The cognitive costs and advantages of children's exposure to parental relationship instability: Testing an evolutionary-developmental hypothesis.
The cognitive costs and advantages of children's exposure to parental relationship instability: Testing an evolutionary-developmental hypothesis.
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DOI：
10.1037/dev0001381
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发表时间：
2022-08
影响因子：
4
通讯作者：
Sturge-Apple, Melissa L
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Davies, Patrick T;Thompson, Morgan J;Li, Zhi;Sturge-Apple, Melissa L
在进化发展模型的指导下，本研究验证了一个假设，即儿童暴露于父母关系的不稳定性，定义为照顾者亲密关系的启动和解散，既有认知障碍的成本，又有提高学习技能的好处。参与者包括来自不同种族背景（例如，46%黑人; 19%拉丁裔）。与假设一致，学龄前期间父母关系的不稳定程度越高，预测儿童在明确的高阶认知功能任务（例如，智商，工作记忆）和更好的表现，在检测奖励概率的内隐学习任务两年后。内隐学习任务的分段潜在增长曲线分析结果显示，经历更大的家庭不稳定性的儿童能够更快地确定最隐藏的奖励的位置在早期，而不是后来，游戏的阶段。额外的研究结果支持的作用，儿童的家庭关系作为一个中介机制的对立表示。更具体地说，父母关系的不稳定性显着预测两年后，他们的家庭的儿童的对抗性陈述的水平较高，控制他们的早期对抗性陈述和人口统计学协变量。反过来，儿童的对抗性表征在一年级时同时与外显认知功能较差和内隐学习能力较好有关。这些发现为理解经历父母关系不稳定的认知权衡提供了信息，并可能对修改教育和临床项目以利用经历环境不可预测性的儿童的认知优势产生重要影响。
Guided by evolutionary-developmental models, this study tested the hypothesis that children’s exposure to parental relationship instability, defined by initiation and dissolution of caregiver intimate relationships, has both costs in cognitive impairments and benefits in enhanced learning skills. Participants included 243 mothers and their preschool children (M age 4.60 years; 56% girls) from diverse racial backgrounds (e.g., 46% Black; 19% Latinx). Consistent with hypotheses, higher levels of parental relationship instability during preschool predicted children’s poorer performance on explicit, higher-order cognitive functioning tasks (e.g., IQ, working memory) and better performance in detecting reward probabilities in an implicit learning task two years later. Results of the piecewise latent growth curve analysis of the implicit learning task revealed that children experiencing greater family instability were able to more rapidly identify the locations of the most hidden rewards in the early, rather than later, stages of the games. Additional findings supported the role of children’s antagonistic representations of family relationships as an intermediary mechanism. More specifically, parental relationship instability significantly predicted higher levels of children’s antagonistic representations of their families two years later after controlling for their earlier antagonistic representations and demographic covariates. Children’s antagonistic representations, in turn, were concurrently linked with poorer explicit cognitive functioning and better implicit learning abilities when they were in first grade. The findings inform an understanding of cognitive tradeoffs of experiencing parental relationship instability and may have important implications for modifying educational and clinical programs to capitalize on the cognitive strengths of children who experience environmental unpredictability.