Little research focuses on children's reasoning about people whose gender is perceived as uncertain. Five- to 8-year-olds viewed a target with a gender uncertain appearance. The target had trait or preference similarities with a character from a binary, specified gender (i.e., boy, girl) and appearance similarities with another character that had an uncertain gender. Half of the participants heard

The present study assessed longitudinal relations between paternal supportive parenting in infancy (12 months) and toddlerhood (36 months) and children's observed self-regulation skills at preschool age (48 months) in a large sample of Norwegian families (N = 771; 48% girls, 52% boys, 28% experienced some socioeconomic risk). After accounting for child sex, socioeconomic risk (6 and 12 months), and

Problematic behaviors impede young children's ability to succeed in the classroom. Examining individual patterns of behavior problems allows researchers to identify profiles of students most in need of support. This study applied latent profile analysis (LPA) among a national sample (N = 2764) of American prekindergarten children and found six distinct behavior profiles, which differed in the severity

Third-party punishment is an important mechanism to enforce norm-following. However, the underlying process that explains the development of third-party punishment is understood poorly. Here we examine to what extent age-effects and contemporaneous experiences of receiving unfair offers influence third-party punishment. In two studies, a total of N = 280 5- to 9-year-olds participated in a computer-based

To better understand the development of externalizing behavior, the current study examines how multiple levels of influence (child temperament, negative parenting, and dyadic interactions) work together to increase externalizing behaviors over time. Negative parenting (NP) and observed dynamic dyadic behavioral variability (DBV) in parent–child interactions (e.g., in discipline and compliance) are

Young children favor what they perceive as normative behavior and people who act in normative ways. This preference for normativity could negatively affect non-autistic children's attitudes towards autistic peers – individuals who (by definition) act in unconventional ways. In Study 1, we investigated how non-autistic 4- to 7-year-old U.S. children (N = 112) evaluated several unconventional behaviors

We examined whether adolescent normative beliefs about aggression (NBA) functioned as a mechanism through which parental psychological control (PPC) predicted physical aggression in emerging adulthood via secondary data analyses with the Child Development Project longitudinal data. Fathers’ psychological control (fPC) that adolescents reported at age 13 predicted NBA at age 16, which then predicted

Peers are critical influencers of adolescent behavior, including defending against peer victimization. The current research explored peer influence processes associated with four different types of peer-defending behaviors (comforting, reporting, solution-focused, and aggressive defending behaviors) within early adolescent friendship networks. Links with peer victimization, friendship ties, and gender

Associations between implicit theories of personality, perceived social competence, and attributions to explain positive and negative outcomes in social tasks were examined in a study of 103 fifth- and sixth-grade girls and boys. Consistent with the basic model formulated by Dweck and Leggett (1988), it was hypothesized that having an entity, rather than an incremental, perspective would vary as a

Children use informant characteristics, such as competence or benevolence, in trust judgment. Previous studies have examined the characteristics that children prioritize in trust judgment, but findings have been conflicting. Since people possess and tap into each characteristic in their daily lives as the situation demands, children may adjust the characteristics that they choose to rely on depending

Symbolic play has long been considered a beneficial context for development. According to Cultural Learning theory, one reason for this is that symbolically-infused dialogical interactions constitute a zone of proximal development. However, the dynamics of caregiver-child interactions during symbolic play are still not fully understood. In the current study, we investigated informational exchange between

Past research has demonstrated associations between parental personality traits and children's behaviour. However, fathers have been largely excluded from this research, and mothers often rate both their own personality and their child's behaviour, contributing to shared method variance. This study contributes to the literature by examining associations between parental biologically based affective

The current study investigated relations among maternal emotion socialization, children's facial emotion recognition (FER), and children's behavioral problems. A sample of 118 preschoolers (Mage = 41.96 months) and their mothers participated. Mothers reported their reactions to children's negative emotions and rated children's internalizing and externalizing problems by completing the Coping with Children's

Empathy is an important building block for social interactions, that not only allows individuals experience and understand others’ affective states, but also to helpfully respond to them. Although empathy can already be observed from infancy, only one questionnaire has been specifically developed to examine young children's empathy. This study translated and validated the original Dutch Empathy Questionnaire

Bullying is a serious concern worldwide and may compromise development for all involved. Growing evidence suggests that bullying may be viewed as a goal-oriented strategy to achieve prestige and power or as a form of proactive aggression serving personal goals. The current paper reports a meta-analysis of studies examining social goals-bullying associations in youth. In addition to reporting an overall

