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BackgroundMiddle childhood is a significant period of change both for a child’s cognition and social functioning. Considering that the primary developmental theme of attachment in middle childhood is the balance between child’s growing autonomy and the constant need of relatedness, cultural differences in developmental trends in the attachment might be considered as a function of individualism and collectivism orientations. However, little is known about whether the findings on predictors of individual differences in the attachment in middle childhood found in Western cultures, hold within the non-Western ones. Moreover, still little is known about differences between attachment to mothers and fathers in middle childhood. Hence, one goal of the present study was to investigate the role of a child’s age, sex, and emotionality in a middle-childhood attachment to mothers and fathers in the Polish sample. The second aim was to compare obtained results to the attachment research that focused on Western cultures.MethodsThe sample consisted of 132 children aged 8–12 years (51% boys). They completed the Kern’s Security Scale and the Coping Strategies Questionnaire. Mothers completed a child’s EAS-C and short sociodemographic questionnaire. Pearson’s correlations were conducted to test relationships between a child’s age, sex, emotionality, SES, and attachment-related variables. A paired-samples t-test was used to compare the intensity of preoccupied and avoidant coping strategies with parents in the whole sample. The effects of a child’s age, sex, temperament, and attachment figure were tested with separate repeated-measures ANOVA.ResultsSome of the results replicated prior studies conducted in Western cultures. Similarly to the individualistic cultures, older Polish children reported less preoccupied and more avoidant coping strategies with their parents than younger children. Second, older girls reported higher felt-security with their fathers than with mothers, which suggests some significant changes in attachment relationships regarding the child’s sex. However, as opposed to Western cultures, there were no links between the child’s sex and preoccupied and avoidant coping. Polish children also reported higher rates of preoccupied coping than the avoidant one. Finally, children with relatively lower emotionality reported higher attachment security with both parents than children with relatively higher emotionality.ConclusionsThe current study extends previous work on attachment in middle childhood, the area of rather sparse research, as compared to other developmental periods. The findings reveal the existence of both some specificity in the middle-child attachment in the Polish sample, as well as some culture-universal developmental trends. However, as many questions remain unanswered, they also highlight the strong need for future cross-cultural and comparative studies.

The relationships between maternal parenting attitudes and preschoolers’ hot and cool executive functions (EF) were examined. Forty-eight children aged 3 to 4 years and their mothers took part in the study. Self-report questionnaire concerning parenting attitudes was obtained from the mothers of children who performed a set of EF tasks. Additionally, both maternal and child verbal ability were controlled. It was found that maternal parenting attitudes were related only to child cool EF. Protecting attitude was positively related to child inhibitory control and autonomy support was negatively related to child set-shifting ability. Further analyses revealed that maternal autonomy support accounted for unique variance in child set-shifting, above and beyond the child’s age. On the other hand, protecting attitude accounted for unique variance in child inhibitory control, above and beyond child verbal ability. The findings provide further evidence for the importance of mother-child relationships in children’s EF development.

Inhibitory control is one of the most important components of executive functions, which allows to suppress or regulate prepotent attentional or behavioral responses. It was proved to be a crucial factor for school achievement, including math abilities and reading acquisition. In the present cross-sectional study Ober's assumptions about the developmental patterns of relationships between inhibitory control and reading skill were examined. The sample consisted of 256 grade 1-3 primary school children. Decoding and comprehension, the two subcomponents of reading skill, were assessed using Prolexia Test, while cognitive inhibitory control was measured with the Color Word Stroop Task. Simple correlation analyses showed that comprehension ability was related to inhibitory control but only among boys from 1st and 2nd grades (but not among 3rd graders), and no relations between reading subcomponents and inhibitory control were found among girls. However, hierarchical regression analyses controlling for other reading subcomponent did not yield a significant effect of interaction. Instead, it was found that inhibitory control was related to reading only in the 1st graders. Also, some gender differences between 1st and 2nd graders in their reading ability were observed. Those findings suggest that although gender plays a significant role in reading skill development of early school children, it does not moderate the developmental links between inhibitory control and reading skill.