In early adolescence, levels of conscientiousness and agreeableness have been found to temporarily decrease, with levels of neuroticism increasing, indicating a dip in personality maturation. It is unknown whether these changes are related to the process of puberty, a major developmental milestone with numerous changes for children. Here, we first…

Past meta-analyses show that both child-mother and child-father attachment insecurity are independently and jointly associated with more externalizing behaviors in children. Little is known, however, on the ways that different types of insecure attachment independently and jointly predict the development of externalizing behaviors over time.…

This study quantified changes in self-reported sexual orientation from adolescence to early adulthood, and whether childhood gender nonconformity (GNC) predicted sexual orientation changes. Youth (2,678 boys and 3,359 girls; 96.09% ethnically White) from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) were included. Self-reported…

Finger gnosia and fine motor skills (FMS) are assumed to play a key role in the development of arithmetic abilities, but their contribution to early numerical skills (i.e., enumeration skills and cardinality) has received little attention so far. The purpose of this study was to investigate the predictive value of finger gnosia and FMS to…

This study estimates the effect of physical punishment on the cognitive development of 1,167 low-income Colombian children (M[subscript age] = 17.8 months old) using 3 analytic strategies: lagged-dependent variables, a difference-in-differences-like approach (DD), and a novel strategy combining matching with a DD-like approach. Across approaches,…

Children who show elevated levels of indirect aggression (IA) from childhood to adolescence are at increased risks of experiencing detrimental outcomes. Some studies suggest that psychopathic traits could act as a predisposing vulnerability in the development of IA, but the contributions of all three dimensions of psychopathic traits in explaining…

Many developmental theories have not been sufficiently evaluated using designs that control for unobserved familial confounds. Our long-term goal is to determine the causal structure underlying associations between early environmental conditions and later psychosocial and health outcomes. Our overall objective in this study was to further evaluate…

Executive function (EF) and social function are both critical skills that continue to develop through adolescence and are strongly predictive of many important life outcomes. Longstanding empirical and theoretical work has suggested that EF shapes social function. However, there is little empirical work on this topic in adolescence, despite both…

Both parasympathetic nervous system regulation and receipt of social support from close relationships contribute to prosocial development, although few studies have examined their combined influences in adolescence and particularly within racially and ethnically minoritized populations. In this longitudinal study of 229 U.S. Mexican-origin…

Theoretical models posit real-time bidirectional processes between parents and children as integral to child development, yet few studies have examined such processes. In this study, cross-lagged autoregressive latent growth models were used to assess the dynamic organization of mother and toddler behavior across a snack-delay task. Maternal…

Prior research suggests that social relations may play a role in explaining individual differences in cognitive functioning in older adulthood. In particular, early life maternal relationship quality (MRQ) has been shown to be a strong predictor of later-life socioemotional outcomes and may also contribute to later-life cognitive outcomes. The…

The current longitudinal study examined the predictive associations between the development of future perceptions in adolescence and depressive symptoms in adolescence and early and middle adulthood. Participants (N = 1,527; 48.3% female; broadly representative of Western Germany with respect to race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status) were…

Empathic responding--the capacity to understand, resonate with, and respond sensitively to others' emotional experiences--is a complex human faculty that calls upon multiple social, emotional, and cognitive capacities and their underlying neural systems. Emerging evidence in adults has suggested that the hippocampus and its associated network may…

Receptive vocabulary development was examined in 313 children (151 girls; 78% White) as a function of infant attention and maternal education (66% of mothers held a college degree or higher). Attention was measured at 10 months using a dynamic puppet task and receptive vocabulary was measured at 3-, 4-, 6-, and 9 years of age using the Peabody…

Age-related developments in sleep during the preschool years are normative and consequential. Yet, very few studies have examined the antecedents of individual differences in such developments, and most have used parental reports of child sleep. This study aimed to investigate the roles of mutual responsiveness in mother-child interactions and…