The Role of Dyadic Coordination in Organizing Visual Attention in 5‐Month‐Old Infants

In human infants, the ability to share attention with others is facilitated by increases in attentional selectivity and focus. Differences in early attention have been associated with socio‐cognitive outcomes including language, yet the social mechanisms of attention organization in early infancy have only recently been considered. Here, we examined how social coordination between 5‐month‐old infants and caregivers relate to differences in infant attention, including looking preferences, span, and reactivity to caregivers’ social cues. Using a naturalistic play paradigm, we found that 5‐month‐olds who received a high ratio of sensitive (jointly focused) contingent responses showed strong preferences for objects with which their caregivers were manually engaged. In contrast, infants whose caregivers exhibited high ratios of redirection (attempts to shift focus) showed no preferences for caregivers’ held objects. Such differences have implications for recent models of cognitive development, which rely on early looking preferences for adults’ manually engaged objects as a pathway toward joint attention and word learning. Further, sensitivity and redirectiveness predicted infant attention even in reaction to caregiver responses that were non‐referential (neither sensitive nor redirective). In response to non‐referentials, infants of highly sensitive caregivers oriented less frequently than infants of highly redirective caregivers, who showed increased distractibility. Our results suggest that specific dyadic exchanges predict infant attention differences toward broader social cues, which may have consequences for social‐cognitive outcomes.     

Attention to Maternal Multimodal Naming by 6‐ to 8‐Month‐Old Infants and Learning of Word–Object Relations

We examined whether mothers' use of temporal synchrony between spoken words and moving objects, and infants' attention to object naming, predict infants' learning of word–object relations. Following 5 min of free play, 24 mothers taught their 6‐ to 8‐month‐olds the names of 2 toy objects, Gow and Chi, during a 3‐min play episode. Infants were then tested for their word mapping. The videotaped episodes were coded for mothers' object naming and infants' attention to different naming types. Results indicated that mothers' use of temporal synchrony and infants' attention during play covaried with infants' word‐mapping ability. Specifically, infants who switched eye gaze from mother to object most frequently during naming learned the word–object relations. The findings suggest that maternal naming and infants' word‐mapping abilities are bidirectionally related. Variability in infants' attention to maternal multimodal naming explains the variability in early lexical‐mapping development.     

Child‐Care Usage and Mother‐Infant “Quality Time”

Mothers' time‐use patterns were compared in families in which infants spent more than 30 hours per week in child care (In‐Care group; n= 143) versus 0 hours per week (At‐Home group; n= 183) from birth to 6 months of age. In‐Care group mothers spent about 12 fewer hours per week interacting with their infants, for about 32% less time; fathers of these infants were more involved in caregiving. The groups did not differ in the quality of mother‐infant interaction. In the In‐Care group, quantity of interaction was related to greater separation anxiety and concerns about effects of maternal employment. Time‐use data were not related to child outcomes at 15 months of age. Results suggest that the effect of extensive time spent apart on the quantity and quality of mother‐infant interaction may be smaller than anticipated.     

Self‐Focused Attention and Career Anxiety: The Mediating Role of Career Adaptability

The purpose of this study was to examine how 2 forms of self‐focused attention, self‐reflection and self‐rumination, influence career anxiety. The authors hypothesized that the association between these 2 types of self‐focused attention and career anxiety would be mediated by career adaptability on the basis of a career construction model of adaptation. The participants were 326 undergraduate students in South Korea. The results of this study supported the hypothesized mediation model by indicating significant indirect effects of self‐reflection and self‐rumination on career anxiety via career adaptability. The direct effect of self‐rumination on career anxiety was significant (B = .44, p < .01), but the direct effect of self‐reflection on career anxiety was not significant (B = –.05, p > .05). The authors discuss implications for counselors to help college students manage career anxiety by encouraging and supporting increased career adaptability. Future research to examine the cross‐cultural validity of the current findings is needed.     