Studies of gender development typically use binary, discrete measures of identity. However, growing literature indicates that some children might not identify with a binary gender. We tested a continuous measure of felt gender identity with gender-non-conforming children, socially transitioned transgender children, cisgender siblings, and unrelated cisgender children. In two studies, we found that

Emotion Regulation is one of the most widely studied variables in child development. However, it is a complex construct, and there are few validated instruments to evaluate children. The main goal of this study was to test the factorial structure of the Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC) in two samples of Spanish children, one with 284 preschool children (48.3% girls; M = 4.38) and the other with 323

Aspects of parenting including overprotection explain individual differences in child adjustment. This review and meta-analysis summarizes studies on parental overprotection and internalizing and externalizing problems. To ensure that findings could be compared as systematically as possible, the focus was on studies that used the overprotection scale of the Egna Minnen Beträffande Uppfostran (“Memories

This study investigates the network mechanisms underlying the co-development of two types of negative relationships: dislike relationships, and victim-bully relationships among children. Longitudinal data on school-level networks of 15 Dutch primary schools (N = 2175; Mage(T1) = 10; 51% male) were analyzed with stochastic actor-oriented models. Evidence was found for mutual reinforcement between dislike

This study examined the extent to which social standing based on reputation (i.e., popularity), affective regard (i.e., peer acceptance and peer rejection), and affiliation-network centrality (i.e., degree, betweenness, and closeness centrality), in addition to gender and grade in school, predicted children's accuracy in detecting affiliation patterns within peer networks. Third through fifth-grade

Because emotion knowledge and language skills each contribute to children's success in school and life, the Feeling Thinking Talking (FTT) intervention combines the advancement of language skills and of emotion knowledge in teachers’ child-directed conversations. Teachers from centers of early childhood education in Germany were taught language support strategies (LSS) and how to apply them during

In three studies (N = 854), including one pre-registered study, we examined factors that might influence American parents’ decisions to side with owners versus promote prosociality or sharing when thinking about children's property conflicts. We found that parents’ thinking about property conflicts was affected by the relationships among the parents and their children. Namely, parents were most likely

Though there is increasing awareness of the potential benefits of other-gender interactions and friendships, there has been little research examining the factors that might act as barriers or promoters of such friendships. Our goal was to explore both individual-level factors (i.e., gender identity) and indicators of the social environment (i.e., perceived peer norms) that might relate to other-gender

Children's prosocial behaviour is a core feature of their social development as well as their resilience, but it has not yet been examined in siblings exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV). The goals of the present study were: (1) To describe prosocial behaviour between siblings exposed to IPV by exploring linkages with exposure to violence, sibling spacing, child age, and self-esteem; (2) To

Earlier research has indicated that students displaying hyperactivity struggle with their social inclusion. To foster social inclusion, students’ attitudes as well as inter-group contact have been identified as possible key factors. In this study, the social inclusion of students who display hyperactivity in general and classmates’ attitudes towards such peers have been investigated. Data of 314 students

Children sometimes show positive emotions in response to seeing others being helped, yet it remains poorly understood whether there is a strategic value to such emotional expressions. Here, we investigated the influence seeing a peer receive deserving help or not on children's emotions, which were assessed while the peer was present or not. To measure children's emotional expression, we used a motion

Children's attributions during challenge have roots in toddlerhood with the onset of self-evaluative emotions and may reflect sex differences in early socialization practices. This study examined toddler sex as moderating associations between mothers’ (n = 104, 73.1% White, 75% with a college degree or more) characteristics (low emotional awareness, emotion coaching beliefs) and toddlers’ (Mage = 26

The quality of young children's peer relationships is important for their development, and it is assumed that parenting and self-regulation skills shape children's behavior when interacting with peers. In this multi-informant-multi-method study, we examined the direct and mediated associations between preschool parenting, children's behavioral self-regulation, and peer aggression and peer relationship

Parental diversity ideologies are linked to their own interethnic prejudice, but how do they relate to children's prejudice? This study examined self-reported endorsement of colorblind ideology and multiculturalism among mothers (138 White Dutch, 65 Turkish-Dutch, and 45 Afro-Dutch) of 6-to 10-year old children (55% girls), and its association with child interethnic prejudice. Endorsement of multiculturalism

The current study examined the role of child temperament, parenting, and their interactions in 2- to 6-year-olds’ (n = 112; Mage = 3.82 years, SD = 1.01) moral and social-conventional understanding. Children's judgments regarding hypothetical moral and conventional transgressions were assessed in a semi-structured interview administered on an iPad. Parents reported on their child's temperamental self-regulation

