person as an integrated, embodied center of agency. This is problematic for generating knowledge that is usable because in educational practice the unit of analysis and application is the whole person. We discuss the problems inherent to generating usable knowledge when theory and research methodology are so deeply incongruent. In an illustrative example, we adopt a "person-in-context" perspective to demonstrate how research has led to the mischaracterization of maltreated children as immature, disorganized, and dysregulated. Using this "person-in-context" perspective in research can facilitate generating usable knowledge.

The purpose of this research is to explore the dynamics of cortisol regulation in the context of center-based child care by examining the impact of social context (large classroom vs. small group) and relationship quality with caregivers (conflict with mothers and teachers). We extend the research on children's physiologic stress system functioning in center-based child care by focusing on morning cortisol levels among young children living in poverty. While in high-quality center-based child care, children's cortisol levels decreased over the course of the morning--a result that contrasts with findings in previous research with middle-class children, for whom cortisol typically increased over the course of the day while attending center-based child care. Cortisol levels were further reduced when children were moved from a large classroom environment to a small group context. Relationship conflict with mothers and teachers moderated these effects. Children who had high conflict with their mother exhibited cortisol levels that remained higher (decreased less) over the course of the morning, and children who had high conflict with their teacher exhibited cortisol levels that remained higher (decreased less) in response to the small group context. These results indicate that high-quality child care has the potential to support reduced stress among children living in poverty, at least as indicated by adrenocortical activity.

This investigation of 172 families at risk for child maltreatment examined whether entry-level family functioning and problems had an impact on length of time in treatment and the improvement or deterioration of family functioning over time. Significant differences were found among families either situationally stressed, chronically stressed, emotionally stressed, at multirisk, or violent multirisk. (Author/DB)

Research suggests that perinatal screening and early intervention may reduce the incidence of maltr and improve the parenting in at-risk families. The question of whether families with different sets characteristics differ in the way that they respond to intervention is asked in this paper. We inve entry-level family functioning and family problems had an impact on length of time in treatment and or deterioration of family functioning over time. In our analyses, we used entry-level characterist families into five homogeneous groups - situationally stressed, chronically stressed, emotionally s and violent multirisk - and we found that treatment duration and rate of change in family functioni differed in clinically important ways across these groups. Our findings suggest that treatment is l in stabilizing and slowly improving the family functioning of the majority of families at risk of c, A study which examined families with a predisposition for child maltreatment is presented. In particular, it was investigated whether at-risk families will respond to treatment intervention and whether there will be an improvement or deterioration in family functioning as a result of treatment. The families were grouped into five according to entry-level characteristics observed at the start of the program. Results showed that family functioning was improved due to the ongoing treatment and intervention program and these also reduced the risks of child maltreatment.

This longitudinal study provides an example of the use of exploratory growth modeling to examine changes over time in the functioning of 172 families who underwent treatment in an innovative prevention program, Project Good Start. Two types of research question are addressed: a within-family question (Does family functioning change over time in families at risk of maltreatment who are receiving special early support services?) and a between-family question (Are changes in family functioning systematically related to selected characteristics of family background and treatment?). Results of the study highlight the heterogeneity across families in the direction and rate of family function change and its systematic relationship with the family profile on entry into intervention. Although treatment seems successful in stabilizing and improving the family functioning of most at-risk families, problems of violence/maltreatment and distressed parenting act to defer successful treatment.

Many studies reveal a strong impact of childhood maltreatment on language development, mainly resulting in shorter utterances, less rich vocabulary, or a delay in grammatical complexity. However, different theories suggest the possibility for resilience—a positive adaptation to an otherwise adverse environment—in children who experienced childhood maltreatment. Here, we investigated different measures for language development in spontaneous speech, examining whether childhood maltreatment leads to a language deficit only or whether it can also result in differences in language use due to a possible adaptation to a toxic environment. We compared spontaneous speech during therapeutic peer-play sessions of 32 maltreated and 32 non-maltreated children from the same preschool and equivalent in gender, age (2 to 5 years), home neighborhood, ethnicity, and family income. Maltreatment status was reported by formal child protection reports, and corroborated by independent social service reports. We investigated general language sophistication (i.e., vocabulary, talkativeness, mean length of utterance), as well as grammatical development (i.e., use of plurals, tense, grammatical negations). We found that maltreated and non-maltreated children showed similar sophistication across all linguistic measures, except for the use of grammatical negations. Maltreated children used twice as many grammatical negations as non-maltreated children. The use of this highly complex grammatical structure shows an advanced linguistic skill, which shows that childhood maltreatment does not necessarily lead to a language deficit. The result might indicate the development of a negativity bias in the structure of spontaneous language due to an adaptation to their experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social skills and symbol skills are positively associated in middle childhood, but the relation between these domains is less clear in newly verbal toddlers. Vygotsky proposed that symbols are both tools for interaction and mental tools for thought. Do symbols help even very young children build skills for interacting with and conceptualizing the social world? Longitudinal data from 108 children and mothers were collected when children were 14, 24, and 36 months. Children's gestures and words during mother–child interactions were used as symbol skill indicators to predict children's abilities to engage others and the number of social-emotional concepts children portray during play. In a series of growth models, words had a stronger effect on engagement skills whereas early gesture use predicted later development of social-emotional concepts. Therefore, even in early development, symbols serve as both communication tools and mental tools to construct understanding of the social-emotional world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]