A that early experiences聽of聽environmental harshness, in combination with personal temperament, can shape the child鈥檚 problem-solving abilities later in life.
Children growing up in poverty with unengaged caregivers are more likely to do poorly on standardized assessments. However, the researchers found, those children who exhibited higher levels聽of聽so-called hawk traits at age two became better at using problem-solving skills to obtain a blocked reward.
Hawk traits describe heightened levels聽of聽aggression, boldness, and dominant behavior in toddlerhood.
By the time they were preschoolers, these high-risk children with hawk traits performed worse on a standardized聽visual problem-solving task with low motivational significance, but did significantly better on problem-solving tasks if rewards were involved.
The study, conducted at the 人妻少妇专区鈥檚 was recently published in the Journal聽of聽Child聽Psychology聽and Psychiatry. Using an evolutionary聽perspective, the study addresses聽questions聽about how and why stressful environments and children’s聽temperament may interact to shape聽children’s cognition.
鈥淥ur study supports emerging聽views聽that early environmental experience, in combination with temperament聽characteristics,聽shape聽children’s cognitive functioning to focus on what is most聽salient in their environments,鈥� says lead author Jennifer Suor 鈥�19, a PhD candidate in clinical psychology at the 人妻少妇专区.
The multi-method study looked at 201 mother鈥揷hild dyads when the children were two and four聽years old. At age two, environmental harshness was assessed via maternal report of earned income, and observations of the mother鈥檚 disengagement during a parent鈥揷hild interaction task. Children’s hawk temperament traits were assessed from a series of unfamiliar episodes. At age four, the researchers measured the children’s problem-solving skills.
In one task children completed a standardized visual problem-solving assessment where they re-created a block puzzle shown to them by an experimenter. In a reward-oriented problem solving task, children had to figure out how to open a transparent聽box with a set of keys that contained a toy prize the child had previously picked out. However, the researchers had provided the wrong set of keys to be able to observe the children鈥檚 problem-solving behaviors like strategy, how they manipulated the keys, and their level of concentration on the task.
鈥淲hile on average children performed similarly on problem solving tasks 鈥� the kids who had experienced greater caregiving adversity and had more hawk traits were more likely to do better on the reward problem solving tasks,鈥� explains co-author Melissa Sturge-Apple, 人妻少妇专区 associate professor of psychology, and dean of graduate studies in arts, sciences, and engineering. 鈥淭hey were more persistent, tried more solutions, were more engaged.鈥�
Placed in a larger evolutionary context, the findings suggest that high-risk children adapt to their stressful environment in a way that might help with survival.
鈥淲hen kids are faced with poverty and unengaged caregivers, they devote more energy to solving the problem which is more meaningful to them than one that isn’t,鈥� says Sturge-Apple.
鈥淓volutionary approaches to聽child聽development might聽offer important insights into the functional significance behind developmental adaptations in cognition. Standardized cognitive聽assessments, which聽often聽lack聽direct ecological聽and聽motivational聽significance,聽may not be able to fully聽capture聽the specialized repertoire聽of聽cognitive skills聽children in stressful environments have developed as a survival mechanism,鈥� explains Suor.
Psychologists Melissa Sturge-Apple and Patrick Davies of the 人妻少妇专区, and Dante Cicchetti from聽the University of Minnesota and the University鈥檚 Mt. Hope Family Center co-authored the study, which was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and聽the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
