This study examined associations between foster mothers' emotional investment, assessed when foster children were age 2, and foster children's representations of self and others, assessed when children were age 5. Caregiver investment was assessed using a semi-structured interview called the ''This is My Baby'' interview (TIMB; Bates, B., &…

This review begins with a brief history from Piagetian perspective-taking development, through metacognitive development, and into the past and present field of theory-of-mind development. This field has included research on what infants and children know about a variety of mental states, on possible causes and consequences of mentalistic…

Three experiments examined developmental change in children's understanding of regret and relief, two second-order emotions whose quality depends on a comparison between reality and "what might have been." In Experiment 1, participants 7 years of age and older, but not 5-year-olds, made regret-related emotion-response judgments that took into…

Using grounded theory methodology, I establish family identity management as an important type of invisible work that connects women's household-based domestic activities with community members perceptions and treatment of them and their family members. Detailed observations of household routines and family interactions, as well as in-depth…

Linkage studies of complex phenotypes such as reading ability/disability (developmental dyslexia or reading disorder) and related componential processes, where the effects attributable to individual genes appear to be modest, are critically dependent on the nature and composition of the samples and the phenotypes analyzed. Thus, it might be…

An ideal of education is to ensure that our children develop into autonomous critical thinkers. The "indoctrination objection", however, calls into question whether education, aimed at cultivating autonomous critical thinkers, is possible. The core of the concern is that since the young child lacks even modest capacities for assessing reasons, the…

To examine the development of look duration as a function of age and stimulus type, 14- to 52-week-old infants were shown static and dynamic versions of faces, Sesame Street material, and achromatic patterns for 20 s of accumulated looking. Heart rate was recorded during looking and parsed into stimulus orienting, sustained attention, and…

In a study of the ability to reconstruct the times of past events, 86 children from 4 to 13 years recalled the times of 2 in-class demonstrations that had occurred 3 months earlier and judged the times of hypothetical events. Many of the abilities needed to reconstruct the times of events were present by 6 years, including the capacity to…

The emerging field of Evolutionary Computation (EC), inspired by neo-Darwinian principles (e.g. natural selection, mutation, etc.), offers developmental psychologists a wide array of mathematical tools for simulating ontogenetic processes. In this brief review, I begin by highlighting three of the approaches that EC researchers employ (Artificial…

Career development is regarded as a lifespan process; however, the career development of children has received little theoretical and research attention. This article reflects on the breadth and depth of understandings about children's career development from the metatheoretical perspective of the Systems Theory Framework of career development…

In this article, the author recounts her experience with Tracy, who was playing with a balloon outside her office when she was five years old, and gives an up-to-date story of Tracy since 1985, 1990, and 2006. In reflecting on Tracy's play, the author realizes that Tracy is helping her see clearly what play is really all about, that in playing to…

In this article, the author talks about the importance of play in the lives of children and describes how games and imaginative play contribute to the development of children. From her decades-old collection of countless incidents demonstrating children's love for self-directed, informal, imaginative play, the author shares three incidents that…

Filling a significant gap in the literature, this book examines the impact of culture on the social behaviors, emotions, and relationships of children around the world. It also explores cultural differences in what is seen as adaptive or maladaptive development. Eminent scholars discuss major theoretical perspectives on culture and development and…

Head Start is a federally funded preschool program for poor children designed to help close the gap between those children and their more advantaged peers before they begin public schooling. Given that Head Start appears to have positive long-run impacts on its recipients, a natural and important next question to ask is: What are the channels…

Academic inquiry has focused recently on how to create caring classrooms and school communities--that is, classrooms and school communities that encourage children to continue to develop caring feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, or to feel, think, and practice them anew. After reviewing research on caring and attachment, this article discusses how…