This study examined parents' developmentally appropriate beliefs about young children's play and parents' views on their child's play skills. This exploratory secondary data analysis was drawn from data on low-income African-American and Latino parents and their children (n = 109) participating in Head Start programmes in the USA. Compared with…

This study describes engagement in and stability of physical activity and sedentary behaviours in early life, and assesses associations with sex, maternal education and developmental stage. Maternal-report data at child age 4, 9 and 20 months were collected from 542 families in the Melbourne Infant Feeding Activity and Nutrition Trial Program.…

The present study used a large sample of mostly non-resident fathers (74%) to determine whether father-school involvement (e.g. attending parent-teacher conferences) predicted better academic and social emotional skills after controlling for the influence of mother-school involvement, the quality of children's home learning environment, and…

This cross-sectional observational study aims to examine the current status and familial factors associated with social competence and emotional well-being among young children in an urban city in the East Asia region. Early childhood teachers assessed the social competence and the emotional state of preschool children with the Social Competence…

During a regular free writing time in class, children in Kindergarten through sixth grade in various areas of the city were given the writing prompt,"My dreams for the world". Writing samples were collected from an elementary school in an affluent area of the city, an elementary and a middle school in a low socio-economic area, and an…

This study analysed the role of both sociocultural background and exposure to a creche on children's development of cognitive competence in Switzerland. Data were derived from a survey on children's cognitive proficiency after enrolment to primary school. Correlations and multiple linear regressions indicate that creche experience was not related…

International research indicates that children with disabilities are more exposed to negative parenting than their non-disabled peers. The mechanisms behind this increased risk are likely operating at the levels of the individual child, the family and the broader social context. The present study investigated harsh parenting practices using…

Three aspects of young children's social cognition--accurate encoding of social cues, hostile attributions and response access/generation--were assessed among 128 children (64 girls) attending three-, four-, and five-year-old classrooms (ages ranged from 36 to 73 months). Hostile attributions and the quality of strategy generation were both…

The following study expands Denham and Auerbach's (1995, "Mother-child dialogue about emotions and preschoolers' emotional competence." "Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs," 121, 313-337) findings, demonstrating a link between mothers' talk about emotions and preschoolers' knowledge of emotions. We investigate the maternal language…

Even in the absence of major disabilities, children born prematurely are at high risk for academic delays and deficits. Research suggests that some differences in outcomes may relate to problems with self-regulation, especially attention regulation. Previous research has demonstrated that individual differences in attention regulation is…