We investigate dispositional, experiential, and environmental factors that contribute to physical, mental, emotional, and social development in human beings through the first two decades of life. Our overall goals are to describe, analyze, and assess the capabilities and proclivities of developing young human beings, including their genetic characteristics, physiological functioning, perceptual and cognitive abilities, and emotional, social, and interactional styles as well as the nature and consequences for children and parents of family development and children’s exposure to and interactions with their natural and designed surroundings. Project designs are experimental, longitudinal, and cross-sectional as well as intracultural and cross-cultural. Sociodemographic comparisons include family socioeconomic status, maternal age and employment status, and child parity and daycare experience. In addition to the United States study sites, include Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, England, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Norway, Peru, and the Republic of South Korea.
Language development in childhood
Haynes, Leach, Bornstein
Language acquisition is one of the great achievements of early childhood. This past year, we focused on children’s early language acquisition. More than 300 children age 1 to 6 years participated cumulatively in four longitudinal studies of specific and general language performance. We drew data from maternal questionnaires, maternal interviews, teacher reports, experimenter assessments, and transcripts of children’s own spontaneous speech, assessing separately and together language performance at each age and stability of individual differences across age in girls and boys. Across age, including the important transition from preschool to school, across several tests at each age, and across several reporters, both girls and boys showed moderate to strong stability of individual differences. In the second through fifth years, but not before or after, girls consistently outperformed boys in several specific and general measures of language.
We also investigated the composition of young children’s vocabularies in seven contrasting linguistic communities. Mothers of more than 250 20-month-olds in Argentina, Belgium, France, Israel, Italy, the Republic of Korea, and the United States completed comparable vocabulary checklists for their children. In each language and for different vocabulary size groupings, children’s vocabularies contained relatively greater proportions of nouns than other word classes. Each word class was consistently positively correlated with every other class in each language and for children with smaller and larger vocabularies. A follow-up study compared several characteristics of girls’ and boys’ vocabulary in six linguistic communities, one urban and one rural setting in each of three countries. More than 250 mothers in Argentina, Italy, and the United States completed vocabulary checklists for their 20-month-old children. Individual variability was substantial within each linguistic community. We found minimal cross-linguistic differences in children’s vocabulary size; however, differences among languages in the composition of children’s vocabularies appeared to be possibly related to cultural valuing of different categories of words. Ecological setting differences within cultures appeared in children’s vocabulary size, even when we examined the composition of children’s vocabularies. Particularly among Argentine and U.S. children, mothers reported that children living in urban areas said significantly more words than children living in rural areas. Girls demonstrated consistently larger vocabularies than boys.
Using several measures of maternal report, child speech, and experimenter assessment, we also explored vocabulary competence in more than 50 first-born and second-born sibling pairs when each child reached two years. Measures from each of the three sources were interrelated. First-borns’ vocabulary competence exceeded second-borns’ only in maternal reports, not in child speech or in experimenter assessments. First-born girls outperformed boys on all vocabulary competence measures, and second-born girls outperformed boys on most measures. Vocabulary competence was independent of the gender composition and, generally, of the age difference in sibling pairs. Vocabulary competence in first-borns and second-borns was only weakly related.
Generally, children confront the formidable task of assimilating information from the environment and accommodating their cognitive structures to that information. Developmental science is concerned equally with two distinctive features of these processes. The first feature describes children’s group mean level performance through time; obviously, the majority of children improve in cognition as they age. The second feature describes the standing of individual children through time. Since the inception of the mental measurement movement, prevailing opinion has held that individual development is unstable: over time, individual children change unpredictably in their abilities. We undertook a large-scale controlled multivariate prospective microgenetic four-year longitudinal study that revealed a statistically significant cascade of species-typical cognitive abilities from early infancy through middle childhood. Just as infancy is a recognizable starting point of life, we found that, to a small but significant degree, infancy also represents a setting point in the life of the individual.
Bornstein MH, Cote L. Expressive vocabulary in language learners from two ecological settings in three language communities. Infancy 2005;7:299-316.
Bornstein MH, Cote LR, Maital S, Painter K, Park S-Y, Pascual L, Pêcheux M-G, Ruel J, Venuti P, Vyt A. Cross-linguistic analysis of vocabulary in young children: Spanish, Dutch, French, Hebrew, Italian, Korean, and American English. Child Dev 2004;75:1115-1139.
Bornstein MH, Hahn C-S, Bell C, Haynes OM, Slater A, Golding J, Wolke D, the ALSPAC Study Team. Stability in cognition from early infancy: a developmental cascade. Psychol Sci 2006 (in press).
Bornstein MH, Hahn C-S, Haynes OM. Specific and general language performance across early childhood: stability and gender considerations. First Lang 2004;24:267-304.
