Childhood Aggression and Gender: Boys Will Be Boys, But What About Girls?

Nicki Crick, Institute on Child Development, University of Minnesota

Chair: Carolyn Zahn-Waxler, University of Wisconsin

This lecture will provide an overview of research on relational aggression, a form of aggression that harms others through damage (or the threat of damage) to relationships. Research across a variety of developmental periods (i.e., preschool to adulthood) has documented the importance of relational aggression for significantly increasing our understanding of children’s social-psychological adjustment, particularly for girls. Research and theory related to the etiology, development, and outcomes associated with relational aggression will be summarized. Implications of this research for our understanding of the role of gender in the development of children’s aggressive behavior and other forms of psychopathology will be discussed.

Immigration and Development Among Multigeneration Black American and Afro-Caribbean Families
James Jackson, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan
Chair: Mary Levitt, Florida International University

The purpose of my presentation is to explore contextual and structural influences on social identity, solidarity, group conflict, and well being among racially, ethnically, and nationally diverse peoples of African American and Afro-Caribbean descent in the United States and abroad. The talk will use data from the National Survey of Three Generation Black American Families, the National Survey of American Life (NSAL), and the ongoing International Study of Black Three Generation Family Members; a study that identifies and interviews internationally representative samples of three-generation families. Preliminary analyses in the NSAL indicate that race, ethnicity, and immigration status all combine to influence the nature of social, political, and social adaptation of immigrant (and nonimmigrant) blacks. We will explore the nature of complex family structures and greater geographical mobility and increased racial and ethnic diversity through immigration and identity reformulation.

Economic Context and Childhood Experience: Making the Case for Why and How Race Matters in Children’s Development
Vonnie C. McLoyd, Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
Chair: Aletha Huston, University of Texas - Austin

Drawing on the speaker’s research and that of others, this invited address will highlight the connection between economic stress (at both the family and neighborhood level) and various domains of parenting behavior and the importance of parenting behavior as a mediator of the link between economic stress and children’s development. Attention will also be given to out-of-home experiences (e.g., high-quality, center-based child care) that appear to underlie improvement in child functioning when work-based antipoverty interventions raise family income. Finally, the presentation will highlight the complex nature of the relation of race to economic context and the relevance of racial disparities in these economic indicators for understanding how race affects children’s development. The address will feature correlational and experimental research and briefly consider its implications for policy.

What Do We Mean When We Say Modularity?
Nora S. Newcombe, Department of Psychology, Temple University
Chair: Judy DeLoache, University of Virginia

Fodor and others ushered in attention to modules 25 or more years ago. Since then, the field of cognitive development has carved itself into almost non-overlapping areas. Some of us study number, some study space, some study language, and so on. In addition, modularity has become a key issue in the nativist-empiricist debate. However, we still lack a completely clear sense of what we mean by a module. The purpose of this talk is to reflect on the metatheory surrounding questions of cognitive modularity and development. Central illustrations will involve research on the geometric module but other modularity claims will also be discussed.

Understanding and Sharing Intentions: The Origins of Cultural Cognition

Michael Tomasello, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Chair: Andrew Meltzoff, University of Washington

We propose that the crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species is the ability to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions: shared intentionality. Participation in such activities requires not only especially powerful forms of intention-reading and cultural learning, but also a unique motivation to share psychological states with others and unique forms of cognitive representation for doing so. The result of participating in these activities is species-unique forms of cultural cognition. Support for this proposal is provided by systematic reviews of empirical research with human children and great apes.

Culture and Context: The Most Important Influence in Human Development

Thomas Weisner, Departments of Psychiatry and Anthropology, UCLA

Chair: Robert LeVine, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Bring an infant to mind. What is the most important thing one would do to influence the development of that child? The most important thing one could do would be to decide the cultural place on earth where the child is about to grow up. I bring to mind not an individual child floating in space, but a child somewhere, on particular pathways, surrounded by resources, institutions, people, scripts for conduct, enmeshed in a daily routine of life that has a moral direction. I illustrate cultural analysis in studies of attachment (the meanings and experience of trust), caretaking (socially distributed care), and family socialization (its diverse forms). Cultural theories are pluralistic regarding what promotes well-being and nonpathological mental and emotional development. Cultural and context-rich research is at the heart of the goal of increasing the odds that children will find and engage successful developmental pathways in life.