abstract: Using data from an eight-year longitudinal study of 214 children's social and emotional development, I conducted three studies to (1) examine patterns of agreement for internalizing (INT) and externalizing (EXT) symptomatology among different informants (mothers, fathers, teachers, and adolescents) using a recently developed structural equation modeling approach for multi-trait, multi-method data; (2) examine the developmental trajectories for INT and EXT and predict individual differences in symptom development using temperament and parenting variables; and (3) describe patterns of INT and EXT co-occurrence and predict these patterns from temperament and parenting. In Study 1, longitudinal invariance was established for mothers', fathers' and teachers' reports over a six-year period. Sex, age, and SES did not substantially moderate agreement among informants, although both sex and age were differentially related to symptomatology depending on the informant. Agreement among teachers and mothers, but not among mothers and fathers, differed by domain of symptomatology, and was greater for EXT than for INT. In Study 2, latent profile analysis, a person-centered analytic approach, did not provide easily interpretable patterns of symptom development, a failure that is likely the result of the relatively modest sample size. Latent growth curve models, an alternative analytic approach, did provide good fit to the data. Temperament and parenting variables were examined as predictors of the latent growth parameters in these models. Although there was little prediction of the slope, effortful control was negatively related to overall levels of EXT, whereas impulsivity and anger were positively related. Mutually responsive orientation, a measure of the parent-child relationship, was a more consistent predictor of EXT than was parental warmth. Furthermore, the relation between mutually responsive orientation and EXT was partially mediated by inhibitory control. Across informants, there were few consistent predictors of INT. In Study 3, latent profile analysis was used to classify individuals into different patterns of INT and EXT co-occurrence. In these models, a similar class structure was identified for mothers and for teachers. When temperament and parenting were examined as predictors of co-occurring symptomatology, few significant interactions were found and results largely replicated prior findings from this data set using arbitrary symptom groups. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Psychology 2013

<p> Academic achievement gaps across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups are apparent as soon as children enter kindergarten: racial minorities, Hispanics, and poor children begin school at a distinct disadvantage compared to their White peers from middle- and high-income families (Chatterji, 2005; Fryer, Jr. &amp; Levitt, 2004; Magnuson, Meyers, Ruhm, &amp; Waldfogel, 2004; Magnuson &amp; Waldfogel, 2005; Reardon, 2011). To understand these gaps at kindergarten entry, it is essential that researchers understand the skills with which children enter kindergarten. </p><p> Previous research on school readiness has been limited by variable-centered methods that separate components of school readiness (e.g., early academic skills, social skills, engagement). As each entering kindergartner possesses their own set of school readiness skills, it is not likely that school readiness skills are independent of one another. School readiness may be better conceptualized and measured as patterns of skills that children possess at the beginning of kindergarten. These detectable patterns of school readiness skills present at kindergarten entry may deferentially support development of academic and non-academic achievement outcomes, such that strengths can promote the development of weaker skills across the kindergarten year. </p><p> Within the framework of Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller, 1994), this study investigated the nature of the relations among children's school readiness skills and their associations with development of academic, social, and engagement skills across the kindergarten year. This study used a person-centered analytic technique to identify profiles of school readiness present in entering kindergartners and explored the different developmental trajectories of academic, social, and engagement skills of children across these profiles. Five school readiness profiles were detected: 1) Scholastic, 2) On Par, 3) Room to Grow, 4) Super Regulator, and 5) Wiggler. Membership in these profiles was predicted by key demographic variables, and membership in profiles in turn uniquely predicted change in achievement outcomes across the kindergarten year. More specifically, children in the Super Regulator profile improved notably in academic skills, which were their weaker skills at school entry, but did not show improvement in social and engagement skills as a group across the year; children in the Wiggler profile showed moderate improvements in engagement skills, social skills, and self control across the year; children in the On Par profile showed no change in social and engagement skills, while showing the most improvement in math scores across all the profiles; the social and engagement skills of children in the Scholastic profile improved moderately, while their academic skills improved the least of all the groups; and children within the Room to Grow profile showed the most growth in social and engagement skills and improved moderately in math skills, but did not show the same improvement in reading skills. </p><p> Furthermore, this study contrasted the person-centered approach described above to a more traditional, variable-centered approach. The author believes that the person-centered approach succeeded in providing findings about school readiness that can be more easily and succinctly communicated to early childhood education stakeholders than did the variable-centered approach. </p><p>

