This study investigated whether transitory and persistent poverty spells were associated with children's learning (literacy and numeracy scores) and executive function outcomes in Ghana. Children resided in the Greater Accra region (N = 2,154; 49% female; M[subscript age] = 5.2 years at wave-1) and were followed at four-time points over three…

Most extant research on parental socialization for child appreciation has either conflated appreciation and gratitude or fallen foul of a conceptual-operational mismatch, yielding theoretical controversies and inconsistent results. Using a matched conceptualization and operationalization of appreciation and based on three waves of data from 496…

We examined whether the early learning environment predicts children's 5th grade skills in 2,204 families from ethnically diverse, low-income backgrounds; tested the mediating roles of children's pre-kindergarten school-related skills and later learning environment; and asked whether lagged associations generalize across White, Black, Hispanic…

Despite recognition that youth civic engagement is multidimensional, different modeling approaches are rarely compared or tested for measurement invariance. Using a diverse sample of 2,467 elementary, middle, and high school-aged youth, we measured eight dimensions of civic engagement: social responsibility values, informal helping, political…

Cross-age peer mentoring programs, in which teenagers mentor younger children, have proliferated in recent years, yet there is disagreement about the effectiveness of such programs. This study tested whether teen mentors' attitudes about children interact with their mentees' characteristics to moderate outcomes of cross-age peer mentoring. The…

Social and behavioral problems can interfere with a child's acquisition of age-appropriate skills, which may lead to antisocial behavior in adolescence and adulthood. Thus, determining how best to support positive skills during early childhood is critical. Using data from the first three phases of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth…

The current study examines the social and behavioral development of school-age children with different histories of overweight onset. Eight thousand children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) participated. Three groups of children were identified for analysis: (1) those who were persistently overweight from…