Research and News from the Center for Families at Purdue University

April 4, 2022

Lexico-semantic structure in vocabulary and its links to lexical processing in toddlerhood and language outcomes at age three

Toddlerhood is marked by advances in several lexico-semantic skills, including improvements in the size and structure of the lexicon and increased efficiency in lexical processing.

April 1, 2022

CFF Celebrates 25th Anniversary

The Center for Families and the Military Family Research Institute at Purdue Universityheld a joint anniversary celebration on April 1, marking 25 years for CFF and 20 for MFRI. The event, titled “Forging Better Futures for Families,” attracted a capacity...

March 21, 2022

Adolescent substance use: Findings from a state-wide pilot parent education program

Adolescent substance use has long been a top public health priority. In Indiana, concerning recent trends show high rates of youth alcohol consumption coupled with increasing use of opioids, synthetic marijuana, and over-the-counter drugs.

March 20, 2022

Travel and life: A developmental perspective on tourism consumption over the life course

In contrast to existing studies which tend to examine a unidirectional relationship between tourism and life, this research is a stride toward understanding how travel and life inform and shape each other during one's life course. Drawing on Erikson's stages...

March 20, 2022

Developmental changes in how children generalize from their experience to support predictive linguistic processing

Prediction is posited to support fluent comprehension of speech—but how and when do young listeners, who encounter unfamiliar and novel events with high frequency, learn to deploy predictive processing strategies in these unfamiliar circumstances? The current work used a discourse-based...

March 20, 2022

Differentiating the impact of family and friend social support for single mothers on parenting and internalizing symptoms

There is growing interest in what helps parents maintain good parenting when they encounter stressors. The United States has the world's highest rate of single-parent households. These families often experience higher adversity and, in turn, mental distress. Supportive relationships are...

March 20, 2022

Multi-type childhood maltreatment exposure and substance use development from adolescence to early adulthood: A GxE study

Childhood maltreatment types can co-occur and are associated with increased substance use during adolescence and early adulthood. There is also a strong genetic basis for substance use which interacts with environmental factors.

February 26, 2022

Evaluating a food pantry-based intervention to improve food security, dietary intake and quality in Midwestern food pantries

Voices for Food was a longitudinal community, food pantry-based intervention informed by the social ecological model, and designed to improve food security, dietary intake and quality among clients, that was carried out in 24 rural food pantries across six Midwestern...

February 25, 2022

Mandatory Reporting “will Paralyze People” or “Without it, People Would not Report”: Understanding Perspectives from Within the Child Protection System

Although mandatory reporting has grown substantially in scope and geographical coverage, there is limited empirical evidence to support its effectiveness in preventing harm to children. In the absence of rigorous evaluations, comparing the perspectives of individuals who work in systems...

February 20, 2022

Why do early mathematics skills predict later mathematics and reading achievement? The role of executive function

A robust association between young children’s early mathematical proficiency and later academic achievement is well established. Less is known about the mechanisms through which early mathematics skills may contribute to later mathematics and especially reading achievement. Using a parallel multiple...