Grades often decline during the high school transition, creating stress. The present research integrates the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat with the implicit theories model to understand who shows maladaptive stress responses. A diary study measured declines in grades in the first few months of high school: salivary cortisol…

Executive function (EF) plays a foundational role in development. A brain-based model of EF development is probed for the experiences that strengthen EF in the dimensional change card sort task in which children sort cards by one rule and then are asked to switch to another. Three-year-olds perseverate on the first rule, failing the task, whereas…

Executive functions enable flexible thinking, something young children are notoriously bad at. For instance, in the dimensional change card sort (DCCS) task, 3-year-olds can sort cards by one dimension (shape), but continue to sort by this dimension when asked to switch (to color). This study tests a prediction of a dynamic neural field model that…

This study examined conceptual changes in children in the dimension of explicitness through the lens of the representational redescription model (A. Karmiloff-Smith, 1986, 1992). The 4- to 9-year-old participants (N = 24) had to balance blocks on a narrow support in one task and predict whether the blocks could be balanced in another task. In…

Three generations of participants were assessed over approximately 27 years, and intergenerational prediction models of growth in the third generation's (G3) externalizing and internalizing problems across ages 3-9 years were examined. The sample included 103 fathers and mothers (G2), at least 1 parent (G1) for all of the G2 fathers (99 mothers,…

Mechanisms were examined to clarify relations between maternal depressive symptoms, dysfunctional cognitions, and infant night waking among 45 infants (1-24 months) and their mothers. A mother-driven mediational model was tested in which maternal depressive symptoms and dysfunctional cognitions about infant sleep predicted infant night waking via…

This longitudinal investigation of 84 infants examined whether the effect of 12-month attachment on 18- and 24-month exploration and sociability with unfamiliar adults varied as a function of newborn irritability. As expected, results revealed an interaction between attachment (secure vs. insecure) and irritability (highly irritable vs. moderately…

This rejoinder to McCall (Volume 56, 217-218) discusses the differences in viewpoint with respect to the relationship between models and theory, the notion of "direct" tests of propositions, and the use of measures of explained variance to evaluate model performance. (Author/BE)

Two studies examined models that preschoolers, fifth-graders, and adults use to guide predictions of self-beneficial, goal-directed action. Found that preschoolers' predictions were consistent with an animal-based model, fifth-graders' with biology-based and complexity-based models, and adults' predictions with a biology-based model. All age…

Estimates confluence model of intellectual development for a within-family sample of 321 children from 101 transracial adoptive families. Mental ages of children and their parents and birth or adoption intervals were used in a nonlinear least-squares estimation procedure to obtain children's predicted mental ages. Results suggest efficiency of the…