1-080 - Using Intervention Research to Improve our Understanding of Child Development

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Rigorous intervention science can improve our understanding of child development, because it provides causal insights into how changes in the environment shape child development. Yet, intervention studies are underused to inform basic child development research, because they often focus primarily on “what works,” rather than on testing how and why children are affected by their environment, and the active role children themselves play in these effects.

This symposium brings together researchers who are committed to bridging the gap between basic research on child development and intervention science. Their papers refine existing models on child development by disentangling the effects of broad environmental constructs (e.g., family dynamics and the school environment) into the specific mechanisms that explain how and why children are shaped through interactions with their environment. Their work is characterized by a continuous feedback loop in which theory informs intervention, and intervention outcomes inform theory. Included papers distinguish, for example, the aspects of family and school environments that actually do, from those that do not, shape children’s development, and test the robustness of models of child development across cultures and contexts. Together, they cover a broad range of children’s developmental outcomes (e.g., academic development and social-emotional development) and age spans (e.g., early childhood to adolescence).

These four papers investigate key questions about child development in a variety of contexts (e.g., children in conflict affected countries and children with psychopathology), with special attention to intervention effects that confirm existing models of child development, and those that are disconfirming.

Sub Unit

• Prevention and Interventions

Chair

• Patty Leijten, University of Oxford / University of Amsterdam

Individual Presentations

• Building Developmental Models From the Ground Up: Progress and Caveats in the Analysis of the Family Check-Up Effects - Presenting Author: Thomas J. Dishion, Arizona State University; Daniel S. Shaw, University of Pittsburgh

• Understanding Children’s Academic and Psychosocial Development in Conflict-Affected Countries: Insights from Intervention Research - Presenting Author: J. Lawrence Aber, New York University; Carly Tubbs Dolan, New York University

• Targeting Key Behavioral Principles: A “FIRST” Step Towards Streamlining Intervention for Youth Mental Health - Presenting Author: Sarah Kate Bearman, The University of Texas at Austin; John Weisz, Harvard University; Lauren Santucci, Harvard University; Amanda Jensen-Doss, University of Miami

• Using Intervention Research to Understand Why Children Comply - Presenting Author: Patty Leijten, University of Oxford / University of Amsterdam; Frances Gardner, University of Oxford; G.J. Melendez-Torres, University of Warwick; Wendy Knerr, University of Oxford; Geertjan Overbeek, University of Amsterdam