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This study examines the relations among parental beliefs and practices about mathematics, children's beliefs about mathematics, participants' gender, and family socioeconomic status (SES). The study was conducted in Chile, a country with significant gender gaps in standardized test results in mathematics, with boys receiving significantly higher scores than girls. One hundred eighty Chilean kindergarteners (Mage = 5.6 years) of low and high SES completed both implicit and explicit measures of their beliefs about mathematics. Children's mothers and fathers also completed adult versions of these tests, as well as measures of home numeracy practices. This combination of child and parental assessments (both mother and father), including both implicit and explicit measures, provided a wider range of measures than in previous studies. On implicit measures of math-gender stereotypes, boys showed the math = boy stereotype significantly more strongly than girls did. Both fathers and mothers showed this stereotype on both implicit and explicit measures. Fathers also linked me = math (math self-concept) more strongly than mothers on both implicit and explicit measures. Kindergarten girls' implicit math self-concept was explained by a combination of parents' math self-concepts and SES. Taken together, these results show that by 5 years of age children are already developing beliefs about "who does math" in their culture, and that parental beliefs and practices are significantly linked to children's stereotypes and self-concepts about mathematics before they enter formal schooling. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

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A leading question in developmental social-cognitive neuroscience concerns the nature and function of neural links between action perception and production in early human development. Here we document a somatotopic pattern of activity of the sensorimotor EEG mu rhythm in 14-month-old infants. EEG was recorded during interactive trials in which infants activated a novel object using their own hands or feet ("execution" trials) and watched an experimenter use her hands or feet to achieve the same goal ("observation" trials). At central electrodes overlying sensorimotor hand areas (C3/C4), mu rhythm power was reduced (indicating greater cortical activation) during infants' execution of hand acts compared to foot acts. For the central electrode overlying the sensorimotor foot area (Cz), mu power was reduced during the execution of foot versus hand acts. Strikingly similar somatotopic patterns were found in both the action execution and observation conditions. We hypothesize that these somatotopic patterns index an intercorporeal mapping of corresponding body parts between self and other. We further propose that infants' ability to identify self-other equivalences at the level of body parts underlies infant imitation and is an ontogenetic building block for the feelings of intersubjectivity we experience when socially engaged with other people.

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OBJECTIVE: To test the association of media exposure with language development in children under age 2 years. STUDY DESIGN: A total of 1008 parents of children age 2 to 24 months, identified by birth certificates, were surveyed by telephone in February 2006. Questions were asked about child and parent demographics, child-parent interactions, and child's viewing of several content types of television and DVDs/videos. Parents were also asked to complete the short form of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI). The associations between normed CDI scores and media exposure were evaluated using multivariate regression, controlling for parent and child demographics and parent-child interactions. RESULTS: Among infants (age 8 to 16 months), each hour per day of viewing baby DVDs/videos was associated with a 16.99-point decrement in CDI score in a fully adjusted model (95% confidence interval = -26.20 to -7.77). Among toddlers (age 17 to 24 months), there were no significant associations between any type of media exposure and CDI scores. Amount of parental viewing with the child was not significantly associated with CDI scores in either infants or toddlers. CONCLUSIONS: Further research is required to determine the reasons for an association between early viewing of baby DVDs/videos and poor language development.

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