Environmental morality is the foundation of a sustainable future, yet its ontogenetic origin remains unknown. In the present study, we asked whether 7-month-olds have a sense of 'environmental morality'. Infants' evaluations of two pro-environmental actions were assessed in both visual and reaching preferential tasks. In Experiment 1, the overt behavior of protecting (i.e., collecting artificial objects spread on a lawn) was compared with the action of harming the environment (i.e., by disregarding the objects). In Experiment 2, the covert behavior of protecting the environment (i.e., maintaining artificial objects inside a container) was compared with the action of harming the environment (i.e., littering the artificial objects on a lawn). The results showed infants' reaching preference for the agent who performed overt pro-environmental actions (Experiment 1), and no preference for the agent who performed covert pro-environmental actions (Experiment 2). These findings reveal a rudimentary ecological sense and suggest that infants require different abilities to evaluate overt impact-oriented and covert intend-oriented pro-environmental behaviors.

Executive attention, the attention necessary to reconcile conflict among simultaneous attentional demands, is vital to children's daily lives. This attention develops rapidly as the anterior cingulate cortex and prefrontal areas mature during early and middle childhood. However, the developmental course of executive attention is not uniform amongst children. Therefore, the purpose of this investigation was to examine the role of individual differences in the development of executive attention by exploring the concurrent and longitudinal contributions to its development at 8 years of age. Executive attention was predicted by concurrent measures of frontal electroencephalography, lab-based performance on a conflict task, and parent report of attention. Longitudinally, 8-year-old executive attention, was significantly predicted by a combination of 4-year old frontal activity, conflict task performance, and parent report of attention focusing, but not with an analogous equation replacing attention focusing with attention shifting. Together, data demonstrate individual differences in executive attention.

Objective. The purpose of this study was to examine whether exercise is associated with 2-year follow-up smoking status through its influence on smoking-specific self-efficacy.Methods. Longitudinal data from the 2003-2005 National Youth Smoking Cessation Survey were used, including 1,228 participants (16-24 years). A questionnaire was used to examine baseline exercise levels, baseline smoking-specific self-efficacy, follow-up smoking status, and the covariates.Results. Baseline exercise was associated with baseline self-efficacy (beta = 0.04, p < 0.001) after adjusting for age category, sex, race-ethnicity, education, and nicotine dependence. Baseline self-efficacy, in turn, was associated with 2-year smoking status (beta = 0.23, p < 0.001) after adjustments. There was no adjusted direct effect of baseline exercise on 2-year smoking status (beta = 0.001, p = 0.95); however, the adjusted indirect effect of baseline self-efficacy on the relationship between exercise and 2-year smoking status was significant (beta = 0.008, bootstrapped lower and upper CI: 0.002-0.02; p < 0.05). The mediation ratio was 0.837, which indicates that smoking-specific self-efficacy mediates 84% of the total effect of exercise on smoking status.Conclusions. Among daily smokers, exercise may help to facilitate smoking cessation via exercise-induced increases in smoking-specific self-efficacy. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Psychophysiological and cognitive performance differences exist between shy and non-shy individuals. Neuroimaging studies have shown identifiable differences in task-related cortical functioning between adults with and without sensitivity to social events. The current study compared baseline and task measures of EEG power (6-9 Hz) for 125 shy and non-shy children between the ages of 41-55 months who differed in core executive function (EF) skills. Results indicated an increase in medial frontal EEG power from baseline-to-task for high EF performers (shy and non-shy). Shy/low EF performers also demonstrated this increase, but the non-shy/low EF group did not. For the medial parietal region, only the shy children (high and low EF performers) showed an increase in power from baseline-to-task; and for the shy/high EF group, left hemisphere power was greater than the right during baseline and task. This study is believed to be the first continuous-recording EEG comparison between children who are shy and non-shy in the context of an EF assessment. These findings highlight differences in medial frontal and medial parietal power for children who differ in shyness and EF skills. They also suggest the value of future research examining strong EF skills as protective and regulatory for shy children.

Moderate, yet relatively consistent, associations between cognitive performance and shyness have been reported throughout the child and adult literatures. The current study assessed longitudinal associations between cognition (i.e., executive functioning) and parent-report temperamental shyness from infancy to early childhood and used temporal order to explore directionality of the relations. Two hundred and eleven children contributed data at multiple ages (5 months, 10 months, 2 years, 3 years, and 4 years). The results indicated a complex pattern of association between cognition and shyness in early development and provided tentative support for both cognitive ability and temperament as causal agents at different developmental time points.

We investigated whether brain electrical activity during early childhood was associated with anxiety symptoms and emotion regulation during a stressful situation during middle childhood. Frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetries were measured during baseline and during a cognitive control task at 4 1/2 years. Anxiety and emotion regulation were assessed during a stressful situation at age 9 (speech task), along with measures of heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV). Questionnaires were also used to assess anxiety and emotion regulation at age 9. Results from this longitudinal study indicated that children who exhibited right frontal asymmetry in early childhood experienced more physiological arousal (increased HR, decreased HRV) during the speech task at age 9 and less ability to regulate their emotions as reported by their parents. Findings are discussed in light of the associations between temperament and development of anxiety disorders.