This study assessed maternal caregiving quality and children's prosocial behavior as related to changes in child self-esteem from early childhood across the transition into formal schooling. Although a robust literature indicates that sensitive caregiving promotes self-esteem, less is known about the potential contribution of children's positive social behavior to enhanced self-esteem. This study drew

Emotion recognition and emotion regulation have been implicated as promising correlates of sympathy. However, their relative and joint contributions to sympathy in different periods of childhood remain unclear. Moreover, researchers have not explored the relative importance of recognizing and regulating distinct distress-related emotions, such as sadness and anger, for sympathy. The objective of the

This Social Development quartet highlights how social network approaches can enhance developmental researchers’ understanding of the benefits of intergroup connections for diverse youth. The introduction provides an overview of the four included articles, highlighting their common and unique contributions to the literature. The first article describes four relational mechanisms that could explain the

This study examined whether effortful control (executive control [EC], delay ability [DA]) accounted for the effects of early-childhood contextual factors (income, cumulative risk, parenting) on middle-childhood adjustment (social competence, internalizing and externalizing problems), or whether contextual factors account for observed associations between effortful control and adjustment. A sample

Despite theoretical underpinnings that social influences increase in salience with age, it is currently unclear how relationships with mothers, fathers, and siblings might change during the transition to adulthood and what roles the quality of those relationships play in young adults’ longitudinal adjustment. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was twofold. Firstly, we explored longitudinal

The capacity for dynamically coordinating behaviour is assumed to have largely matured in infancy. In adolescence—another sensitive period for social development—the primary focus on individual social cognition as the main driver of interaction has prevented the study of actual social interaction as behavioural coordination within dyads. From a dynamic perspective, however, capturing real-time social

Separate lines of research on prosocial development suggest that although toddlers worldwide are eagerly helpful, older children help voluntarily in some communities but in other communities, children become resistant to helping with household work. This study investigated these discrepancies by interviewing 64 Mexican-heritage and middle-class European American mothers of 2–3-year-olds and 6–7-year-olds

As evidence mounts of persistent disparities in academic outcomes by English learner (“EL”) classification status, it is critical that we better understand how to create more equitable classroom learning environments. The present study investigates the role of classroom peer academic collaboration networks within linguistically diverse, “English-medium” middle school classrooms. Across 29 classrooms

This study examined the differential effects of two forms of adolescents’ perceptions of peers’ prosociality, aggression, and popularity, on friendship selection. Individuals’ reports of their peers’ behaviors (dyadic perceptions) and the aggregated classmates’ reports (reputational perceptions) were disentangled. The findings indicated that adolescents were more likely to befriend classmates widely

Although many emerging adults feel lonely and struggle to gain status during the college transition, it remains unclear whether certain personality traits facilitate this transition. Using a longitudinal design, we investigated whether status-related traits—namely, entitlement, intrasexual competitiveness, and dominance—related to the development of status in 91 first-year college students (Mage = 18

This study investigated the contribution of early maternal autonomy support in the prediction of developmental patterns of change in child internalizing and externalizing behavior problems from 2 to 7 years of age. The participants were 130 mother-child dyads drawn from a community sample. Data were collected at four-time points. Maternal sensitivity and autonomy support were assessed observationally

In this theory-driven experimental field intervention, we used vicarious intergroup contact, a popular prejudice-reduction strategy, to fight stigma-based bullying. We focused on the role of peer norms, manipulated by asking participants to work individually or collectively in reinforcing activities following vicarious contact (operationalized as story reading). Participants were 346 Italian 4th-5th

Because diverse school settings provide students with opportunities to form same- and cross-group relationships with youth of various ethnicities and races, an important question arises: How are these opportunities taken up, and what are the developmental implications of doing so? Accumulating evidence suggests that these connections are beneficial to youth. Yet, we currently have a limited understanding

This study examined the preliminary reliability and predictive and incremental validity of a novel system of coding observational assessments of children's coping behavior during a laboratory stress task using the Responses to Stress theoretical framework. Specifically, this study tested whether observations of child coping predicted child adjustment (i.e., internalizing problems, externalizing problems

The present study examined links between mother–child reciprocity and early elementary school children's cooperative behavior, an important marker of adjustment during this age. The study identified two distinct forms of mother–child reciprocity—following the child's lead and sharing the lead—and examined their interplay with maternal perception of the child. Mothers were observed in play interaction