<p> Understanding the nature and origin of abstract concepts, like the concept of time, is a fundamental problem in cognitive science. From infancy, humans can discriminate brief durations, represent event sequences, and associate temporal and spatial magnitudes. By adulthood, Westerners construe of time as an abstract dimension, which is described and measured using language, clocks, and calendars. Are mature concepts of time built from innate perceptual primitives? In this dissertation, I will argue that they are not, drawing on developmental evidence from 3- to 8-year-old children. In Chapter 1, I show that children do not learn duration words like &ldquo;minute&rdquo; by associating them with perceptual representations of duration. Instead, children's earliest meanings for duration words encode their relations to one another. For example, preschoolers know their relative ordering (e.g., <i>hour > minute > second</i>) long before they know each word&rsquo;s approximate duration. Similarly, in Chapter 2, I present evidence that children do not learn deictic time words like &ldquo;yesterday&rdquo; by associating them with experienced or anticipated events. I find that children&rsquo;s earliest meanings for deictic time words include information about their relative order in the past and future, but not about their approximate temporal distance from the present. Both these cases suggest that children initially use linguistic cues to construct ordered semantic domains for time words, and do not map them to perception until later, <i>after</i> learning their formal definitions. Finally, in Chapter 3, I present evidence that the left-to-right &ldquo;mental timeline&rdquo; English-speaking adults use to organize events is not derived from innate space-time associations. I show that, unlike kindergarteners and adults, preschoolers do not spontaneously represent time linearly. Instead, conventional linear mappings between time and space develop slowly throughout early childhood, in response to increasing cultural exposure and education. Together, these studies suggest that abstract time concepts in children are not built from perceptual primitives, but from structures available in language and cultural artifacts.</p><p>

Any event can be construed from a variety of perspectives. While this flexibility is fundamental to human ingenuity, it poses a challenge for language learners who must discern which meanings are encoded in their language and by which forms. The papers in this dissertation focus on verbs encoding directed motion (e.g., a girl runs into a house) and caused change-of-state events (e.g., a boy blows out candles). Both classes of events can be expressed by verbs that lexicalize different components of the event, namely Manner-of-motion (e.g., run) or Path (e.g., enter), and Means (e.g., blow) or Effect (e.g., extinguish), respectively. Papers 1 and 2 examine the representation of higher-order generalizations about the meanings of directed motion and novel caused change-of-state verbs. Both studies use a novel verb-learning paradigm to manipulate the meanings of novel verbs in the input and then assess how learners interpret subsequently encountered novel verbs (measure lexicalization bias). The results indicate that learners rapidly use semantic regularities to form higher-order generalizations about verb meaning. In Paper 1, adults taught Manner verbs construed new directed motion verbs as lexicalizing Manner more often than those taught Path verbs. Moreover, changes in verb learning bias were accompanied by shifts in visual attention: Manner-verb learners fixated on Manner-related elements of visually-presented events more than Path-verb learners. These results indicate that previously observed cross-linguistic differences in verb lexicalization biases are unlikely to stem from the restructuring of semantic representations along language-specific lines and more likely reflect the operation of a flexible, inferential learning mechanism that monitors the input and updates beliefs accordingly. Likewise, in Paper 2, adults taught Means verbs interpreted unknown verbs for caused change-of-state events as encoding the Means more often than those taught Effect verbs. Unlike directed motion verbs, the encoding of these events is not characterized by marked typological variation and the availability of Means and Effect verbs does not appear to vary appreciable within or across languages. Our results, then, suggest that the formation of higher-level generalizations about meaning is a fundamental property of the processes that undergird lexical acquisition. Paper 3 focuses on the representation of the event concepts that underlie verb meanings. Specifically, we examine the possibility that Manner-of-motion and Means are actually instances of a broader semantic category, MANNER, whereas Path and Effect are instances of a different semantic category, RESULT. Adults were taught novel verbs for either directed motion or caused changes of state and subsequently presented with novel verbs from the other semantic class. The results revealed that adults transfer newly-learned higher-order generalizations about the meanings of directed motion verbs to caused change-of-state verbs (and vice versa), providing support for the psychological reality of superordinate event concepts. / Psychology

