This study examined the mediating roles of children's callousness and negative internal representations of family relationships in associations between family instability and children's adjustment to school in early childhood. Participants in this multimethod (i.e., survey, observations), multiinformant (i.e., parent, teacher, observer),…

Research comparing the predictive power of parents' control and autonomy support in the United States and China has relied almost exclusively on children's reports. Such reports may lead to inaccurate conclusions if they do not reflect parents' practices to the same extent in the two countries. A total of 394 American and Chinese children…

This study examined level of engagement with Disney Princess media/products as it relates to gender-stereotypical behavior, body esteem (i.e. body image), and prosocial behavior during early childhood. Participants consisted of 198 children (M[subscript age] = 58 months), who were tested at two time points (approximately 1 year apart). Data…

A stochastic actor-based model was used to investigate the origins of sex segregation by examining how similarity in sex of peers and time spent in gender-typed activities affected affiliation network selection and how peers influenced children's ("N" = 292; "M"[subscript age] = 4.3 years) activity involvement. Gender had…

Researchers have suggested that as children's language skill develops in early childhood, it comes to help children regulate their emotions (Cole, Armstrong, & Pemberton, 2010; Kopp, 1989), but the pathways by which this occurs have not been studied empirically. In a longitudinal study of 120 children from 18 to 48 months of age, associations…

A key prediction of cognitive theories of gender development concerns developmental trajectories in the relative strength or rigidity of gender typing. To examine these trajectories in early childhood, 229 children (African American, Mexican American, and Dominican American) were followed annually from age 3 to 5 years, and gender-stereotypical…

Bronfenbrenner's (1979) ecological model proposes that events in higher order social ecosystems should influence human development through their impact on events in lower order social ecosystems. This proposition was tested with respect to ecological violence and the development of children's aggression via analyses of 3 waves of data (1 wave…

Guided by family systems theory, the present study sought to identify patterns of family functioning from observational assessments of interparental, parent-child, and triadic contexts. In addition, it charted the implications for patterns of family functioning for children's developmental trajectories of adjustment in the school context across…

This report presents data on 9-month-old twin pairs (n[MZ]=172; n[DZ]=333) from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, demonstrating that the role of genetic variation among infants is trivial and the shared and nonshared environment is substantial in accounting for the observed quality of infant-caregiver relationships. In contrast, maternal…

Infants were observed at 10, 12, and 14 1/2 months to test whether social interaction among infant peers develops as a by-product of object-centered play. Age differences were noted. Object-centered contact did not influence early social interaction; long interactions emerged at later ages regardless of whether or not toys were present. (Author/DB)

A transcript-narrative analysis technique was used to identify interpersonal negotiation strategies of two nine-year-old boys selected from a pool of children with socioemotional and interpersonal difficulties. Strategies were classified according to four developmental levels: impulsive/physical, unilateral/coercive, reciprocal/influential, and…

Study found that stimulus presence during a delay of reinforcement interval enhanced performance, and to a large extent prevented the usual delay-produced decrement. (Authors)

This naturalistic field study of child-rearing patterns compared observational and developmental data for 60 home-based and 60 day care center-based Swedish toddlers. (Author/JMB)

Reports further analysis of longitudinal records of mother-infant interaction at home during the infant's first year of life. Analysis was designed to clarify the role of maternal affectionate behavior in defining maternal patterns and in discriminating anxious/avoidant mothers from secure mothers and from anxious/resistant mothers. (Author/DB)