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    Contribution of working memory to gesture production in toddlers
    (Elsevier Science Inc, 2021) Gunes-Acar, Naziye; Alp, Ercan; Aksu-Koc, Ayhan; Department of Psychology; Küntay, Aylin C.; Faculty Member; Department of Psychology; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 178879
    Starting as early as 10 months of age, gesturing is present in the communicative repertoire of children, and later, around the age of two, it is integrated with speech, yielding multimodal utterances. However, children's propensity to gesture varies, and the mechanisms underlying these individual differences remain unknown. The present study tests whether gesture production in the presence of speech (bimodal gestures) or in the absence of speech (unimodal gestures) is predicted by working memory and articulation performance associated with verbal processing. Children aged 22-46 months were presented with a gesture elicitation task in which they needed to correct the actions of a puppet using everyday objects in an unconventional way. Working memory was measured by the Imitation Sorting Task (IST) and articulation performance was indexed by the Non-Word Repetition Task (NWR). It was revealed that any increase in working memory capacity was linked to a higher incidence rate of gesturing in toddlers and working memory was differentially associated with the production of unimodal and bimodal gestures. When gestures were produced without speech, they primarily relied on attentional processes as indicated by working memory capacity. Conversely, when gestures were produced with speech, it was the articulation performance supporting speech processing that predicted the number of bimodal gestures. Overall, unimodal and bimodal gestures seem to have different working memory demands.
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    Language and age effects in children's processing of word order
    (Elsevier, 2012) Yeh, Ya-ching; Cheung, Hintat; Wagner, Laura; Naigles, Letitia R.; Department of Psychology; N/A; Küntay, Aylin C.; Candan, Ayşe; Faculty Member; Master Student; Department of Psychology; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities; 178879; N/A
    We compare the processing of transitive sentences in young learners of a strict word order language (English) and two languages that allow noun omissions and many variant word orders: Turkish, a case-marked language, and Mandarin Chinese, a non case-marked language. Children aged 1-3 years listened to simple transitive sentences in the typical word order of their language, paired with two visual scenes, only one of which matched the sentence. Multiple measures of comprehension (percent of looking to match, latency to look to match, number of switches of attention) revealed a general pattern of early sensitivity to word order, coupled with language and age effects in children's processing efficiency. In particular, English learners showed temporally speedier processing of transitive sentences than Turkish learners, who also displayed more uncertainty about the matching scene. Mandarin learners behaved like Turkish learners in showing slower processing of sentences, and all language groups displayed faster processing by older than younger children. These results demonstrate that sentence processing is sensitive to crosslinguistic features beginning early in language development.
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    Parental predictors of children’s math learning behaviours in different cultures
    (Springer, 2022) Selcuk, Bilge; N/A; Department of Psychology; Niehues, Wenke Ulrike; Sakarya, Yasemin Kisbu; PhD Student; Faculty Member; Department of Psychology; Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; N/A; 219275
    Research indicates that parental schoolwork involvement is beneficial for students' academic functioning when parents facilitate their children's autonomy and refrain from psychological controlling practices. However, effects of the quality of parental involvement on child learning outcomes may vary due to cross-cultural differences in children's appraisal and reaction towards these practices. The current study aimed to investigate the link between the quality of parental schoolwork involvement and children's learning-related behaviours in math, and the mediating role of mother-child conflict around math schoolwork in this link in three cultural groups (i.e., German-Turkish, Turkish and German families). Data were collected from 107 German-Turkish, 426 Turkish and 140 German mothers with children in fifth to eighth grades. After testing measurement invariance of the scales across groups, multi-group structural equation modelling was used to examine the direct and indirect paths between the quality of parental involvement, mother-child conflict and child learning-related behaviours. Results showed that the level of mother-child conflict mediated the link between mothers' psychologically controlling practices and children's learning-related behaviours in math in all three groups. No mediation was found for the link between maternal autonomy support and children's learning-related behaviours in any group. However, the direct path from mothers' autonomy support to children's learning-related behaviours was significant in the Turkish and German-Turkish samples. These results suggest that the role of different forms of parental schoolwork involvement in children's academic functioning is more similar than different across cultural groups.
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    Relations among self-reported maternal stress, smartphone use, and mother-child interactions
    (Springer, 2022) Uzundag, Berna A.; Oranc, Cansu; Altundal, Merve Nur; N/A; Keşşafoğlu, Dilara; Master Student; Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities; N/A
    A growing body of research indicates that parents' smartphone use is associated with interruptions in parent-child interactions and lower levels of parental responsiveness, which may adversely affect children's cognitive and socioemotional development. Studies suggest that parent-child interactions are more frequently interrupted by the use of screen-based devices if parents experience more stress specifically resulting from the demands of parenting, yet there are unexamined questions. Is parents' general daily stress related to technology-based interruptions in parent-child interactions? If so, does parents' use of mobile technology mediate this relationship? In this first study testing the mediating role of parental use of mobile phones between parental stress and technology-based interruptions in parent-child interactions, we collected data from 604 mothers of children younger than age six with an online survey. Results showed that controlling for child age, family income, mothers' employment status, household size, and maternal and paternal education, more stressed mothers reported using their mobile phones more problematically (e.g., not being able to resist checking messages), which was linked to more frequent perceived interruptions in the interactions with their children. Our results suggest that using mobile phones may serve as an outlet for stressed parents and is related to disruptions in the flow of parent-child interactions.
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    PublicationOpen Access
    Role of temperament, parenting behaviors, and stress on Turkish preschoolers’ internalizing symptoms
    (Wiley, 2017) Yavuz, H. Melis; Corapçı, Feyza; Aksan, Nazan; Department of Psychology; Selçuk, Bilge; Faculty Member; Department of Psychology; College of Social Sciences and Humanities; 52913
    Child- and family-related factors that predict internalizing symptoms are under-studied in preschool years and have a negative influence on children’s functioning. We examined observational assessments of preschoolers’ temperamental fear fulness and exuberance, mother reports of negative control, warmth, and parenting stress in a sample of 109 Turkish preschoolers. High temperamental fearfulness and low joyful/exuberant positive affectivity in addition to low warmth and high parenting stress had significant effects on internalizing symptoms. Parenting stress had both direct and indirect relations to internalizing symptoms via lower maternal warmth. When comorbid elevations in externalizing symptoms were controlled, the results were consistent with the interpretation that poor parenting practices and stress associated with the parenting role predict maladaptation in general but that the specific form of maladaptation may be best predicted by individual differences in children’s temperament