Browsing by Author "Tan, Mei"
Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
- Results Per Page
- Sort Options
Item Child internalizing problems and mother-child discrepancies in perceptions of parenting: Evidence for bidirectional associations(Journal of Family Psychology, 3/1/2018) Hein, Sascha D.; Stone, L.; Tan, Mei; Barbot, Bastiste; Luthar, Suniya S.; Grigorenko, Elena L.We investigated the bidirectional associations between mother–child discrepancies in their perceptions of maternal rejection and children’s internalizing problems over 10 years from pre/early adolescence to early adulthood. Mothers’ reports of rejection and involvement in the parent–child relationship, the children’s perception of the mother’s rejection, and children’s self-report of internalizing problems were collected from a sample of 360 low-income ethnically diverse urban mother–child dyads at three time points (T1, T2, and T3) with 5-year intervals. Children were on average 12.6 years old at T1 (54% girls). Using a series of nested path analyses, we found that mother–child discrepancies while reporting maternal rejection at T1 were predictive of lower ratings of maternal involvement at T2 (β = −.14), which predicted higher levels of internalizing problems at T3 (β = −.16). The presence of mother’s affective disorder was related to T1 mother–child discrepancies (β = .14). Regarding bidirectional associations, children’s internalizing problems predicted maternal involvement across all time points, whereas T2 maternal involvement predicted T3 child internalizing problems. Discrepancies showed small associations with child internalizing problems both concurrently and over time. The findings highlight the importance of early discrepancies in the perception of maternal rejection for child internalizing symptoms.Item Differences in Judgments of Creativity: How Do Academic Domain, Personality, and Self-Reported Creativity Influence Novice Judges’ Evaluations of Creative Productions?(Journal of Intelligence, 9/14/2015) Tan, Mei; Mourgues, Catalina V.; Hein, Sascha D.; MacCormick, John; Barbot, Baptiste; Grigorenko, Elena L.Intelligence assessment is often viewed as a narrow and ever-narrowing field, defined (as per IQ) by the measurement of finely distinguished cognitive processes. It is instructive, however, to remember that other, broader conceptions of intelligence exist and might usefully be considered for a comprehensive assessment of intellectual functioning. This article invokes a more holistic, systems theory of intelligence—the theory of successful intelligence—and examines the possibility of including in intelligence assessment a similarly holistic measure of creativity. The time and costs of production-based assessments of creativity are generally considered prohibitive. Such barriers may be mitigated by applying the consensual assessment technique using novice raters. To investigate further this possibility, we explored the question: how much do demographic factors such as age and gender and psychological factors such as domain-specific expertise, personality or self-perceived creativity affect novices’ unidimensional ratings of creativity? Fifty-one novice judges from three undergraduate programs, majoring in three disparate expertise domains (i.e., visual art, psychology and computer science) rated 40 child-generated Lego creatures for creativity. Results showed no differences in creativity ratings based on the expertise domains of the judges. However, judges’ personality and self-perception of their own everyday creativity appeared to influence the way they scored the creatures for creativity.Item Exploring Multiple Dimensions of the Context for Child Development in Rural Zambia(2023-05-28) Tan, Mei; Grigorenko, Elena L.; Ali, Samira B.; Francis, David J.; Sharp, Carla; Yoshida, Hanako; Grigorenko, Elena L.In this dissertation, I present unique perspectives on data collected from both children and adults in rural Zambia, considering new methods and topics regarding the investigation of contexts for child development. I aim to bring to the field’s attention two larger issues. First, in a scoping review, I highlight the need to expand the range of methods being applied (for example, mixed methods studies still seem relatively scarce) while honing in on key, understudied variables. Then, in empirical work, I emphasize cultural facets of human behavior that appear to be much less well studied in non-Western settings. Specifically, in a quantitative analysis I examine in- and out-of-household migrations and their effect on children’s development; in a qualitative analysis I investigate adults’ conceptions of time as they are expressed in natural language samples. To introduce my research endeavors, I discuss the relevance of certain facets of African settings to child development as per theoretical frameworks of intelligence and of the developmental niche. The overall thrust of this work is to emphasize the need for attention to culture as an important source of information regarding the societal ideas, beliefs, values and behaviors that form the context for children’s development.Item Paired Associate Learning Tasks and their Contribution to Reading Skills(Learning and Individual Differences, 1/1/2017) Mourgues, Catalina V.; Tan, Mei; Hein, Sascha D.; Ojanen, Emma; Reich, Jodi; Lyytinen, Heikki; Grigorenko, Elena L.Associative learning has been identified as one of several non-linguistic processes involved in reading acquisition. However, it has not been established whether it is an independent process that contributes to reading performance on its own or whether it is a process that is embedded in other linguistic skills (e.g., phonological awareness or phonological memory) and, therefore, contributing to reading performance indirectly. Research has shown that performance on tasks assessing associative learning, e.g., paired-associate learning (PAL) tasks, is lower in children with specific reading difficulties compared to typical readers. We explored the differential associations of two distinct verbal-visual PAL tasks (the Bala Bbala Graphogame, BBG, and a Foreign Language Learning Task, FLLT) with reading skills (word reading and pseudo-word decoding), controlling for phonological awareness, rapid naming, and letter and digit span in children at risk for reading disabilities and their typically developing peers. Our study sample consisted of 110 children living in rural Zambia, ranging in age from 7 to 18 years old (48.1% female). Multivariate analyses of covariance were used to explore the group differences in reading performance. Repeated-measures ANCOVA was used to examine children’s learning across the PAL tasks. The differential relationships between both PAL tasks and reading performance were explored via structural equation modeling. The main result was that the children at risk for reading difficulties had lower performance on both PAL tasks. The BBG was a significant predictor for both word reading and pseudo-word decoding, whereas the FLLT—only for word reading. Performance on the FLLT partially mediated the association between phonological awareness and word reading. These results illustrate the partial independence of associative learning from other reading-related skills; the specifics of this relationship vary based on the type of PAL task administered.Item School effects on non-verbal intelligence and nutritional status in rural Zambia(Learning and Individual Differences, 2/1/2017) Hein, Sascha D.; Tan, Mei; Reich, Jodi; Thuma, Philip E.; Grigorenko, Elena L.This study uses hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to examine the school factors (i.e., related to school organization and teacher and student body) associated with non-verbal intelligence (NI) and nutritional status (i.e., body mass index; BMI) of 4204 3rd to 7th graders in rural areas of Southern Province, Zambia. Results showed that 23.5% and 7.7% of the NI and BMI variance, respectively, were conditioned by differences between schools. The set of 14 school factors accounted for 58.8% and 75.9% of the between-school differences in NI and BMI, respectively. Grade-specific HLM yielded higher between-school variation of NI (41%) and BMI (14.6%) for students in grade 3 compared to grades 4 to 7. School factors showed a differential pattern of associations with NI and BMI across grades. The distance to a health post and teacher’s teaching experience were the strongest predictors of NI (particularly in grades 4, 6 and 7); the presence of a preschool was linked to lower BMI in grades 4 to 6. Implications for improving access and quality of education in rural Zambia are discussed.