Previous research is inconsistent as to whether a more labile (faster-changing) autonomic system confers performance advantages, or disadvantages, in infants and children. To examine this, we presented a stimulus battery consisting of mixed static and dynamic viewing materials to a cohort of 63 typical 12-month-old infants. While viewing the…

Our social world is rich with information about other people's choices, which subsequently inform our inferences about their future behavior. For individuals socialized within the American cultural context, which places a high value on autonomy and independence, outcomes that are the result of an agent's own choices may hold more predictive value…

The early years of marriage are a time of significant personal and relational changes as partners adjust to their new roles, but the specific ways that spouses' personalities may change in early marriage and how these changes are associated with spouses' marital satisfaction trajectories have been overlooked. Using 3 waves of data collected over…

Childhood gender nonconformity (femininity in males, masculinity in females) predicts a nonstraight (gay, lesbian, or bisexual) sexual orientation in adulthood. In previous work, nonstraight twins reported more childhood gender nonconformity than their genetically identical, but straight, cotwins. However, self-reports could be biased. We…

Humans and other animals are able to make rough estimations of quantities using what has been termed the "approximate number system" (ANS). Much evidence suggests that sensitivity to numerosity correlates with symbolic math capacity, leading to the suggestion that the ANS may serve as a start-up tool to develop symbolic math. Many…

A growing body of evidence indicates that the development of mathematics and literacy skills is highly related. The importance of literacy skills--specifically language--for mathematics development has been well rationalized. However, despite several prominent studies indicating that mathematics skills are highly predictive of literacy…

Based on Marcia's theory, many researchers consider exploration and commitment as the main processes in identity development. Although some identity theorists have hypothesized that emotional experience may also be an important part of the mechanisms of identity development, empirical research to investigate this claim has been lagging behind. In…

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is increasingly used in developmental research despite minimal evidence of whether children's IAT scores are reliable across time or predictive of behavior. When test-retest reliability and predictive validity have been assessed, the results have been mixed, and because these studies have differed on many…

The relationship between ethnic socialization by parents, peers, and ethnic identity development was examined over a 7-year time span in a sample of 116 internationally adopted Korean American adolescents. Parent report data was collected in 2007 (Time 1 [T1]) when the adopted child was between 7 and 13 years old and again in 2014 at ages 13 to 20…

We investigated the development and cognitive correlates of envisioning future experiences in 3.5- to 6.5-year old children across 2 experiments, both of which involved toy trains traveling along a track. In the first, children were asked to predict the direction of train travel and color of train side, as it would be seen through an arch.…

Most researchers on media and aggression have examined the behavioral effects of viewing physical aggression in the media. Conversely, in the current study, I examined longitudinal associations between viewing "relational aggression" on TV and subsequent aggressive behavior. Participants included 467 adolescents who completed a number of…

Loneliness is a stressful experience that appears to interfere with health and social integration (SI). Recently, researchers proposed that both antecedents and consequences of loneliness may change across the life span. To fully understand the processes related to loneliness it may thus be crucial to adopt an age-differentiated perspective. This…

Adolescent delinquency and identity formation have both been described in relation to the confusion, doubt, and need for individuation and autonomy faced by adolescents. While theoretical conceptualizations (e.g., Erikson, 1968; Moffitt, 1993) suggest that delinquency and identity formation might be developmentally intertwined across adolescence,…

The present study examined sympathetic and parasympathetic indices of autonomic nervous system reactivity as moderators of the prospective association between parental management of peers via directing of youths' friendships and peer adjustment in a sample of typically developing adolescents. Participants included 246 adolescents at Time 1 (T1)…

Certain psychopathologies are often linked to dysregulation of specific emotions (e.g., anxiety is associated with dysregulation of fear), but few studies have examined how regulatory repertoires for specific emotions (e.g., the strategies a person uses to regulate fear) relate to psychopathology, and fewer still have examined this in childhood. A…