This article was excerpted from the author's "Charting the Bumpy Road of Coparenthood: Understanding the Challenges of Family Life", published in 2007 by "ZERO TO THREE." In the "Families Through Time" longitudinal study, James P. McHale and a number of colleagues met with expectant couples and then followed the families when the infants were 3…

This article examines the interdependent nature of infants and their parents who are experiencing wartime deployment and reunion. Research supports the contention that the cumulative effects of stress place families at risk; the experience of ambiguous loss changes as family roles change throughout the cycle of deployment; and parental absence has…

Participation in imagined worlds is a hallmark of the human species, and yet we know little about the context of its early emergence. The experiments reported here replicated and extended in 2 directions Lillard and Witherington's (2004) study of how mothers pretend to have snacks, across different ages of children (15- to 24-month-olds,…

Two experiments examined toddlers' performance on a new task designed to examine the development of body self-awareness. The new task was conceived from observations by Piaget (1953/1977) and theoretical work from Povinelli and Cant (1995) and involved a toy shopping cart to the back of which a small mat had been attached. Children were asked to…

Although "hindsight bias" (the "I knew it all along" phenomenon) has been documented in adults, its development has not been investigated. This is despite the fact that hindsight bias errors closely resemble the errors children make on theory of mind (ToM) tasks. Two main goals of the present work were to (a) create a battery of hindsight tasks…

The Morrissey, Lekies, and Cochran (this issue) article is a welcome addition to the literature focusing on whether state-funded preschool education negatively impacts child care. Yet, although the study is a step in the right direction, it does not provide the data needed to answer the question at hand or inform state preschool and child care…

Studies show interpersonal callousness (IC) plays an important role in understanding persistent antisocial behaviors; however, it remains unclear whether IC is a unidimensional construct, represented by invariant behavioral indexes and stable across different developmental periods. This study explores the structure and stability of IC using parent…

Mental-content verbs such as "think," "believe," "imagine" and "hope" seem to pose special problems for the young language learner. One possible explanation for these difficulties is that the concepts that these verbs express are hard to grasp and therefore their acquisition must await relevant conceptual development. According to a different,…

The goals of this paper were two-fold. The first goal was to examine the emotional and social developmental value of play in the early childhood classroom. This issue is important because of the recent impetus for a more academic focus in early childhood classrooms, and questions about the developmental benefits of play. The second goal was to…

The joint trajectory analysis version of Nagin's ("Group-based modeling of development." Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005) semiparametric, group-based approach for modeling trajectories was used to assess how boy's trajectories of conduct problems (CP) and neighborhood SES covaried from ages 5 to 12. Participants were…

A theory of the dynamics of dyadic interaction is presented, based on the concepts of "concern" (i.e., intentions, goals, and interests), "appraisal" and "contagiousness." Differences between children who participate in a specific interaction are linked to differences in social competence and social power. An overview is given of the social…

Implementing the Pyramid Model with fidelity and achieving positive outcomes for children and their families requires that administrators understand their roles in the implementation process. Every administrative decision impacts program quality and sustainability. This Policy Brief underscores the importance of facilitative administrative…

Youth development research has found that children become more engaged and benefit more from being incorporated as decision makers. Thus participation helps promote development and encourages engagement. Based in theories of engagement and free-choice learning, the current research focused on a program combining sport/physical activity, life…

This exploratory research studied middle-class mother's primary reason for registering their young children, mean age 6.9 years, in adapted motor and sports programs and their perceptions of their children upon entering the program and upon completion. Analyses also examined the possible relationship between mothers' age, education or children's…

Smith-Magenis syndrome (SMS) is a neurobehavioral disorder associated with deletions and mutations of the "RAI1" gene on chromosome 17p11.2. Clinical features of the syndrome include intellectual disability, sleep disturbance, craniofacial differences, and a distinctive profile of stereotypic and self-injurious behaviors. Although the functional…