This special issue consists of 20 articles that focus on issues related to Eisenberg and colleagues' (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998; Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Cumberland, 1998) model of emotion socialization processes and its relevance for understanding a range of aspects of children's socioemotional functioning. The various papers…

In order for children to understand and reason about the world in an adult-like fashion, they need to learn that conceptual categories are organized in a hierarchical fashion (e.g., a dog is also an animal). While children learn from their first-hand observation of the world, social knowledge transmission via language can also play an important…

This article draws on the literature in development economics, psychology and sociology to explicate how decolonised early childhood education and care services can reverse the metacolonial cognition lingering in the postcolonial era. In particular, the author shows that colonial institutions persist even after formal colonisation has ended…

The current longitudinal study used data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) to examine a model of development that emphasizes early caregiving environments as predictors of social emotional competence (including classroom competence). This path analysis…

We investigated whether children's robust conscience, formed during early family socialization, promotes their future adaptive and competent functioning in expanded ecologies. We assessed two dimensions of conscience in young children (N = 100) at 25, 38, and 52 months in scripted laboratory contexts: internalization of their mothers' and fathers'…

This article outlines a model of the structure and the dynamics of gender cognition in childhood. The model incorporates 3 hypotheses featured in different contemporary theories of childhood gender cognition and unites them under a single theoretical framework. Adapted from Greenwald et al. (2002), the model distinguishes three constructs: gender…

Background: Empirical studies demonstrate that maternal sensitivity is associated with attachment security in infancy, while maternal frightening/frightened behavior is related to attachment disorganization. However, attachment disorganization is also predicted by individual dispositions in infancy. Indeed, recent studies indicate a link between…

This paper presents a new perspective on the transition from early to middle childhood (i.e., human juvenility), investigated in an integrative evolutionary framework. Juvenility is a crucial life history stage, when social learning and interaction with peers become central developmental functions; here it is argued that the "juvenile transition"…

This project offers a close look into the meaning-making practices of the Bulgarian socialist state with regard to the conception and enactment of childhood. Held for the first time in 1979, on occasion of the UN declared "International Year of the Child", the International Children's Assembly "Banner of Peace" emerges as a…

The purpose of this study was to test direct, additive, and mediation models involving family, neighborhood, and peer factors in relation to emerging antisocial behavior and social skills. Neighborhood danger, maternal depressive symptoms, and supportive parenting were assessed in early childhood. Peer group acceptance was measured in middle…

This study tested the prediction that children in a tempting situation would resist longer when they had interaction with an adult before exposure to the temptation situation. (Author)

The theoretical model presented in this paper emphasized the importance of the social structure as an organization of functionally interdependent relationships. (SB)

Discusses both the advantages and difficulties of using nonlinear modeling in the context of a model used to study the relations between parental warmth and control and preschool children's competence. (HOD)

Understanding children's experience is increasingly a key purpose of much educational research. In contrast to traditional approaches to the study of children that emphasized the socialization of children through various stages of development, researchers within the social constructionism perspective begin with an insistence that childhood is a…

Examined is a general model of the socialization process based on Polak's theory of social change which identifies key agents of the process which shape perceptions of the possibility of creative change instead of defensiveness or aggression in situations where old behaviors are inadequate. Six agents of socialization are identified: family,…