At school entry, girls are rated by teachers as more competent on measures of social skills than boys. It is less clear if this higher rating is stable or grows over time. To address this question, multiple group curve of factors models investigated gender-specific growth trajectories across seven waves of measurement in a large, longitudinal…

This article reports on analyses examining contextual influences on parenting with an ethnically and geographically diverse sample of parents (predominantly mothers) raising 387 children (49% ethnic minority; 51% male) in high-risk communities. Parents and children were followed longitudinally from first through tenth grades. Contextual influences…

In an attempt to devise a methodology for characterizing children's intuitive theories of drug action, 217 children in Grades 1 to 6 were interviewed about how two substances, alcohol and cocaine, cause behavioral changes in their users. Measures tapped both structure (Piagetian complexity of causal reasoning, coherence, and construction of a…