Colloquia Graduate School of Child Development and Education on Monday 14 July 2025

Abstracts

Krystyna Zaczykiewicz

Prosociality is a crucial component of children’s social development. Researching early prosociality matters to better understand its precursors and promote its emergence. In the present research, we examined the hypotheses that attuned maternal mind-mindedness during infancy positively predicts toddlers’ helping and sharing behaviours across time. Our sample consisted of 103 mother-child dyads (n = 64 boys, n = 39 girls) measured when the children were 6, 15, and 24 months old. The dyads completed experimental tasks in a laboratory setting. Maternal mind-mindedness was assessed based on attuned comments during a free-play task with and without toys. Children’s instrumental helping was measured by retrieving a fallen object, and sharing was measured by giving up toys for someone who did not have any. Using multi-level mixed models, we found no evidence for the associations between mind-mindedness during infancy and children’s helping and sharing over time. However, parental income was significantly positively associated with toddlers’ sharing behaviour at 15 months. Our results suggest that there may be alternative parenting pathways influencing children’s emerging prosociality, and that socio-economic indicators should be considered in interventions promoting children’s prosocial behaviours.

Veronika Orsanska

This meta-analysis tested whether mindful parenting predicts children’s internalizing and externalizing symptoms in childhood and adolescence. Based on a systematic search in three databases (e.g., PsycINFO and Scopus), and a two-stage screening process, 14 longitudinal studies were included. Multilevel meta-analysis was used to examine overall associations, whether mindful parenting differentially predicts internalizing versus externalizing symptoms, and whether mindful parenting is a stronger (or weaker) predictor of children’s symptoms than other established parenting practices. Findings showed that more mindful parenting predicted better child mental health outcomes. The strength of this association did not differ between internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Furthermore, there was no significant difference in predictive strength between mindful parenting and traditional parenting practices. These results suggests that mindful parenting can play a valuable role in supporting children’s emotional and behavioural well-being. Future research is needed to clarify whether these associations are causal, which could guide the development of effective and evidence-based interventions to support child mental health.   

Eirini Demirtzoglou 

Empathy is a capacity that pertains to understanding, feeling, and sharing another’s experience, while maintaining a self-other differentiation. While it appears during infancy, the mechanisms underlying its development are not yet clear. This study examined whether maternal sensitivity may affect the formation of empathy during the first two years of life. We also explored the role of self-awareness in infants’ empathy. We derived observational data from a longitudinal study with 103 mother-child dyads. We measured maternal sensitivity through free-play tasks at six months and self-awareness through the mirror self-recognition task at 15 months. We measured empathy at 15 and 24 months through a validated empathy task, the injured knee procedure, indexing children’s empathetic concern and distress. In contrast to our expectations, maternal sensitivity did not contribute to empathy development from infancy to toddlerhood. Our results revealed that infants with higher empathic concern at 15 months displayed lower empathic distress at 24 months. This longitudinal finding suggests that while they are two distinct aspects, early concern ability may alleviate self-distress over time. We also found that self-recognition in 15-month-old infants predicted lower empathic concern later in the second year, possibly indicating that early emerging self-awareness hinders, rather than helps, the development of empathic concern. We conclude by suggesting that empathic responses emerge early in life along with the development of individual and parental factors that future research might need to examine their stability, employ different measures, larger and more diverse samples. 

Efthimia Smixioti  

Psychological theories consider autonomy as a construct crucial for the agent’s well-being. On the other hand, philosophical theories show little consensus on how (relational) autonomy should be defined and whether it is a construct applicable to human reality. The current work aimed to resolve this conflict through a critical analysis of the existing debates and a synthesis that resulted in a revised definition of relational autonomy and measurement suggestions. I examined previous measurement tools with regard to the similarities and differences they present among them as well as with the current approach. Through the comparison process, I developed a new factor model. The logical coherence of the model and the theory behind it was examined by semi-structured interviews with “autonomy experts.” The resulting definition recognizes autonomy as an intersubjective experience that expresses the agent’s situation-specific capacity to cover their needs in accordance with their authentic views and preferences. Autonomy is positioned in a spectrum ranging from “heteronomy” to “hyper-autonomy.” Empirical research should be conducted for the validation of the model.

Shanti Baudoin

A well-developed sense of self is not only fundamental to knowing who we are as individuals, but also to understanding who we are in relation to others. It forms the foundation of our social world: allowing us to differentiate ourselves, develop empathy, and navigate social relationships. Investigating how the self emerges early in life is therefore a crucial area of developmental research. The current study examined the hypothesis that appropriate maternal mind-mindedness predicts greater self-understanding in children at 24 months, and that this relation is moderated by child temperament, such that children higher in negative affectivity benefit more from appropriate mind-mindedness. The sample consisted of 103 mother-child dyads from a longitudinal study on mother-child interactions and infants’ socio-emotional development, with assessments at 6, 15, and 24 months. Maternal mind-mindedness was measured at 6 months and based on the proportion of appropriate mind-related comments during a free-play task. Child temperament (Negative Affectivity dimension) was reported by mothers via the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R) at 6 months. Self-understanding at 24 months was measured using six tasks assessing objective and subjective self-awareness. Path analyses revealed a significant interaction: among children low in negative affectivity, higher appropriate mind-mindedness was associated with unexpectedly lower self-understanding at 24 months. Exploratory analyses using logistic regression examined the same predictors and interaction for self-awareness in infancy (measured by self-recognition in the mirror task at 15 months), but no significant effects were found. These findings suggest that a "one-size-fits-all" approach to caregiving may be insufficient, and that children’s temperamental traits shape their responsiveness to maternal mind-mindedness in developing an early sense of self.

Best regards,
Sanne Agterberg MSc,
Research Institute of Child Development and Education

^{Colloquium categorie: Lezingen en congressen}