Bornstein MH, Leach DB, Haynes OM. Vocabulary competence in first- and secondborn siblings of the same chronological age. J Child Lang 2004;31:855-873.
Parenting and child development
Bornstein, Hahn, Haynes, Hendricks, Leach, Painter, Suwalsky
Given that parenting constitutes the initial and continuing all-encompassing ecology of child development, parents play central roles in children’s physical survival, social growth, emotional maturation, and cognitive development. We are broadly concerned with analyzing and understanding the roles of parenting in human development. One review focused on parents and parenting, theories of parenting, determinants of parenting, the multicausal context of parenting effects, parenting cognitions and practices, and parenting interventions. Mothers and fathers guide the development of their children through many direct and indirect means. Biological parents contribute to the genetic makeup of their offspring, but all parents shape their children’s experiences and influence their children’s development by what they believe and how they act. Parents also influence their children by virtue of each partner’s influence on the other and of parents’ associations with larger social networks. Parenting alone does not determine the course and outcome of ontogeny—stature in maturity is shaped by the actions of individuals themselves as well as by their contexts—but it makes sense that effects have causes and that the start exerts an impact on the end.
In an empirical study, we used an ecological framework to examine the roles of several contributors to variation in key maternal perceptions of mothers’ own parenting. We explored maternal socioeconomic status (SES), employment, and parenting support; child gender, language, social competence, and temperament; and maternal intelligence, personality, and parenting knowledge and style in separate predictions of self-perceived competence, satisfaction, investment, and role balance in over 230 European American mothers of first-born 20-month-olds. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated highly differentiated patterns of unique predictive relations for 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 parental parenting styles). SES, maternal employment, community support, and maternal personality also contributed to self-perceptions, as did child temperament. 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.
Emotional availability (EA) is a prominent index of socioemotional adaptation in the parent-child dyad. In a methodological study, we examined the short-term stability and continuity in EA as measured with individual and dyadic Emotional Availability Scales and in clusters of individuals and dyads on EA scores in more than 50 mothers and their 5-month-olds observed twice at home. The work documents psychometric properties of EA from both variable and person orientations.
Parents’ knowledge about child development and child rearing is relevant to pediatric practice, parent-child interactions, and child development. In one study, we investigated parenting knowledge in two groups (Japanese and South American) of immigrant mothers to the United States. Immigrant mothers scored about 70 percent on the evaluation of parenting knowledge, significantly lower than U.S. mothers. The majority of immigrant mothers’ incorrect answers were responses to questions about normative child development. Parents’ knowledge is relevant to pediatricians’ evaluations of the health and welfare of children as understood by their parents. Gaps in parenting knowledge have implications for clinical interactions with parents, child diagnosis, pediatric training, and parent education. Parenting knowledge is vital to parents’ evaluation of their children’s behaviors and development and to parents’ every-day decisions about their children’s care. We also studied parenting knowledge in a sample of Brazilian mothers and fathers. The average knowledge score obtained by mothers was significantly greater than the average score obtained by fathers. Mothers and fathers in the same family were correlated in their parenting knowledge. For mothers, education and child age predicted knowledge score, but for fathers only education predicted knowledge score.
Bornstein MH. Parenting science and practice. In: Sigel IE, Renninger KA, eds. Handbook of Child Psychology: Vol. 4. Child Psychology and Practice, 6th edition. New York: Wiley & Sons, 2006.
Bornstein MH, Cote L. Who is sitting across from me? Immigrant mothers’ knowledge about children’s development. Pediatrics 2004;114:557-564.
Bornstein MH, Gini M, Suwalsky JTD, Leach DB, Haynes OM. Emotional availability in mother-child dyads: short-term stability and continuity from variable and person points of view. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 2005 (in press).
Bornstein MH, Haynes OM, Pascual L, Painter KM. Competence and satisfaction in parenting young children: an ecological, multivariate comparison of expressions and sources of self-evaluation in the United States and Argentina. In: Gielen UP, Roopnarine JL, eds. Childhood and Adolescence: Cross-cultural Perspectives and Applications. Westport, CT: Praeger/Greenwood Press, 2004:166-195.
Ribas RdeC, Bornstein MH. Parenting knowledge: similarities and differences in Brazilian mothers and fathers. Interam J Psychol 2005 (in press).
Family acculturation in contemporary America
Bornstein; in collaboration with Cote
America is a country of acculturating peoples; the countries of origin of those acculturating peoples are constantly changing, and the nature of acculturation itself is elusive. Current Bureau of the Census statistics indicate that one in every five children under the age of 18, or 14 million children, in the United States are either immigrants themselves or the children of immigrant parents. Yet, acculturation as a scientific phenomenon is not well understood; moreover, acculturation is a major transforming force on child health and human development. We study families acculturating to the United States from Japan and South America. We assess acculturation and the role of acculturation on parenting, child development, and family life.
