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1.Introduction: the power of parental talk /P.E. davis-Kean, S.W. Bindman, M.I. Susperreguy and S. Tang --2."You really need to go to bed": how mothers use language to guide and control children's behavior during morning and bedtime routines /S.W. Bindman --3.Mother-child conversations about thoughts, desires, and emotions: relations to children's understanding of the mind /C.E. Smith and I. Wu --4.Math talk between children and mothers and its connection to math-related practices in the home setting /M.I. Susperreguy --5.Parenting of preschool children's media use in the home /N.E. Waters, S.E. Dumoff and S. Tang --6.Food talk in families /A.L. Miller, A. Ellis and S.E. Dumoff --7Conclusion: the value of parent talk /S. Tang.

AbstractAdolescence, the second decade of life, bridges childhood and adulthood, but also represents a host of unique experiences that impact health and well‐being. Lifespan theories often emphasize the continuity of individual characteristics and their contexts from childhood to adolescence, underscoring the distal influence of childhood experiences. Yet, adolescence is marked by transitions that may provoke discontinuities, particularly within individuals, their contexts, and their interactions within those contexts. These discontinuities occur at varied times, orders, and intensities for individual youth, suggesting that adolescence may be a developmental turning point where earlier life experiences may be mediated, reversed, or transformed by proximal events. This perspective piece emphasizes the importance of considering transitions, discontinuities, and developmental turning points in adolescence as well as their potential to explain heterogeneity in adolescent and adult outcomes. We explore one biological and one contextual transition in adolescence and highlight innovative theories and methods for investigating continuity and discontinuity dynamics across development, which could lead to new insights related to the adolescent period and its importance in shaping future life trajectories.

AbstractObjectiveThis study examined the longitudinal trajectories of economic hardship for low‐income families with a college education.BackgroundThe relation between parental education and family income to parenting behaviors and children's achievement is well documented. Less is known on how high education and low income interact within families, particularly over time.MethodThe sample consisted of 537 families who were low‐income and college‐educated when their child was in kindergarten. We used latent growth curve analyses to classify families into different trajectory classes based on economic hardship over several years. We then examined predictors and outcomes of each class.ResultsWithin this sample of low‐income, college‐educated families, there were two economic hardship trajectories: Transient (i.e., short‐term) and Chronic (i.e., long term). Parents in the transient class were more likely to work an occupation requiring a postsecondary degree and had higher educational expectations than the chronic class. We conducted additional analyses to test for generalizability and comparison to other family types.ConclusionParental education attainment may provide a protective buffer for parents and children when facing short‐ or long‐term economic hardship.ImplicationsThis study highlights the sustained importance of educational attainment and the need for policy and program solutions to address families' diverse needs.

Although substantial work has examined the influence of adolescent pregnancy on mothers' developmental outcomes, few studies have investigated the influence of adolescent mothers' educational attainment on their children's achievement. This article examined the reading and math achievement trajectories of children born to adolescent and nonadolescent mothers with various levels of educational attainment. Results demonstrate that higher levels of maternal education predicted children's higher initial achievement at kindergarten and growth in achievement through eighth grade. The achievement of children with adolescent mothers, however, never reaches parity with the achievement of their peers with nonadolescent mothers. Race also predicted achievement differences. Black and Latino children of adolescent mothers were at greater risk for underachievement.

AbstractSocioeconomic status (SES) has been repeatedly linked to the developmental trajectory of vocabulary acquisition in young children. However, the nature of this relationship remains underspecified. In particular, despite an extensive literature documenting young children's reliance on a host of skills and strategies to learn new words, little attention has been paid to whether and how these skills relate to measures of SES and vocabulary acquisition. To evaluate these relationships, we conducted two studies. In Study 1, 205 2.5‐ to 3.5‐year‐old children from widely varying socioeconomic backgrounds were tested on a broad range of word‐learning skills that tap their ability to resolve cases of ambiguous reference and to extend words appropriately. Children's executive functioning and phonological memory skills were also assessed. In Study 2, 77 of those children returned for a follow‐up session several months later, at which time two additional measures of vocabulary were obtained. Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and multivariate regression, we provide evidence of the mediating role of word‐learning skills on the relationship between SES and vocabulary skill over the course of early development.

The present research explores risk factors for, and longitudinal associations of, sexual harassment by peers during adolescence. Eight‐hundred and seventy‐two African American and European American adolescents (65.4% African American, 51.1% females) were assessed during the summer after the eighth grade (mean age=14.2 years) and then again in the 11th grade (mean age=17.1 years). At the first assessment, adolescents were asked about their experiences with sexual harassment, their psychological reactions to sexual harassment, and also about their peer relationships, perceived pubertal timing, problem behavior, and mental health. At the second assessment, adolescents reported on their problem behavior and mental health. In general, youth who associated with peers who were involved in problem behavior were at risk for victimization. Among females, those who perceived themselves to be experiencing early pubertal development were also at risk. Additionally, for some adolescents, sexual harassment predicted later adjustment difficulties.

This article summarizes important contributions of the Child Development Supplement to the PSID (PSID-CDS) to knowledge in child development, time use, media use, and health. The PSID-CDS began in 1997, surveying 2,394 households, including 3,563 children; three waves of data on the first cohort were collected—1997, 2002–03, and 2007–08—and a new cohort was interviewed in 2014. Hundreds of books, journal articles, and dissertations have used the PSID-CDS, and our overview of that literature points to unique methodological and measurement contributions, summarizes the motivation for research on parental investments in children, reviews findings regarding healthy child development, and examines the role of neighborhoods in children's lives.

The last decades of neuroscience research have produced immense progress in the methods available to understand brain structure and function. Social, cognitive, clinical, affective, economic, communication, and developmental neurosciences have begun to map the relationships between neuro-psychological processes and behavioral outcomes, yielding a new understanding of human behavior and promising interventions. However, a limitation of this fast moving research is that most findings are based on small samples of convenience. Furthermore, our understanding of individual differences may be distorted by unrepresentative samples, undermining findings regarding brain–behavior mechanisms. These limitations are issues that social demographers, epidemiologists, and other population scientists have tackled, with solutions that can be applied to neuroscience. By contrast, nearly all social science disciplines, including social demography, sociology, political science, economics, communication science, and psychology, make assumptions about processes that involve the brain, but have incorporated neural measures to differing, and often limited, degrees; many still treat the brain as a black box. In this article, we describe and promote a perspective—population neuroscience—that leverages interdisciplinary expertise to (i) emphasize the importance of sampling to more clearly define the relevant populations and sampling strategies needed when using neuroscience methods to address such questions; and (ii) deepen understanding of mechanisms within population science by providing insight regarding underlying neural mechanisms. Doing so will increase our confidence in the generalizability of the findings. We provide examples to illustrate the population neuroscience approach for specific types of research questions and discuss the potential for theoretical and applied advances from this approach across areas.