studies & articles

The Blog

One of the many pleasures of being a professor was feeling the need to stay on top of the research in psychology. When I first learned about the half-life of knowledge, the literature typically said it was 3-5 years in technical fields. As a retired professor, I am still a member of the American Psychological Association and subscribe to a service that delivers abstracts and open-source articles from a large number of journals. As an alumna of Harvard, I also get information from them and I have the time to peruse multiple sources. This is a pleasure most professionals don’t have, especially if they value
work-life balance.

I still love research and, when I was asked to write the blog, I enthusiastically agreed. I try to select articles based on their relevance to practitioners, but also to capture both emerging themes and important corrections. I am hopeful that, moving forward, we will have ways to enable readers to easily engage in conversations with me and each other.

-Dr. Karen Nelson

Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Autonomy and growth mindsets in learning

Here, I present two studies related to children’s learning and one more on autnomy. Park et al. (2023) published “Parental Intrusive Homework Support and Math Achievement: Does the child’s mindset matter?” in Developmental Psychology. Here’s the edited abstract and impact statement with some information in bold:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Risk of behavioral inhibition from infancy to age seven

This is a longer than usual post because I find behavioral inhibition fascinating and this study is very well done. Anaya et al. (2023) published “Developmental Trajectories of Behavioral Inhibition from Infancy to Age Seven: The role of genetic and environmental risk for psychopathology” in Child Development. Here’s the edited abstract and article with some key information in bold:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Mothers’ parenting self-efficacy, attachment, and parenting

I have indicated before that I like research on attachment. This is an important paper. Cao, Zhou & Leerkes (2023) published “Primiparous Mothers’ Parenting Self-Efficacy in Managing Toddler Distress: Childhood nonsupportive emotion socialization, adult attachment style, and toddler temperament as antecedents” in Emotion.

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Behavioral Inhibition and loneliness

This is a long one because I haven’t found a lot on loneliness and I have been intrigued by behavioral inhibition since Kagan first talked about it. Verhagen, Derks, Roelofs & Maciejewski (2022) published “Behavioral Inhibition, Negative Parenting, and Social Withdrawal: Longitudinal associations with loneliness during early, middle, and late adolescence” in Child Development. Here’s an edited version of the article with some information in bold:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Perceived parental social support for LGBTQ+ children

McCurdy & Russell (2023) published “Perceived Parental Social Support and Psychological Control Predict Depressive Symptoms for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, or Questioning Youth in the United States” in Child Development. I have edited both the abstract and the article and added bold for major findings:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Two studies of parenting efficacy

Today, I am presenting two studies of parenting. The first a positive approach and the second focused on predictors of harsh parenting and recommended interventions. First, Resnik, Garbacz, Stormshak & McIntyre (2023) published “Family-centered Prevention to Enhance Proactive Parenting and Parental Self-Efficacy During Early Elementary School” in Journal of Family Psychology. Here’s the abstract:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Parental burnout, emotion suppression, and sleep

I am presenting abstracts of two studies related to exhaustion and sleep. In the first, Blanchard, Hoebeke & Heeren (2023) published “Parental Burnout Features and the Family Context: A temporal network approach in mothers” in Journal of Family Psychology. Here’s the abstract with some information in bold:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Solidarity with those who are different

Here, I summarize four articles related to understanding those different from the self. The first article, which is available in full text, has the longest summary: Scott, Ash, Immel, Liebeck, Devine & Shutts (2022) published “Engaging White Parents to Address Their White Children's Racial Biases in the Black-White Context” in Child Development. Here’s the edited article:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Four studies of children and math

I am presenting studies of preschool, elementary, and teenage children, as well of one of parents’ attitudes. In the first study, Mou, Zhang & Hyde (2022) published “Directionality in the Interrelations Between Approximate Number, Verbal Number, and Mathematics in Preschool-Aged Children” in Child Development. Here’s the abstract:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Harsh Parenting Practices

Speyer, Hang, Hall & Murray (2022) published “The role of harsh parenting practices in early- to middle-childhood socioemotional development: An examination in the Millennium Cohort Study” in Child Development.

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Helicopter parenting of children of lesbian parents

Carone, Gartrell, Rothblum, Koh & Bos (2022) published “Helicopter Parenting, Emotional Avoidant Coping, Mental Health, and Homophobic Stigmatization Among Emerging Adult Offspring of Lesbian Parents” in Journal of Family Psychology. I was interested in this study because helicopter parenting has been studied in younger children but I had not seen research on young adults with lesbian parents. Here’s the abstract:

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Parents are wrong about teenage sleep and health

The Harvard Gazette published “Parents Are So Wrong About Teenage Sleep and Health” on September 28, 2022. They summarize results of a survey conducted by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

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Karen Nelson Karen Nelson

Different family processes and adolescent functioning

Xia (2022) published “Different Families, Diverse Strengths: Long-term implications of early childhood family processes on adolescent positive functioning” in Developmental Psychology. I like research that focuses on different models of family functioning. The sample size here and its diversity are acceptable. Here’s the abstract:

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