Doctoral Dissertation Research: The behavioral ecology of children's signals of need

Children require essential benefits from parents and other caregivers, such as food, care, and protection, which they often attempt to elicit with cries and other signals of need. Although infant cries have been studied in several populations, the full range of potential child signals of need, which likely extend beyond cries, has never been investigated in children of all ages, nor is it known how often parents respond favorably or unfavorably to these signals. This project helps fill this gap by collecting observational, self-report, and experimental data on child signals of need and parental responses to them. It also investigates if children’s self-endangering behaviors, such as running away, are signals of need. In addition to training a graduate student in mixed methods data collection and analyses, the research provides information that can enhance child well-being. The researcher intends to publish the results in peer-reviewed journals and share the data and findings with child welfare organizations. This project will be conducted in an island community among two populations that differ in culture and socioeconomic status, both of which are experiencing rapid change due to increased tourism and immigration. Daily surveys are used to examine how often children signal need, how they do this, how parents respond to such signaling, and how children respond to parental responses. Researchers are also replicating an experimental vignette study on adolescent and young adult self-endangering behaviors that tests the hypothesis that these are credible signals of need. By providing information from two populations on 1) the frequency and costliness of signals of need across development and 2) the extent to which those signals receive positive or negative responses from caregivers, this project provides insight into why children differ in their signaling behavior and why parents might respond positively or negatively to indications of child need. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.