The focus of this study was to identify whether there was a pattern of instability within the friendship bonds of a group of young girls aged between 10 and 12-years-old. Changes were monitored over 16 months within friendship clusters of dyads, triads and larger groups. Research has shown a trend towards gender difference in preferred forms of…

In this study we examined the psychopathology and behavioral treatment of White and African American preadolescent children with social phobia. The comprehensive assessment strategy, including semistructured diagnostic interviews, clinician ratings of impairment, behavioral observations, parental ratings, and self-report inventories, did not…

The social functioning of 64 young adolescents (10- to 12-year olds) was examined in relation to negative emotionality and regulation during early adolescence, as well as two, four, and six years earlier. Young adolescents who were viewed as relatively high in social functioning (i.e., high teacher-rated school social competence; low mother- or…

Should teachers teach the calculation of target heart rate to students? And when is it appropriate to engage students in the attainment of these heart rates during physical education class activities? The answers to these questions are not easy. One might be tempted to state a simple yes or no and to identify a specific age to begin using training…

Background: Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcus infections (PANDAS) is a recently recognized syndrome in which pre-adolescent children have abrupt onsets of tics and/or obsessive-compulsive symptoms, a recurring and remitting course of illness temporally related to streptococcal infections, and associated…

Children aged 8-12 years took 723 photographs representing well-being. Another group of children categorised the photographs, identified what was missing and discussed their inter-relationships. The largest categories were "people I love the most (friends)" (23.2%), "activities" (18%), "food and drink" (17.2%) and…

Children aged 11-12 years with a diagnosis of dyslexia (DR) were compared to chronological and reading-age matched poor readers (PR), and two normal reader groups, age-matched (CA) and spelling and reading-age matched (SA-RA), on their processing of inflectional morphology. In comparison to SA-RAs and PRs, the DRs made more spelling errors on…

Four experiments examined the flexibility and stability with which children and adults organize locations into categories based on their spatiotemporal experience with locations. Seven-, 9-, 11-year-olds, and adults learned the locations of 20 objects in an open, square box. During learning, participants experienced the locations in four…

Disruptive behavior may be associated with poor academic achievement due to covariance with attention problems and low IQ. Evidence is based on clinical samples and on associations between problem behaviors in young children and later achievement difficulties. The contemporaneous relations and their genetic and environmental influences have not…

Should instruments, such as Likert-type scales, contain both positively worded and negatively worded items within the same scale (i.e. mixed format)? Recent evidence suggests that the use of scales with a mixed format can adversely affect the psychometric properties of scales. In particular, the mean item response to the positively worded items…

This study explores the social impact of ADHD, with and without opposition-defiant behaviour [ADHD+ODD (n= 22) and ADHD-only (n= 18)], in 9- to 12- year old girls compared to girls without ADHD (n= 40). Girls played a computer game involving simulated players, and mothers and teachers completed rating scales. In general, mothers and teachers saw…

Adolescents' perceptions of persons their age who smoke cigarettes (also known as prototypes of smoking peers) play a critical role in an adolescent's decision to start smoking. However, adolescents' perceptions of their peers who do not smoke (prototypes of nonsmoking peers) could be implicated in adolescents' smoking decisions as well. In the…

Objectives: To determine whether the nature and correlates of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms are different in subjects with mild intellectual disability (ID) compared to subjects with average ability. Method: From a general population sample of 2,726 12- to 15-year-olds, a stratified subsample was selected to enrich for…

This study adopts satisfaction with life as a whole and satisfaction with specific life domains as indicators to analyse the relationships between the well-being of 12 to 16-year-old adolescents and some related constructs such as self-esteem, perceived control and perceived social support. Well-being indicators from a 2003 Spanish sample using an…

This study examined variation in friendship formation and friendship stability as a function of children's and their friends' victimization, overt aggression, and relational aggression. Participants were 605 pre- and early adolescents in fifth through eighth grades (M age = 12.05) assessed twice over a three-month period. Scores for stability and…