Affinity for aloneness (i.e., an enjoyment of solitude) has been associated with negative adjustment, but it may depend on whether solitude is motivated by social anxiety. Thus, the current study investigated differences in affinity for aloneness in late adolescents and emerging adults while controlling for social anxiety. In a sample of late adolescents (N = 739, Mage = 16 years) and a sample of emerging

When do hurt feelings develop? The emotion of feeling hurt is vital for close relationships because it signals that one has been devalued illegitimately, potentially eliciting guilt and the motivation to repair in the partner. We approached the question of when hurt feelings develop by studying the emergence of sulking behavior as an indicator of hurt feelings. In an online-questionnaire study, parents

Despite the documented importance of friendship for the well-being of young adults, there is a paucity of work mapping factors associated with friendship dissolution and maintenance during this developmental period. We examined whether implicit theories of friendships – specifically, growth beliefs (i.e., the belief that friendships can be developed) and destiny beliefs (i.e., the belief that friendships

This study examined the criteria children, adolescents, and adults intuitively apply when they distribute a resource between two protagonists who differ systematically in need and effort. Two main questions were investigated: (a) Do the allocation criteria (equality, need, effort, integration of need and effort) differ by age? (b) Do the allocation criteria of adolescents differ in accordance with

Following theoretical proposals emphasizing the role of caregiver behavior for child emotion processing, this study investigated whether maternal sensitivity and non-intrusiveness predicted child attention to emotional facial expressions, assessed via eye tracking, as the earliest stage of emotion regulation. Maternal behavior and child attention were assessed at 12 (N = 118) and 24 months. Cross-lagged

Movement synchrony is an essential feature of rituals and collective displays around the world. Previous studies have shown that synchronous movements increase observers’ perceived group entitativity and fighting capacity in agonistic contexts; however, little is known about the developmental roots of synchrony-dominant attributions. In this study, adult participants (Exp 1), 5- to 6-year-old children

Children are remarkably concerned with fairness, yet social evaluations often lead to partiality in fairness behavior. For instance, children share more generously with in-group peers and allocate resources based on the material need of recipients. The goal of the present study was to examine how children developing in Canada and Iran privilege group status and recipient need when allocating resources

Self-esteem has implications for a wide variety of psychological problems. This study sought to determine whether parenting practices at ages 3 and 4 years contributed to 5-year-old children's self-perception, a precursor to later self-esteem. Data came from a longitudinal study in which preschool twin or triplet children were tested within a month of their birthdays; complete data were available for

This study examined the link between theory of mind (ToM) in middle childhood and teachers’ propensity for mental-state language and self-reported conversational-instruction strategies. Multilevel analyses on 430 Italian children (221 girls, Mage = 9.34 years, SD = .63, Range: 7.95–11.43 years) from 27 primary-school classrooms and their teachers showed that: (i) there were striking between-classroom

Research on parents’ mental state talk (MST) and children's social understanding is typically situated within a social constructivist approach, which asserts that parent-child conversations around mental states promotes children's social understanding. However, prior research has provided a limited view of children's participation in these exchanges or the interaction among qualities of MST. This study

Both linguistic and socioemotional competencies develop in early childhood in the context of children's learning environments at home and during interactions with their parents. To support linguistic competencies, the Home Literacy Environment (HLE) and shared reading routines play a crucial role. In turn, research also indicates associations between the HLE and children's socioemotional development

This study tested whether the relations between parental warmth and children's problem behaviors vary as a function of the quality of the teacher-student relationship while controlling for prior levels of the outcomes. When children (N = 301, M age = 5.48, 52% girls) were in kindergarten, teachers reported on the quality of the teacher-student relationship, and parents reported on their warmth toward

What do young children understand about arguments? Do they evaluate arguments critically when deciding whom to learn from? To address this question, we investigated children at age 4–5, when robust selective social learning is in place. In Studies 1a/b, children made an initial perceptual judgment regarding the location of an object under varying perceptual circumstances; then received advice by another

The positive relationship between popularity goals and bullying in early adolescence is documented in many studies. The aim of the current study was to investigate the relationship between student social goals of two types (popularity and social preference) and bullying in a diverse sample of early and middle adolescents. Additionally, we aimed to investigate both individual (self-perceived popularity

In-group members who challenge group norms (hereon “challenger peers”) often are evaluated less positively by their peers compared to those who adhere to group norms. In the present study children (n = 118, Mage = 10.01) and adolescents (n = 132, Mage = 13.32; total n = 269) were inducted into a gender-based group who endorsed an activity norm. Participants evaluated a challenger peer who was either