HIV-exposed uninfected (HEU) children during the preschool and early school ages may be at-risk for neurodevelopmental challenges due to in utero and perinatal exposure to HIV and/or antiretroviral (ARV) medications. HEU children and HIV-unexposed uninfected (HUU) children from the community were recruited and tested at 3 to 4 and 5 to 6 years of…

Anger is a central characteristic of negative affect and is relatively stable from infancy onward. Absolute levels of anger typically peak in early childhood and diminish as children become socialized and better able to regulate emotions. From infancy to school age, however, there are also individual differences in rank-order levels of anger. For…

The purpose of this study was to examine the developmental course and implications of the personality metatraits ego resiliency and ego control across the first 3 decades of life. The sample consisted of 139 participants who were assessed 9 times between ages 2 and 33. Participants completed measures of ego resiliency, ego control, Big Five…

Research on contemplative practices (e.g., mindfulness or compassion training) is growing rapidly in the clinical, health and neuro-sciences, but almost none of this research takes an explicitly developmental life span perspective. At present, we know rather little about the naturalistic development of mindfulness or compassion in children and…

Multitalker situations confront listeners with a plethora of competing auditory inputs, and hence require selective attention to relevant information, especially when the perceptual saliency of distracting inputs is high. This study augmented the classical forced-attention dichotic listening paradigm by adding an interaural intensity manipulation…

Many new and important developmental issues are encountered during adolescence, which is also a time when Internet use becomes increasingly popular. Studies have shown that adolescents are using these online spaces to address developmental issues, especially needs for intimacy and connection to others. Online communication with its potential for…

Developmental and life course studies of young adult identities have focused on 2 dimensions: subjective age and psychosocial maturity. This study examines the developmental synchrony of these 2 processes. In a longitudinal sample of young adults from Add Health (ages 18-22), a person-centered analysis of indicators of these dimensions identified…

Analyzes the logical basis of testing developmental order hypotheses with categorical measures. Argues that depending on whether saltatory or continuous developmental changes are being assessed, the observed relationship between categorical measures yields different types of information about developmental ordering. Maintains that when change is…

Conducted a three-year longitudinal analysis of morphological spelling strategies in second through fourth graders. Found that, when children first adopt morphologically determined spelling patterns, they disregard the morphological basis. Generalization progresses from grammatically inappropriate words to the right grammatical category to the…

Examined electrical brain activity during negative and positive emotion expression in infants of depressed and nondepressed mothers. Found that, compared with infants of nondepressed mothers, infants of depressed mothers exhibited increased EEG activation in the frontal but not parietal region when expressing negative emotions. There were no…

Illustrates contribution of genetic and environmental factors to differential ratings of within-family behavior and environmental differences. Maintains that, assuming differential ratings are a linear function of underlying trait differences, it is simple to recover within-family statistics, offering a more legitimate basis than comparing mean…

Compared verbal and visuo-spatial working memory (WM) performance under initial, gain, and maintenance conditions for nine age groups from 6 to 57 years to determine if differences were attributable to specific or general processing functions. Found support for a general-capacity explanation of age-related differences, reflecting demands placed on…

Examined analytic methods for describing children's social risk. Found that the individual-risk-variables approach provided better overall prediction of developmental outcomes at a particular age. The risk-factor approach provided good prediction of developmental trajectories with moderate to large sample sizes. The risk-index was useful for…

Observed the behavior of 37 infants in response to their mothers' normal and still face. Infants reduced their smiling and increased their gazing away from mother during the still face condition compared to normal face condition. Compared to three month olds, six month olds were more likely to use hand activities while gazing away from mother. (MM)

Examined whether 30-month olds appreciate that their communicative signals are being understood by another. Separated listener comprehension from obtaining a material goal in communication. Children clarified their signal more when the experimenter misunderstood compared with when she understood. Regardless of achieving overt goal, children…