Guided by the ecological model of civic development, this study examined the extent to which the growth in children's self-control during middle childhood predicted their civic engagement at age 26 directly and indirectly via their prosociality at age 15. We used data from 1,042 children (50% female, 77% White) in the NICHD Study of Early Child…

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…

Insufficient research attention has been focused on the development of academic "under"-achievement and motivational beliefs. A longitudinal, person-centered approach was used to identify latent subgroups of growth in the joint development of teacher-reported underachievement and four motivational beliefs (self-concept, task importance,…

Afterschool programs (ASPs) have become increasingly recognized as a key context to support youth daily physical activity (PA) accrual. Using Self-Determination Theory (SDT) as a framework, this study examined staff perspectives on the strengths and barriers within under-resourced ASPs for establishing a social-motivational climate for encouraging…

Evidence that the learning gains of preschool fade as children transition into elementary school has led to increased efforts to sustain preschool advantages during this key transitional period. This study explores whether the observed benefits of sustainability practices for a range of child outcomes are explained and/or moderated by family and…

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…

Research suggests that behavioral self-regulation skills are critical for early school success, but few studies have explored such links among young children in Europe. This study examined the contribution of early self-regulation to academic achievement gains among children in France, Germany, and Iceland. Gender differences in behavioral…

The present study examined child and school factors that might foster classroom behavioral engagement during the first year at school in a sample of 67 typically developing British 4-year-olds. The children were followed for 9 months from the summer before enrollment through the first 7 months of school. Our findings showed that effortful control…

Children's social skills are an important class of learned behaviors that facilitate success in the classroom; the primary method used in the assessment of social skills involves having parents or teachers complete standardized checklists using judgments of frequency or intensity. Children's (N = 1,102) social skills were modeled as time-varying…

The present longitudinal study employed two distinctive approaches (variable-oriented and person-oriented) to examine low-income children's academic and social functioning across the important transition from pre-k to first grade. Participants included 152 former urban Head Start children. Variable-oriented and person-oriented approaches were…

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…