The field of developmental psychophysiology provides the methodology for examination of age-related changes in the functioning of the brain. The electroencephalogram (EEG) is an efficient, non-invasive, and relatively inexpensive method for studying brain development in infants and children and for relating brain development to changes in cognitive behaviors. Utilizing EEG allows for examination of these developmental changes without dramatic interference with normal ongoing behaviors. All of these characteristics make the EEG one of the more favorable methods for investigating brain-behavior relations with young populations (Casey & de Haan, 2002; Taylor & Baldeweg, 2002).

This study investigated age-related differences in working memory and inhibitory control (WMIC) in 312-, 4-, and 412-year-olds and how these differences were associated with differences in regulatory aspects of temperament, language comprehension, and brain electrical activity. A series of cognitive control tasks was administered to measure WMIC ability, including the Stroop-like day–night and the yes–no tasks. Baseline and task electroencephalographic data were collected. The Children's Behavior Questionnaire was used to assess caregiver perceptions of temperament with a particular interest in the effortful control and surgency factors, and language comprehension was measured with the Peabody-Picture Vocabulary Test-III. The results of this study demonstrated differential temperament-cognition relations for the three age groups, as positive associations were found between WMIC and effortful control for the 312- and 4-year-olds and negative associations were found between WMIC and surgency for the 412-year-olds. An increasingly robust relation between WMIC and language comprehension was demonstrated across the three age groups, as well as differential patterns of task-related brain electrical activity.

This study was an attempt to integrate cognitive development (i.e., cognitive control) and emotional development (i.e., emotion regulation) in the first years of life. The construct of temperament was used to unify cognition and emotion because of its focus on attentional and regulatory behaviors. Children were seen at 8 months and 412-years of age in a study designed to examine the correlates of working memory development. Frontal brain electrical activity and temperament predicted working memory performance at 8 months. Similarly, frontal brain electrical activity, temperament, and language predicted working memory at age 412-years. Temperament in early childhood mediated the relation between infant temperament and early childhood working memory performance. These associated temperament characteristics highlight the value of early-learned regulatory and attentional behaviors and the impact of these early skills on later development.

Using measures of EEG power and coherence with a longitudinal sample, the goal of this study was to examine developmental changes in brain electrical activity during higher order cognitive processing at infancy and early childhood. Infants were recruited at 8 months of age and performed an infant working-memory task based on a looking version of the A-not-B task. At age 4.5 years, one half of the original sample returned for a follow-up visit and were assessed with age-appropriate working-memory tasks. At infancy, working memory was associated with changes in EEG power from baseline to task across the entire scalp, whereas in early childhood, working memory was associated with changes in EEG power from baseline to task at medial frontal only. Similar results were found for the EEG coherence data. At infancy, working memory was associated with changes in EEG coherence from baseline to task across all electrode pairs and by 4.5 years of age, EEG coherence changed from baseline to working-memory task at the medial frontal/posterior temporal pairs and the medial frontal/occipital pairs. These EEG power and coherence longitudinal data suggest that brain electrical activity is widespread during infant cognitive processing and that it becomes more localized during early childhood. These findings may yield insight into qualitative changes in cortical functioning from the infant to the early childhood time periods, adjustments that may be indicative of developmental changes in brain specialization for higher order processes.

Regulatory aspects of development can best be understood by research that conceptualizes relations between cognition and emotion. The neural mechanisms associated with regulatory processes may be the same as those associated with higher order cognitive processes. Thus, from a developmental cognitive neuroscience perspective, emotion and cognition are dynamically linked and work together to process information and execute action. This article highlights the authors' recent efforts at integrating emotion regulation and cognitive processing during the first year of life by focusing on the methodological criteria outlined by Cole, Martin, and Dennis (this issue) , and it discusses the idea that emotion and cognition are an intricately bound developmental process.

This study examined the cognitive skills of working memory and inhibitory control (WMIC) in relation to physiological functioning, temperament, and language in early childhood. WMIC skills were assessed in twenty-five 4 1/2-year-old children using the day--night Stroop-like task and the yes--no task; each task required the child to remember two rules and to inhibit a dominant response. Electroencephalogram (EEG) and heart period (HP) were recorded during baseline and WMIC tasks. An increase in 6- to 9-Hz EEG power from baseline to task was found for the medial frontal region. In addition, a decrease in HP (i.e., an increase in heart rate) was found from baseline to task. Associations were found between performance on the WMIC tasks and scales of the Children's Behavioral Questionnaire (CBQ) related to the effortful control of behavior. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III (PPVT-III) distinguished between high and low WMIC performance. Results of a discriminant function analysis indicated that physiology, temperament, and language were able to correctly predict 90% of WMIC performance.