Religion and Non‐traditional Families in the United States

Family forms that have historically been considered “nontraditional” and even “transgressive” are becoming increasingly accepted in the United States, bringing the United States into greater conformity with other western nations. The United States is still unique, however, in that religion continues to play an exceptionally powerful role in shaping Americans' perceptions of and engagement in non‐traditional families. Focusing our attention on same‐sex and interracial families specifically, we consider the recent work on how religion serves to stimulate and justify opposition or (in a minority of instances) support for such families. We contend that studies typically limit their focus to the cognitive aspects (beliefs, ideologies, identities, schemas, salience, etc.) of religion, while often ignoring the influence of religion's more structural aspects in shaping Americans' relationship to non‐traditional families. Given that religion impacts Americans' approaches to family formation at the micro, meso, and macro levels, we propose a more Durkheimian perspective on the topic, one that synthesizes social psychological and structural frameworks in future studies, thus allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of religion's evolving role in American family formation. We also call for more attention to how religion shapes the functioning of non‐traditional families.     

RENT‐SEEKING AND CAPITAL ACCUMULATION

A general model incorporating rent‐seeking activities in the standard neoclassical model of capital accumulation is presented. The welfare of the representative agent is negatively affected by the efficiency of rent‐seeking activities. Although intuitive, this result is not obvious because long‐run income can be positively affected by more efficient rent‐seeking activities. The model is used to provide explanations for some recent experiences in developing countries, including the relative poor performance of economies that experience a move to a more decentralized system and the observed path of total factor productivity (TFP) in countries like Ireland and Venezuela. (JEL D23, D74, O40, O41, O47)     

Heterogeneity in Two‐Parent Families and Adolescent Well‐Being

This study highlights the heterogeneity in two‐parent families and examines how adolescents fare when they reside in simple two‐parent, blended, and stepfamilies. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N= 1,769), we find that shared biological children in blended families have worse outcomes than children in simple two‐parent families, even though they reside with both of their biological parents. These differences occur for academic performance, delinquency, school detachment, and depression. Current explanations in the family literature do not account for the poorer outcomes of shared children in blended families. We suggest that the presence of half‐siblings creates a unique family situation that is not accurately represented in the current family literature.     

Attention to Threat as a Predictor of Shyness in the Context of Internalizing and Externalizing Behavior

The duration of children's attention to putative threat has been documented as a consistent predictor of later anxiety in inhibited children across childhood (Fox, New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 127, 2010, 33; Pérez‐Edgar & Fox, Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 14, 2005, 681). However, attention to threat has not been broadly examined within existing behavioral contexts and has seldom been studied in very early childhood. Whereas toddlers with high levels of internalizing behavior may view fear‐inducing stimuli as a threat, toddlers with high levels of externalizing behavior may demonstrate attention out of interest or sensation seeking. Thus, attention to threat was expected to predict increased toddler shyness in the context of either high internalizing problems or low externalizing behavior. We examined 117 twenty‐four‐month‐old toddlers to determine whether attention to threat interacted with internalizing and externalizing behavior at 24 months of age to predict toddler shyness one year later. Results indicated that attention to threat predicted toddlers' lower shyness at 36 months when toddlers’ externalizing behavior at age 24 months were high, but there was no significant interaction between toddlers’ internalizing behavior and their attention to threat in predicting later shyness. These results expand our understanding of the contexts in which attention to threat in early childhood is a viable predictor of later shyness.     

Maternal Depression and the Ability to Facilitate Joint Attention With 18‐Month‐Olds

Maternal depression has been associated with the mother‐child dyad's ability to engage in joint attention. This study of 69 depressed and 63 control mothers and their 18‐month‐olds addresses how aspects of maternal psychopathology are related to joint attention during a snack interaction. Although nondepressed‐mother dyads appeared better at joint attention than depressed‐mother dyads, this difference was not statistically significant. Among the depressed‐mother dyads, joint attention was related to presence of a comorbid Axis I diagnosis (usually an anxiety disorder) versus a diagnosis of major depressive disorder (MDD) only. Surprisingly, dyads with mothers who met criteria for a comorbid diagnosis were better at joint attention than those with MDD only, despite the fact that those mothers were likely to have longer and more severe depressive histories. The relationship between comorbid status and joint attention was mediated by the mother's affect. Rationale for the paradoxical finding that the “more pathological” mothers had greater success in engaging in joint attention is discussed.     

A Weak Embrace: Popular and Scholarly Depictions of Single‐Parent Families, 1900 – 1998

The growth of single‐parent families constitutes one of the most dramatic and most studied social changes of the 20th century. Evolving attitudes toward these families have received less attention. This paper explores depictions of these families in representative samples of popular magazine (N = 474) and social science journal (N = 202) articles. Critical depictions of divorce plummeted between 1900 and 1998, a trend stemming not from any increase in favorable depictions but from the virtual disappearance of normative debate. Such de facto acceptance did not extend to nonmarital childbearing, however, depictions of which were almost as likely to be critical at the century’s end as at its beginning. These trends illustrate Americans’ ambivalent embrace of single‐parent families as a reality but not an ideal.     

