During imaginative play, children may learn foundational skills important for academic success. Indeed, imaginative children, high in fantasy orientation (FO), may have advantages in skills that support positive classroom and social behavior. Yet findings are mixed regarding the classroom behavior of children high in fantasy orientation. The…

Research Findings: The Children's Social Understanding Scale (CSUS) assesses young children's theory of mind (ToM). The current study adapted the parent version of the CSUS-short form to Turkish and examined its utility, for the first time, as an assessment tool for teachers. The associations of parent and teacher reports of the CSUS-short form…

The current randomized control trial evaluated the effectiveness of a new social-emotional learning (SEL) program, I Can Succeed for Preschools (ICS-PS). ICS-PS aims to improve preschoolers' social/interpersonal, emotional, and academic skills in an integrative way, focusing on children's core executive functions (EFs). The various components of…

Research Findings: The purpose of the current study was to investigate direct associations between the home literacy environment (HLE) and preschool children's executive function (EF), academic readiness, and social-emotional competence and to explore the indirect association between the HLE and academic and social-emotional outcomes working…

The present study investigated gender differences in social mastery motivation, vocabulary knowledge, behavioral self-regulation, and socioemotional skills and examined the relationships among this knowledge and these skills by gender. Participants were 134 Chinese children (68 boys, M age = 3.80; 66 girls, M age = 3.89) and their parents…

Research Findings: This study examined the learning effects of collaborative group work under heterogeneous group composition among 5-year-old children, especially in terms of their social skills. To this end, the study utilized an experimental research design wherein 3 groups of differently composed dyads and a group of students who worked alone…

Research Findings: In this study, we examined self-regulatory skills, namely, effortful control and executive function, in Turkish preschoolers (N = 217) and their mediating roles in the associations between parenting and children's socioemotional competence. We also investigated the role of family socioeconomic status and maternal psychological…