Publications

Children s screen use is ubiquitous, with toddlers in particular demonstrating increases after the pandemic and negative associations with cognitive abilities. Thus, the objective of this cross-cultural study was to broaden and deepen existing results by describing Latin American toddlers screen use and its association with parental reports of language skills, developmental milestones, and sociodemographic variables. A

BACKGROUND: Screen time has increased, with more frequent use at younger ages during the developmental process. International pediatric associations recommend that its use be minimal before three years of age. However, several studies have shown that in this age range, its use is for at least one hour per day, and in general without the accompaniment of an adult and with no consideration of age-appropriate content. Furthermore, negative associations between screen use in hours and minutes were reported with different cognitive abilities (e.g., language, executive functions, attention, memory) during this period. Many of the studies carried out on associations between these variables used questionnaires or parental reports. This is why it becomes important to study how screen time is associated with early interactions between primary caregiver and toddlers and with early cognitive skills, using measures that observe behavior directly, and in a non-WEIRD sample [a WEIRD population is White, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic - ed.] from low-to-medium SES backgrounds in Latin America. This could generate interventions to promote early cognitive development, and evaluate what type of responsible use can be provided for screen consumption in the early years. OBJECTIVE: To describe the use of screens in toddlers of low-to-medium SES, compare caregiver-toddler interactions when engaged in play with digital or physical stimuli (with screens or toys), and examine screen use associations with regulation, early communication skills, and sociodemographic variables. DESIGN: A mixed quantitative research sample was of 33 dyads of low-to-medium-SES primary caregivers

The objective of the following research was to describe the use of digital media (i.e., TV, background TV, cell phone, PC, and Tablet), presence of the adults during this activity, and its association with language, motor, and language developmental milestones and SES in the first years of life. Participants were

A renewed interest in early executive function (i.e., EF or the conscious control of thought and behavior) development has led several research groups to suggest that EF may be emerging and is less coordinated (e.g., showing few relations between tasks) in the first few years (Devine et al., 2019; Gago Galvagno et al., 2021; Johansson et al., 2016; Miller & Marcovitch, 2015; Ribner et al., 2022). This potentially universal development in EF does not exclude the possibility that EF may also differ across context (e.g., Gago Galvagno et al., 2021; Lohndorf et al., 2019; Tran et al., 2015) reflecting unique strengths and development built within one s sociocultural environment. The present paper explores potential universal and context-specific early EF developments by focusing on three aims: (1) reviewing work on EF within the first two years of life that may speak to potential universality in the measurement, structure, growth, stability, and conceptualization of early EF (2) reviewing research that may speak to how the sociocultural context may play a role in context-specific development within early EF and (3) examining potential developmental EF frameworks for understanding universal and context-specific developments of early EF within context.

The still-face paradigm (SFP) is a common method in infancy used to assess emotion regulation and interactions when an adult (typically the caregiver) abruptly stops a positive interaction with a child and switches to a more neutral affect. The effect of this paradigm has been studied in different countries and age ranges, but research in Latin America and with toddlers (e.g., 2-3 years old) of different socioeconomic backgrounds is scarce. The current study analyzed caregiver-child interactions in this novel sample, to analyze the possibility of generalization of the typical response of this paradigm (i.e., less positive affect, reduced gaze, and more negative affect in children when parent affect changes). The sample consisted of 114 caregiver-child dyads from low to middle socioeconomic status (SES) (children s

Recent work within early executive function (EF) seems to suggest that toddlers show distinct patterns of development, involving poorly correlated performance across EF tasks and significant improvements over relatively short periods of time. The present study sought to extend these findings by investigating evidence for these patterns in toddlers and the existence of more traditional patterns of EF (e.g., correlations between tasks, links to language) when using the same tasks in a novel Latin American sample. Eighty toddlers (18-24 months) and sixty young preschoolers (30-36) months completed a battery of EF tasks, early social communication, and receptive and expressive language measures. Results indicated that toddlers showed similar distinct patterns of development (i.e., few relations between tasks and links to responding to joint attention), but by early preschool a more cohesive EF and links to language were present. Further, work demonstrated significant age (older children outperformed younger children), gender (girls outperformed boys), and socioeconomic differences (satisfied basic needs outperformed unsatisfied basic needs, but only on the snack delay). This work provides evidence for patterns of emerging EF development within this novel cultural sample (and evidence for group differences) that may be supported by communicative and representational development.

Although a growing body of work has established developing regulatory abilities during the second year of life, more work is needed to better understand factors that influence this emerging control. The purpose of the present study was to examine regulation capacities in executive functions (i.e., EF or cognitive control) and emotion regulation (i.e., ER or control focused on modulating negative and sustaining positive emotions) in a Latin American sample, with a focus on how joint attention, social vulnerability, and temperament contribute to performance. Sixty Latin American dyads of mothers and children aged 18 to 24 months completed several EF tasks, a Still-Face Paradigm (SFP) to examine ER (Weinberg et al., 2008), and the Early Social Communication Scale to measure joint attention (Mundy et al., 2003). Parents completed the Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire Very Short Form to measure temperament (ECBQ-VS, Putnam et al., 2010) and the Social Economic Level Scale (SES) from INDEC (2000). Results revealed the typical responses expected for toddlers of this age in these EF tasks and in the SFP. Also, we found associations between EF and ER and between non-verbal communication related to monitoring infants attention to objects (i.e., responding to joint attention) and initiation of pointing (e.g., pointing and showing of an object while the child alternates his gaze to an adult) with EF. Regarding social factors, family differences and type of housing contribute to regulation. For temperament, effortful control was associated with both regulatory capacities. Finally, only age predicted EF. These results suggest that many patterns regarding the development of these abilities are duplicated in the first months of life in a Latin American sample while further highlighting the importance of considering how the environment and the individual characteristics of infants may associate to these regulatory abilities, which is particularly relevant to developing public policies to promote their optimal development.

Several theories of executive function (EF) propose that EF development corresponds to children s ability to form representations and reflect on represented stimuli in the environment. However, research on early EF is primarily conducted with preschoolers, despite the fact that important developments in representation (e.g., language, gesture, shared joint attention) occur within the 1st years of life. In the present study, EF performance and the relationship between EF and early representation (i.e., joint attention, language) were longitudinally examined in 47 children at 14 and 18 months of age. Results suggest that the 2nd year of life is a distinct period of EF development in which children exhibit very little coherence or stability across a battery of EF tasks. However, by 18 months, a subset of child participants consistently passed the majority of EF tasks, and superior EF performance was predicted by 14-month representational abilities (i.e., language comprehension and some episodes of initiating joint attention). This research suggests that the transition from foundational behavioral control in infancy to the more complex EF observed in preschool is supported by representational abilities in the 2nd year of life.

There is scant evidence that children younger than 7 years show a memory advantage for distinct information, a memory phenomenon termed the isolation effect (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2001, Vol. 27, pp. 1359-1366). We investigated whether 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds developing organizational processing and executive function contributed to the isolation effect, demonstrated when recall was better for a semantically unique target (e.g., sheep, pig, watermelon, duck) rather than a semantically common target (e.g., apple, banana, watermelon, strawberry). To encourage organizational processing, children were asked to categorize each item presented. Children also completed working memory and cognitive flexibility tasks, and only children who scored high in cognitive flexibility demonstrated the isolation effect.