The Emergence of a Social Problem: Single‐Parent Families in U.S. Popular Magazines and Social Science Journals, 1900–1998*

Abundant research investigates the content of public discourse about social problems. Far less is known about the quantity of social problems discourse. This article employs original data to address this gap by examining the emergence of single‐parent families as a social problem within U.S. popular magazines and social science journals. I trace the growth of discourse about single‐parent families in magazines indexed by the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature (N= 3050) and social science journals indexed by JSTOR (N= 1376) between 1900 and 1998 and explore factors associated with this growth. The results indicate that contemporary issues functioned as rival social problems and depressed single‐parent family discourse within magazines but not within journals. Increases in the prevalence of single‐parent families were associated with increases in related discourse in both arenas, but discourse increased earlier in journals. Growing popular concern about single‐parent family formation in the 1960s was associated with a reduction in the quantity of single‐parent family discourse within journals but not within magazines.     

Evaluation of the Psychometric Properties of the Gap‐Overlap Task in 10‐Month‐Old Infants

Understanding the development of attention is key to understanding cognitive maturation. The gap‐overlap task can be administered at all ages and is widely used to study the development of overt visual attention. However, studies using the gap‐overlap task report different measures and little is known about the tasks’ psychometric properties, especially in infants. We tested the 1‐week test–retest reliability of two frequently used gap‐overlap measures of attentional disengagement in 10‐month‐old infants; the gap effect as measured by the difference between the gap and overlap condition and the gap effect as measured by the difference between the gap and baseline condition. Sixty‐seven infants performed the gap‐overlap task twice, of which 45 infants had sufficient data quality for further analyses. Test–retest reliability of the overlap‐gap gap effect was higher (r = .50) than the baseline‐gap gap effect (r = .29). Moreover, the shared variance between overlap and baseline saccadic reaction times was moderate to high across sessions. In light of these results and the methodological challenges and limitations of infant research, we consider the overlap‐gap gap effect to be a good measure to study the development of attentional disengagement in infants and suggest the exclusion of the baseline condition in future studies.     

The Family‐Friendly Community and Its Life Course Fit for Dual‐Earner Couples

Much is known about family‐friendly workplaces. This article examines the less understood family‐friendliness of the communities in which dual‐earner couples reside. Using data from a representative sample of dual‐earner couples (N = 727) in upstate New York, we examine how individual, couple, and neighborhood characteristics are associated with perceptions of community family‐friendliness. Using a life course perspective, we find that couples with young children rate their communities more favorably than do other couples. Findings also indicate that for couples with children of their own, living in a neighborhood with many other families with children is associated with higher ratings of family‐friendliness. We term this match, between a couple's life stage and their neighborhood's demographic structure, life stage‐neighborhood fit.     

Cross‐Task Stability in Infant Attention: New Perspectives Using the Still‐Face Procedure

Infant visual attention has been studied extensively within cognitive paradigms using measures such as look duration and reaction time, but less work has examined how infant attention operates in social contexts. In addition, little is known about the stability of individual differences in attention across cognitive and social contexts. In this study, a cross‐sectional sample of 50 infants (4 and 6 months of age) were first tested in a look duration and reaction time task with static visual stimuli. Next, their mothers participated with the infants in the still‐face procedure, a mildly distressing social interaction paradigm that involves violation of expectancy. Individual differences in looking and emotion were stable across the phases of the still‐face task. Further, individual differences in looking measures from the visual attention task were related to the pattern of looking shown across the phases of the still‐face procedure. Results indicate that individual differences in attentional measures show moderate stability within cognitive and social contexts, and that the ability of infants to shift and disengage looks may affect their ability to regulate interaction in social contexts.     

