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Children
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Child Development in Latin America
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Child Development in Latin America

A special issue of Children (ISSN 2227-9067). This special issue belongs to the section "Global and Public Health".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 November 2020) | Viewed by 8521

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Lisa Boyce

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Human Development and Family Studies Department, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322, USA
Interests: early child development; developmental interventions; parent-child interaction; parent supports of children's language and regulation skills

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

While much progress has been made in Latin America, approximately 3.6 million 3–4-year-old children living in Latin America and the Caribbean are at risk of failing to reach their developmental potential and almost 6 million children under the age of 5 experience chronic malnutrition (UNICEF, 2016). Early child development (ECD) has been widely recognized as laying the foundation for future health, academic, and economic outcomes. As such, ECD is included in the Sustainable Development Goals, and the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund have launched the Nurturing Care Framework for ECD. Early childhood interventions in many different countries have been shown to be effective in reducing mortality, health inequalities, undernutrition, and child neglect and abuse. Early childhood interventions have also been associated with positive parenting practices and improved child health, cognitive, language, and social–emotional outcomes. ECD intervention strategies are varied and address health, nutrition, early learning, and parenting. Few longitudinal studies in the Latin American region have studied how health and development in the first years of life affect future developmental outcomes related to learning and decision-making (Araujo and Schady, 2020). Research conducted to identify the risk and protective factors associated with positive child outcomes within Latin American countries can be used to guide the development and implementation of effective early childhood interventions for specific communities.

A greater understanding of the geographical and demographic factors as well as the social, ethnic, religious, and cultural processes within Latin American countries that influence ECD is essential for recognizing areas of strength and developing effective, meaningful interventions to promote optimal development. Evaluation results from high-quality ECD interventions in Latin America would also inform efforts for developing targeted interventions for specific populations. In this Special Issue, we seek submissions from diverse disciplines that make novel contributions to our understanding of the diversity of contexts in which early child development takes place and the associated outcomes in Latin America. Both reviews and original research will be considered for publication. Examples include, but are not limited to, the relationships between the risk and protective factors and diverse child outcomes, the validation of assessment tools, the evaluation results from innovative interventions, and longitudinal studies of developmental outcomes within or across Latin American countries.

Dr. Lisa Boyce
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Children is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • ethnicity
  • risk and protective factors
  • early childhood
  • intervention
  • Latin America

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 275 KiB  
Article
Depressive Symptomatology and Parenting Stress: Influence on the Social-Emotional Development of Pre-Schoolers in Chile
by María Pía Santelices, Francisca Tagle and Nina Immel
Children 2021, 8(5), 387; https://doi.org/10.3390/children8050387 - 13 May 2021
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2441
Abstract
(1) Background: The preschool stage is a period of great psychological changes that requires the support of parents and significant adults for optimal development. Studies show that maternal mental health can be a risk factor in parenting, affecting the social-emotional development of children. [...] Read more.
(1) Background: The preschool stage is a period of great psychological changes that requires the support of parents and significant adults for optimal development. Studies show that maternal mental health can be a risk factor in parenting, affecting the social-emotional development of children. (2) Methods: The present study seeks to shed light on the relation between depressive symptoms, parental stress in mothers and social-emotional development of their preschool children, using a total of 123 mother-child dyads with low Social-economic Status (SES). In mothers, depressive symptomatology and level of parental stress were evaluated, as well as social-emotional development in children. A possible mediation effect between maternal depressive symptoms and parenting stress is expected. (3) Results: The results indicate that higher levels of depressive symptoms and parenting stress in mothers relate to greater difficulties in social-emotional development of their preschool children. (4) Conclusions: These results are clinically relevant from the perspective of family therapy: Parents need support to decrease their levels of parenting stress in order not to jeopardise their children’s social-emotional development. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Child Development in Latin America)
21 pages, 390 KiB  
Article
How Living in Vulnerable Conditions Undermines Cognitive Development: Evidence from the Pediatric Population of Guatemala
by Joaquín A. Ibáñez-Alfonso, Rosalba Company-Córdoba, Claudia García de la Cadena, Antonio Sianes and Ian Craig Simpson
Children 2021, 8(2), 90; https://doi.org/10.3390/children8020090 - 29 Jan 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3376
Abstract
Low-socioeconomic backgrounds represent a risk factor for children’s cognitive development and well-being. Evidence from many studies highlights that cognitive processes may be adversely affected by vulnerable contexts. The aim of this study was to determine if living in vulnerable conditions affects childhood cognitive [...] Read more.
Low-socioeconomic backgrounds represent a risk factor for children’s cognitive development and well-being. Evidence from many studies highlights that cognitive processes may be adversely affected by vulnerable contexts. The aim of this study was to determine if living in vulnerable conditions affects childhood cognitive development. To achieve this, we assessed the performance of a sample of 347 Guatemalan children and adolescents aged from 6 to 17 years (M = 10.8, SD = 3) in a series of 10 neuropsychological tasks recently standardized for the pediatric population of this country. Two-fifths of the sample (41.5%) could be considered to have vulnerable backgrounds, coming from families with low-socioeconomic status or having had a high exposure to violence. As expected, results showed lower scores in language and attention for the vulnerable group. However, contrary to expectations, consistent systematic differences were not found in the executive function tasks. Vulnerable children obtained lower scores in cognitive flexibility compared to the non-vulnerable group, but higher scores in inhibition and problem-solving tasks. These results suggest the importance of developing pediatric standards of cognitive performance that take environmental vulnerable conditions into consideration. These findings, one of the first obtained in the Guatemalan population, also provide relevant information for specific educational interventions and public health policies which will enhance vulnerable children and adolescent cognitive development. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Child Development in Latin America)
14 pages, 297 KiB  
Article
Using the Very Short Form of the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire for Spanish-Speaking Populations in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Psychometric Analysis of Dichotomized Variables
by Elsa Lucia Escalante-Barrios, Sonia Mariel Suarez-Enciso, Samuel P. Putnam, Helen Raikes and Sergi Fàbregues
Children 2021, 8(2), 74; https://doi.org/10.3390/children8020074 - 22 Jan 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2109
Abstract
While the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Very Short Form of the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ-VSF) have been assessed in the US and Europe in samples composed of middle- and high-income parents with high levels of education, no studies have [...] Read more.
While the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Very Short Form of the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ-VSF) have been assessed in the US and Europe in samples composed of middle- and high-income parents with high levels of education, no studies have tested the instrument in low-income Spanish-speaking populations living in low- and middle-income countries. To fill this gap, our cross-sectional study assessed the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the CBQ-VSF version in a sample of 315 low-income and low-educated parents with preschool children living in the Caribbean Region of Colombia. While our findings revealed problems that were similar to those identified in previous assessments of the CBQ-VSF Spanish version, they also showed unique problems related to the sociodemographic characteristics of our sample, containing many individuals with a low income and low educational level. Most of the participants gave extreme responses, resulting in a notable kurtosis and skewness of the data. This article describes how we addressed these problems by dichotomizing the variables into binary categories. Additionally, it demonstrates that merely translating the CBQ-VSF is insufficient to be able to capture many of the underlying latent constructs associated with low-income and low-educated Latino/Hispanic populations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Child Development in Latin America)
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