Meta-ignorance is an awareness of one’s own knowledge or lack of knowledge. The goal of this dissertation is to examine the development of children’s meta-ignorance between 14 months and 42 months. I examine the hypothesis that children have some awareness of their own epistemic states, notably states of knowledge and ignorance. In Study 1, eight children’s use of the mental verb know was examined when they were between 18 and 36 months. Children (from the Child Language Data Exchange System) used know to affirm their own knowledge and that of their interlocutor. When they used know in the context of asking a question, they typically asked about their interlocutor’s knowledge states and not their own. Conversely, they often denied their own knowledge but rarely their interlocutor’s. Finally, they rarely referred to a third party’s knowledge. In Study 2, 64 children’s production of the flip gesture (hold two hands palm up out to the side to communicate “I don’t know”) was examined when they were between 14 and 42 months. The video recordings were from the Language Development Project. Flip gestures were observed at 14 months, which is four months before a minority of children were first observed saying: “I don’t know.” Children often flipped following their interlocutors’ comments and questions, suggesting that children used flips in a dialogic fashion. When children flipped, their interlocutors often interpreted flips as an expression of ignorance and responded accordingly. Study 3 involved an experiment in which 52 children aged 16 to 37 months were presented with familiar and unfamiliar pictures and asked to label them. For familiar pictures, children mostly produced the correct name. For unfamiliar pictures, children were more likely to display signs of uncertainty, including turning to gaze at an adult, producing a filled pause such as Um, asking for help, and saying I don’t know. Children’s ability to produce I DON’T KNOW flips, to say I don’t know, and to express uncertainty when asked to name unfamiliar objects indicates that they come to express a simple understanding of knowledge and ignorance in the course of the second and third year.

I explore music's early role in social cognition, testing the hypothesis that infants interpret singing as a social signal. Over six experiments, I examine 5- and 11-month-old infants' social responses to new people who sing familiar or unfamiliar songs to them. I manipulate song familiarity with three training methods: infants learn songs from a parent; from a musical toy; or from an unfamiliar adult who sings first in person and subsequently via video chat. I use two main outcome measures: a test of visual preference for the singer of a familiar song; and, in older infants, a more explicitly social test of selective reaching for objects associated with and endorsed by novel individuals. I also test infants' memory for the songs they hear in these studies. I find that infants garner social information from the songs they hear, which they subsequently act upon in the context of social interaction; when songs are not learned in a social context, infants recall them in great detail after long delays. These results demonstrate a social function of music in early development. Music is not just pleasurable noise: it is a member of a class of behaviors, including language, accent, and food preference, that reliably inform infants' social behavior.

<p>Cell signaling determines cellular behavior through the regulation of complex biochemical networks, slight disruptions in which can lead to a plethora of pathologies. The key to curing such diseases lies in part in gaining a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms and molecules involved. The aim of this thesis was to characterize the role of A Kinase Anchoring Protein 200 (AKAP200), to expand our current understanding of signaling pathways in the context of development. AKAP200, a scaffolding protein previously known for its role in the spatial and temporal regulation of Protein Kinase A (PKA), was identified in our laboratory in a dominant modifier screen as a novel regulator of Planar Cell Polarity (PCP), which refers to the polarization of cells across the plane of an epithelium. Here, I demonstrate a novel role of AKAP200 in promoting Notch protein stability. In Drosophila, AKAP200 mutants show phenotypes that resemble Notch loss-of-function defects, including eye patterning and sensory organ specification defects, and its overexpression affects wing venation. Importantly, Notch signaling is downstream of the PCP pathway in the eye, the context, where AKAP200 was identified. AKAP200 shows a strong genetic interaction with Notch in the eye and thorax, and appears to promote Notch activity. Interestingly, these interactions are independent of AKAP200?s role in PKA signaling, linking AKAP200 to other functions. AKAP200 physically interacts with Notch, stabilizes endogenous Notch protein, and limits its ubiquitination. I provide genetic and molecular evidence that AKAP200 protects Notch from the E3-ubiquitin ligase Cbl and the lysosomal pathway, thereby promoting Notch signaling. In this thesis, I have discovered a novel role of AKAP200 as a post-translational regulator of Notch signaling that functions to achieve optimal Notch protein levels.