Same‐Sex Parent Families and Children's Academic Achievement

Children in traditional families (i.e., married, 2 biological parents) tend to do better than their peers in nontraditional families. An exception to this pattern appears to be children from same‐sex parent families. Children with lesbian mothers or gay fathers do not exhibit the poorer outcomes typically associated with nontraditional families. Studies of same‐sex parent families, however, have relied on a static conceptualization of the family and discounted the importance of the timing and number of family transitions for understanding children's outcomes. To examine whether same‐sex parent families represent an exception among nontraditional families, the author used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten cohort (N = 19,043) to create a dynamic indicator of children's family structure and tested its association with math assessment scores. The results indicated that children in same‐sex parent families scored lower than their peers in married, 2‐biological parent households, but the difference was nonsignificant net of family transitions.     

Maternal Into‐The‐Face Behavior,Shared Attention,and Infant Distress During Face‐to‐Face Play at 12 Months: Bi‐directional Contingencies

We describe a new maternal intrusion behavior, moving a toy or hand “into‐the‐face” of the infant, and we investigate its bi‐directional associations with infant‐initiated shared attention, infant distress, and infant gaze, during mother–infant face‐to‐face play at 12 months. The play was videotaped split‐screen, with infants seated in a high chair. Videotapes were coded on a 1‐sec time base for mother and infant gaze (at partner, toy, both, or gaze away); infant distress; and maternal intrusion behavior, “into‐the‐face.” We defined “infant‐initiated shared attention” as mother and infant looking in the same second at a toy that the infant‐initiated interest in. We documented that maternal into‐the‐face behavior decreased the likelihood of infant‐initiated shared attention, increased the likelihood of infant distress, and decreased the likelihood of infant gazing away. Reciprocally, infant distress and gazing away increased the likelihood of mother into‐the‐face. In moments when the dyad was engaged in infant‐initiated shared attention, mother into‐the‐face was less likely. This work documents bi‐directional contingencies in the regulation of maternal intrusion and infant behavior during face‐to‐face play at 12 months. We suggest that mother into‐the‐face behavior disturbs an aspect of the infant's experience of recognition.     

Psychosocial Well‐Being and the Relationship Between Divorce and Children's Academic Achievement

As an unprecedented number of children live in families experiencing divorce, researchers have developed increasingly complex explanations for the consequences associated with marital dissolution. Current accounts focus on changes to family finances, destabilized parenting practices, elevated parental conflict, and deterioration of the parent–child relationship, to explain the impact of divorce. A less studied explanation draws attention to children's diminished psychosocial well‐being following divorce. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten cohort (ECLS‐K) (N = 10,061), I examined the role of psychosocial well‐being in the relationship between divorce and children's outcomes. The results suggest that divorce is associated with diminished psychosocial well‐being in children, and that this decrease helps explain the connection between divorce and lower academic achievement.     

Individual Differences in Infants’ Joint Attention Behaviors With Mother and a New Social Partner

Relations between infant–mother attachment security at 15 months and infants’ (N = 206) joint attention behaviors (a) with an experimenter at 8 and 15 months, and (b) with their mothers at 15 months were investigated. No concurrent or longitudinal relations were observed between attachment security and infants’ tendency to respond to an experimenter’s bids for joint attention. Higher levels of initiating joint attention with an experimenter at 15 months were associated with insecure‐avoidant attachment. Insecure‐avoidant attachment was also associated with lower scores for initiating high‐level joint attention behaviors (pointing, showing, and giving) with the mother at age 15 months. The fact that security‐related differences in initiating joint attention with an experimenter were observed only once the attachment relationship was consolidated suggests that (a) attachment security may influence infants’ active engagement with new social partners, and (b) insecure‐avoidant infants may compensate for reduced social contact with the caregiver by initiating more interaction with other social partners.     

Parental Speech at 6 Months Predicts Joint Attention at 12 Months

In a prospective longitudinal study of a representative community sample (N = 264), mothers' references to infants' mental states were coded during a topic‐sharing task in the home at 6 months. Joint attention behaviour was assessed in the laboratory at 12 months. Individual joint attention skills (gaze following, gaze alternating, and declarative pointing) were significantly inter‐correlated, with a single factor accounting for 68% of the variance. Mothers' references to infants' mental states at 6 months predicted infants' joint attention at 12 months. The association was not explained by sociodemographic characteristics of the family, the mother's mental state, or by the quantity or acoustic properties of her speech. However, variability in pitch of maternal speech was an independent predictor of the infants' later joint attention skills. Taken together, these findings suggest that mothers' infant‐directed speech fosters infants' attentive participation in topic‐sharing interactions, which in turn provide an important arena in which joint attention skills develop over the first year of life.