Our methodology examines the acculturation of mothers’ parenting cognitions and practices at the individual and group levels. We explore acculturation at the individual level by determining whether immigrant mothers’ acculturation level predicts their parenting cognitions and practices. We explore acculturation at the group level by comparing immigrant mothers’ parenting cognitions and practices with those of mothers in the cultures of origin and destination. First, acculturation at the group level appears to be more robust than acculturation at the individual level. Second, parenting practices acculturate more readily than parenting cognitions. We also compared Japanese and South American immigrant mothers’ parenting cognitions (attributions and self-perceptions) with those of mothers in the country of origin (Japan and Argentina, respectively) and with those of European American mothers in the United States. The mothers of 231 20-month-old children participated. Generally, South American immigrant mothers’ parenting cognitions more closely resembled those of mothers in the United States, whereas Japanese immigrant mothers’ cognitions tended to be similar to those of Japanese mothers or intermediate between Japanese and U.S. mothers.
In a longitudinal study, we investigated Japanese American and South American immigrant mothers’ actual and ideal engagement in social, didactic, and limit-setting interactions with their 5- and 20-month-old children as well as their perceptions of their spouses’ interactions. Ethnic differences in mothers’ actual social, didactic, and limit setting were attributable to mothers’ cultural beliefs (collectivism). Discrepancies between parents’ ideal and actual behaviors emerged for all three parenting domains. Mothers reported differences between their own and their spouses’ behaviors. Parents’ didactic and limit-setting behaviors were discontinuous from infancy to toddlerhood. Mothers’ social and didactic behaviors were stable from infancy to toddlerhood for both groups, and South American mothers’ limit setting was stable.
We also compared immigrant (Japanese and South Americans in the United States) families’ play with play in families in their countries of origin (Japan and Argentina, respectively) and in a common country of destination (European Americans in the United States), examining 240 20-month-old children and their mothers. Generally, the play of immigrant children and mothers was similar to European American children’s and mothers’ play. Japanese and Argentine children engaged in more symbolic play, whereas immigrant children engaged in more exploratory play. Likewise, South American immigrant mothers demonstrated and solicited more exploratory play than Argentine mothers. Japanese mothers solicited more symbolic play, and Argentine mothers demonstrated more symbolic play than immigrant mothers.
Bornstein MH, Cote LR, eds. Acculturation and Parent-Child Relationships: Measurement and Development. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006 (in press).
Bornstein MH, Cote LR. Mothers’ parenting cognitions in cultures of origin, acculturating cultures, and cultures of destination. Child Dev 2004;75:221-235.
Bornstein MH, Cote LR. Parenting cognitions and practices in the acculturative process. In: Bornstein MH, Cote LR, eds. Acculturation and Parent-Child Relationships: Measurement and Development. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006 (in press).
Cote LR, Bornstein MH. Child and mother play in cultures of origin, acculturating cultures, and cultures of destination. Int J Behav Dev 2005 (in press).
Cote LR., Bornstein, MH. Japanese American and South American immigrant mothers’ perceptions of their own and their spouses’ parenting styles. In: Grietens H, Hellinckx W, Vandemeulebroecke L, eds. Child and Youth Care in Their Best Interest: International Perspectives. Leuven, Belgium: University Press Leuven (Series Studia Paedagogica), 2005 (in press).
COLLABORATORS
Jeffrey J. Arnett, PhD, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Martha E. Arterberry, PhD, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, PA
Giovanna Axia, PhD, Università degli Studi di Padova, Padua, Italy
Hiroshi Azuma, PhD, Shirayuri College, Tokyo, Japan
Roger Bakeman, PhD, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
Sashi Bali, PhD, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya
Laura E. Caulfield, PhD, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
Linda Cote, PhD, G&B Solutions, Inc., McLean, VA
Annik de Houwer, PhD, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
Janet A. DiPietro, PhD, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
Celia Galperín, PhD, Universidad de Belgrano, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Margaret Kabiru, PhD, Kenya Institute of Education, Nairobi, Kenya
Sharone Maital, PhD, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
Maria-Lucia Moura de Seidl, PhD, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
A. Bame Nsamenang, PhD, The Institute of Human Sciences, Bameda, Cameroon
Misako Ogino, PhD, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan
Liliana Pascual, PhD, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Marie-Germaine Pêcheux, PhD, CNRS, Paris, France
Alan Slater, PhD, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
Catherine Tamis-LeMonda, PhD, New York University, New York, NY
Suedo Toda, PhD, Hokkaido University of Education, Hokkaido, Japan
Paola Venuti, PhD, Università di Trento, Trento, Italy
André Vyt, PhD, Arteveldehogeschool, Universiteit Gent, Ghent, Belgium
Shirley Wyver, PhD, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
For further information, contact bornstem@cfr.nichd.nih.gov.