In this study, correlates of children's motivation to form friendships are examined using the Friendship Motivation Scale for Children (FMSC), a new scale designed to assess the motivational dimensions that contribute to children's desire for friendships. Specifically, the FMSC consists of four subscales that measure intrinsic motivation, two forms of regulation for extrinsic motivation (identified and external), and amotivation. The results, obtained with a sample of 490 fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-grade boys and girls, confirmed the factor structure of the scale for both genders and revealed adequate reliability (i.e., internal consistency and test-retest stability). Construct validity of the scale was demonstrated by (a) correlations among the four subscales displaying a simplex pattern, and thus supporting the underlying theoretical model (i.e., self-determination continuum), (b) positive correlations between subscales situated at the high end of the self-determination continuum (i.e., intrinsic motivation and identified regulation) and a relationship-maintaining goal, positive correlations between subscales situated at the low end of the self-determination continuum (i.e., external regulation and amotivation) and a revenge goal, and a positive correlation between external regulation and a control goal, (c) positive correlations between self-determined friendship motivation and items assessing the global importance of friendships, and (d) positive correlations between self-determination scores from members of friendship dyads. Furthermore, analyses revealed the existence of several correlates of children's friendship motivation. Children who were more self-determined in their motivation to form friendships were preferred by their peers, and they reported greater perceived social competence, a more internal locus of control of social experience, greater social support from family members, best friend and teacher, and fewer feelings of loneliness and social dissatisfaction. Moreover, loneliness was partially predicted by the discrepancy between children's friendship motivation and presence or absence of a best friend. Finally, girls reported greater self-determined friendship motivation than boys, and gender differences were observed in the relationships between friendship motivation and some of its correlates (i.e., one item stating that friendship is more important than popularity, peer preference, number of reciprocated friends, and having a mutual best friend).

Previous research has identified multiple developmental trajectories of self-esteem in adolescence along with psychosocial factors that differentiate trajectory groups. Results of these and other studies have suggested relations between self-esteem and social support, coping, stress, academic achievement, and life satisfaction. In the first study of the present research, 469 adolescents (235 females and 234 males) were followed from Grades 8 to 10, through the transition to high school in Grade 9. Cluster analysis identified four trajectories of self-esteem: Consistently High (n = 147, 31.3%), Decreasing (n = 99, 21.1%), Increasing (n = 160, 34.1%), and Consistently Low (n = 63, 13.4%). These trajectories showed differential patterns on measures of reported friend, family, and esteem-enhancing social support, avoidant coping, and daily hassles. The Consistently High group reported increases in friend and esteem-enhancing support and decreased use of avoidant coping between Grades 8 and 10. The Increasing group reported increases in all three types of reported social support across the three years. The Decreasing group reported an increase in daily hassles between Grades 8 and 10. Although not different in reported self-esteem in Grade 8, the Consistently High and Decreasing groups were discriminated on the basis of all three types of reported social support, with students in the Decreasing group reporting less support. The Consistently High group demonstrated the most positive pattern of adjustment, the Consistently Low group demonstrated the most negative pattern, and the two changing groups generally demonstrated outcomes between the two other groups. Results supported the conceptualization of trajectories as representative of distinct patterns of development in adolescence. In the second study, a subset of 338 adolescents (166 females and 172 males) was followed up in their Grade 11 year. As in the first study, the Consistently High group demonstrated the most positive adjustment and the Consistently Low group had the most negative outcomes. However, there was no additional differentiation between the Decreasing and Increasing groups at Grade 11. Reported life satisfaction was the variable that most strongly distinguished the trajectory groups in Grade 11. Further research is needed to identify self-esteem trajectories that represent the entire developmental stage of adolescence, as well as to aid in the early identification of at-risk self-esteem groups for the purpose of targeting appropriate interventions.

The current study consists of a phenomenological exploration of the family life of an adolescent diagnosed as suffering from anorexia nervosa. A review of the literature addressing the anorectic's family life revealed that the various theoretical formulations offered were not well validated by experiential data collected from those living in the family. The theoretical orientations of the various authors also appeared to prestructure the accounts. Questions were thus raised regarding the inherent validity of these formulations which lead to more general questions concerning the epistemological and philosophical grounding on which a study of family life should be based. In a second section, the issue of the most appropriate philosophical grounding for a study of family life was addressed. Of the epistemological philosophical positions reviewed, the one which revealed itself to present the most primary and irrefutable grounding for a pursuit of psychological research in general and family research in particular was the existential phenomenological ontological approach. A methodology consistent with the Duquesne School's approach to psychological research was adapted for the study. The results of the study revealed that family life prior to the onset of anorectic symptoms was well structured in terms of division of authority and responsibilities. The approach to family living, however was very much centered in the home with the most important relationships in each member's life being usually contained within the family. Particularly important were the cross-generational relationships which, for the children, were important forums for addressing developmental and autonomy issues. The anorectic was the child most involved in these relationships. The onset of symptoms coincided with a crisis of authenticity experienced by the anorectic which led to an attempt at self-isolation and reduced investment in the family. The anorectic dieting behavior was described as being part of a project of self-definition and renewal. The impact of the withdrawal on the family was to transform it into a conflicted environment which corresponded to many of the descriptions provided by previous authors. The hospitalization helped defuse the intrafamilial conflict but failed to address the core issue of the anorectic's quest for authenticity.