Although children display strong individual differences in emotion expression, they also engage in emotional synchrony or reciprocity with interaction partners. To understand this paradox between trait-like and dyadic influences, the goal of the current study was to investigate children's emotion expression using a Social Relations Model (SRM)…

Research across multiple fields finds that adult-youth relationships are key influencers of development; however, professional learning about relational practice is limited. This suggests the need for targeted, efficient ways to help adults improve relational practice. We present a randomized controlled trial of Simple Interactions, a…

Research shows use of social media (SM) has important implications for college adjustment. However, most studies only focused on Facebook and did not attend to specific use patterns. Drawing on the activity-audience framework of social media use and literature of college adjustment, we examined the associations between use of Facebook, Instagram,…

Research has shown that racial/ethnic diversity in elementary schools and classrooms benefits children's academic achievement and feelings of safety and belonging. The current study aimed to expand on existing research by examining associations between classroom racial/ethnic composition and upper elementary children's social-emotional development…

Data from 332 teachers who participated in the National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education study were used to examine the implications of classroom age diversity in preschool programs for teacher interactions with students in areas of instructional and emotional support, and classroom organization. Teachers in early childhood…

Different positive effects of interactions with animals, such as reduction of stress reactions, depressive mood, anxiety, aggression, and pain, and promotion of trust, calmness, motivation, and concentration have been documented by research on human-animal interaction (HAI), including animal assisted interventions (AAIs). Potential biological,…

Including animals in autism intervention is growing in both research and practice. A systematic literature review was conducted to collate and synthesize all empirical research on animal-assisted intervention (AAI) for autism published from 2012 to 2015. Findings from 28 included studies revealed that AAI programs generally include one animal per…

Guided by the social emotional learning framework, this study examined whether early adolescents' social awareness (empathic concern, perspective taking) and self-management (effortful control) would uniquely contribute to early adolescents' subsequent forms of aggression, and whether perceptions of their school climate (friction, cohesion,…

In this study, we examined the characteristics of adolescents' deep interests or "sparks," the role of relationships in supporting the development of sparks, and whether having a spark was associated with positive developmental outcomes. Participants included 1,860 15 years olds from across the United States who participated in the…

Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (N = 13,970), we examined whether two aspects of school-family connections, parental involvement and communication quality, accounted for the association between classroom composition and children's academic and socioemotional functioning following the transition to…

Publicly funded prekindergartens are programs that most states use to promote school readiness, especially of 4-year-old children at risk for academic problems due to poverty. Despite large public expenditures, these programs have not been widely evaluated. We examined 240 randomly selected pre-kindergarten programs in six states with mature…

This study will address the initial question: Are there ethnic differences in parenting that remain when contextual variables are controlled "and" are related to culture, focusing on two samples of rural African American families. This study is part of a series of coordinated studies presented in this special issue (Le et al., 2008).…

Researchers have theorized that programs to promote positive citizenship should begin with an opportunity for adolescents to participate in civic activities, such as community service or political volunteering. In this article we extend the theory by arguing that a more systemic approach is needed, in which a civic context is developed to promote…

School readiness assessment is a prominent feature of early childhood education. Because the construct of readiness is multifaceted, we examined children's patterns on multiple indicators previously found to be both theoretically and empirically linked to school readiness: social skill, interactions with parents, problem behavior, and performance…