High sleep quality has been associated with beneficial outcomes across the life span. Intensive longitudinal studies suggest that these beneficial effects can also be observed on a day-to-day level. However, the dynamic interplay between subjective sleep quality and affective well-being in children's daily life has only rarely been investigated.…

Parents' socialization beliefs have implications for the psychological adjustment of their children through their parenting behaviors; however, such pathways have rarely been established among Chinese American families. The present study examined how Chinese American parents' goals for their children to take on bicultural values and behaviors…

This longitudinal study of Australian families (n = 1,884, from age 6-12) examined how fathers' and mothers' quantitative involvement (time spent on childcare) and qualitative involvement (specific parenting behaviors) relate to children's emotional adjustment development. We used dynamic structural equation modeling to disentangle stable…

Parent-child coregulation, thought to support children's burgeoning regulatory capacities, is the process by which parents and their children regulate one another through their goal-oriented behavior and expressed affect. Two particular coregulation patterns--dyadic contingency and dyadic flexibility--appear beneficial in early childhood, but…

The present study examined bidirectional effects between maternal and paternal parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, permissive) and infant temperament (negative affect, orienting/regulatory capacity, surgency) in a diverse sample of 201 mothers and 151 fathers. Using 3 waves of longitudinal data (prenatal, 6 months, and 18 months), this…

Guided by paternal investment theory (PIT), the current research examines the effects of fathers on daughters' expectations for men in adulthood, and the role of these expectations in mediating women's short-term (casual or uncommitted) sexual behavior. Using a genetically informed differential sibling-exposure design (N = 223 sister pairs from…

Guided by the life course perspective, this study investigated the developmental antecedents of contact, closeness/warmth, and negativity in young adults' relationships with their parents. Taking the developmental systems approach, we considered interindividual differences in not only initial levels of parenting quality in early adolescence (Grade…

Elementary schoolchildren's working memory performance (WMP) fluctuates from moment to moment and day to day, yet the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. In the present study, affective states were investigated as predictors of these fluctuations. Interindividual differences in the intraindividual affect--WMP associations were expected,…

This study tested child characteristics (temperamental executive control and negative reactivity) and maternal characteristics (parenting behaviors and maternal depressive symptoms) as predictors of a mother's emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs). Further, parenting behaviors and ERSBs were examined as predictors of children's emotion…

Prior work suggests that substance-dependent mothers insensitively respond to their child's emotional needs, which can increase children's risk for psychopathology. However, the mechanisms and processes underlying these associations remain unclarified. Mothers' insensitivity to children's distress is an especially unique predictor of child…

Twin studies have documented that parenting behavior is partly heritable, but it is unclear how parents' genetics shape their caregiving. Using tools of molecular genetics, the present study investigated this process by testing hypotheses about associations between a genome-wide polygenic score for educational attainment and parental caregiving in…

Many researchers have used the standard Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) to assess decision-making in adolescence given increased risk-taking during this developmental period. Most studies are cross-sectional and do not observe behavioral trajectories over time, limiting interpretation. This longitudinal study investigated healthy adolescents' and young…

Given that maternal support promotes healthy social and emotional development in early childhood, it is important to understand the predictors of such support, especially during emotional challenges. In this study, mothers' dispositional distress reactivity (i.e., the tendency toward experiencing distress in response to children's negative…

The links among mothers' compassionate love for their child, autonomic nervous system activity, and parenting behavior during less and more challenging mother-child interactions were examined. Mothers expressed and reported less negative affect when they exhibited autonomic patterns of increased parasympathetic dominance (high parasympathetic…

The current study aimed to substantiate and extend our understanding regarding the existence and developmental pathways of 3 distinct temperament profiles--exuberant, inhibited, and average approach--in a sample of 3.5-year-old children (n = 121). The interactions between temperamental styles and specific types of effortful control, inhibitory…