This study aimed to assess differences in emotion and elaboration quality between clinical and community child cohorts in both past reminiscing and future worry conversations. We analyzed 54 Australian parents (46 mothers, 8 fathers) and their 8- to 12-year-old children (M = 9.63, SD = 1.29; 28 boys, 26 girls) in reminiscing interactions. Dyads…

Deficits in language skills are a risk factor for later aggressive behaviour. However, previous research has mainly addressed clinical or high-risk samples and relations between language and aggressive behaviour in preschoolers and children in primary school. Based on a German longitudinal project with N = 547 typically developing children, the…

This study aimed to facilitate a better understanding of the psychological characteristics of maltreated children by comparing attachment representations between maltreated and non-maltreated pre-schoolers. Participants included 46 maltreated and 48 non-maltreated (children for whom evidence of maltreatment has not been identified or reported)…

This study aimed to examine the unique and joint contributions of behavioral and emotional self-regulation to key but understudied emergent literacy and early social skills, disentangling sex-differentiated paths. The participants were 231 Portuguese preschoolers (50% boys; M[subscript age] = 59.5 months; SD = 8.5) enrolled in 47 classrooms. In…

An ongoing debate in the literature on language acquisition is whether preschool children process reference in an egocentric way or whether they spontaneously and by-default take their partner's perspective into account. The reported study implements a computerized referential task with a controlled trial presentation and simple verbal…

This case study analyzes and describes the language, executive function, and psychosocial outcomes of two 6-year-old children with cochlear implants in the context of their respective family environments. Despite having nearly identical audiological histories, their language abilities and social skills are markedly different from one another,…

Purpose: The objective of this study was to compare children with persistent versus transient preschool language delay on language, academic, and psychosocial outcomes in elementary school. Method: Children with persistent language delay (n = 30), transient language delay (n = 29), and no language delay (controls; n = 163) were identified from a…

The present study examined relations between Theory of Mind (ToM) understanding and social competence among school-age Latino children. Participants included 62 children ages 6-12 years. Picture vocabulary was assessed via a standardized language survey, and ToM assessed via Happé's [(1994). An advanced test of theory of mind: Understanding of…

Objectives: The study aimed to examine the ability of children with an Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) to depict social (pride and shame) vs. basic (happiness and sadness) emotions in their human figure drawings. Methods: Eleven children with a formal diagnosis of an ASC matched on gender and verbal mental age with 11 children with typical…

With access to a unique sample of post-institutionalized Hungarian children, this study focused on the hypothesis that children who had been institutionalized for at least six months after birth have less developed capacities for emotion regulation; 90 children, aged 4-6, were placed in 1 of 3 groups: (1) children who had been institutionalized…

The goal of this study was to explore links among shyness, receptive vocabulary, and indices of socioemotional functioning in a sample of young children in mainland urban China. In particular, we sought to examine the potential moderating role of receptive language in these relations. Participants were N = 360 young children (200 boys, 160 girls,…

Researchers of the gifted have traditionally advanced the theory, though they are often without data to support it, that an association between intellectual and/or creative giftedness and mood disorders exists. This assumed association is often referred to as the "mad genius theory." This article explores the origins and development of…

This study aimed to assess physiological arousal and behavioral regulation of emotion in the context of frustration in 29 children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and 45 typically developing children (41-81 months). Heart rate was continuously measured and emotion strategies were coded, during a locked-box task. Results revealed increases in…

By tracking longitudinally a sample of American children (n = 1,097), this study examined the extent to which enrollment in private schools between kindergarten and ninth grade was related to students' academic, social, psychological, and attainment outcomes at age 15. Results from this investigation revealed that in unadjusted models, children…

This study investigated children's narrative evaluations about jealousy in relation to performance on a higher-order perspective-taking task and assessments of receptive vocabulary and nonverbal intelligence. Eighty children (5;0-11;11) narrated a wordless picture book about a jealous frog, answered probe questions about the plot, and generated a…