Social understanding competence develops in sensitive and co-regulating caregiver interactions. Parental reflective functioning (PRF) and parenting stress can affect children's social understanding. This study investigated if children's social understanding was associated with PRF and parenting stress. Parents of 305 Italian children aged from 24…

The alexithymia hypothesis posits that specific aspects of the autistic socio-cognitive profile, namely emotion recognition difficulties, can be explained by the increased prevalence of alexithymia in autistic populations. However, this hypothesis has largely been tested in adults. We tested whether co-occurring alexithymia could account for…

Both parasympathetic nervous system regulation and receipt of social support from close relationships contribute to prosocial development, although few studies have examined their combined influences in adolescence and particularly within racially and ethnically minoritized populations. In this longitudinal study of 229 U.S. Mexican-origin…

While nature contact is increasingly recognized for its health benefits, its role in human development and learning remains insufficiently examined. The present meta-analysis aimed to investigate (a) the extent to which nature contact predicts social functioning, cognitive functioning, and academic performance, (b) whether these associations vary…

Introduction: Leadership support has been identified as a key facilitator to successful implementation of school-based initiatives. School leadership contributions to student academic success and school reform have been documented, but less work has focused on the effects of leadership on school mental health initiatives such as social, emotional,…

A recent study suggests that parent report on the Social Symptom and Prosocial scales of the Childhood Joint Attention Rating Scale provides useful information about differences in the social development of school-aged autistic children. The current study provides additional psychometric data on the Childhood Joint Attention Rating Scale regarding…

A growing literature provides evidence of long-term effects of childhood sexual trauma (CST), however the intergenerational consequences of CST are not well understood. In the current study we examine the adjustment of children whose mothers reported a history of CST compared to children whose mothers did not report childhood trauma across…

Understanding predictors and effects of teacher well-being, including job satisfaction, is crucial for both teachers' and children's development. Research on teacher job satisfaction (TJS) has indicated that many individual and contextual factors may make a difference for teachers' professional well-being. However, against the backdrop of this…

Research Findings: This study aimed to investigate the developmental path of social skills in early childhood, the associated predictors, and its impact on later school performance. This prospective longitudinal study included 2,121 children, ages 3-5 at baseline, from the general population in a mid-sized Swedish municipality. Results show both…

The current study investigated the impact of birth order on vocabulary and social language development in 1338 first-born and 1049 s-born autistic youth (M age = 9.03 years, SD = 3.57; 86.4% male) from the Simons Simplex Collection. Frequentist and Bayesian analyses revealed mixed findings in language development. There were no differences in…

This study aims to examine the mediating role of attention in the relationship between their social competence, aggression and early literacy by constructing a path model for children's early literacy. This research was designed in a causal pattern. The sample of this study consisted of 256 children attending pre-school education. The data were…

Background: Addiction medicine still largely neglects the topic of mild and borderline intellectual disabilities (MBID), although patients with MBID are considered a risk group for substance-related problems and offending behaviour. This study aimed to explore the cognitive and adaptive impairments of inpatients in forensic addiction mental health…

Despite the wide usage of screen media among young children, less is known about the relationships between children's screen time and their social competence development as impacted by family-related factors. Here, we investigated parents' engagement, children's screen time, and their social competence among Taiwanese Chinese children's families…

Motivation is a key factor for child development, but very few studies have examined child and family predictors of both child task and perceived motivation. Thus, the three aims of this 6-month longitudinal study in preschoolers with global developmental delays (GDD) were to explore: 1) differences between task and perceived motivation in…

People desire to have positive self-esteem. Research by Crocker, Luhtanen, Cooper, & Bouvrette (2003) has demonstrated that late adolescents buttress their sense of self-worth through at least seven different means. Focusing primarily on two such contingencies (seeking to support self-esteem through virtuous behavior and through competitive…