Jeremy Sawyer recounts that, after Lev S. Vygotsky's death, Jean Piaget conceded the Russian psychologist correctly understood the social origins, functions, and developmental trajectory of children's egocentric speech (now called private speech) but dismissed this work as irrelevant to children's egocentrism or nondifferentiation of perspectives.…

In this commentary on the special issue on emotional development, I focus on the papers by Holodynski and Seeger (2019) and by Hoemann, Xu, and Barrett (2019). I suggest that although understanding our emotions is an important part of emotional development; emotional development cannot be reduced to concept development, even when such concepts…

How do schooling years impact children's lives, in rural and urban settings? Why do some children have lower self-esteem than others? What kinds of conflicts do adolescents experience in their search for identity? Why are some teachers able to understand the importance of ensuring the well-being of children while others do not? Does the emotional…

Each year, an increasing number of children are born through surrogacy and thus lack a genetic and/or gestational link with their mother. This study examined the impact of surrogacy on mother-child relationships and children's psychological adjustment. Assessments of maternal positivity, maternal negativity, mother-child interaction, and child…

Providing a curriculum that promotes personal growth and wellbeing is an overarching learning outcome of the Western Australian Curriculum Framework (Curriculum Framework, 1998). However, little is known about what constitutes and causes wellbeing of students in our primary schools. In the study reported in this paper the happiness of 312…

Adults who report having had high-quality relationships with their parents during childhood have better overall mental health and are at decreased risk for mental disorders compared with those who report low parental relationship quality. Researchers have predominantly focused on the relationship with the mother, oftentimes excluding the unique…

This study examines whether disagreeable youth are distinct from aggressive youth, victimized youth, and withdrawn youth. Young adolescents (120 girls and 104 boys, M = 13.59 years old) completed personality and adjustment inventories. Aggression, withdrawal, and victimization scores were derived from peer nominations (N = 807). Cluster analyses…

Scope and Method of Study. This qualitative study used heuristic phenomenology and involved 20 interviews at 3 different sites, 2 focus groups, formal and informal observations, and the analysis of various artifacts including photos, drawings, and documents. Findings and Conclusions. Third culture kids are a diverse group of individuals who spent…

Intergroup attitudes in children were examined based on Leyen's "infrahumanization hypothesis". This suggests that some uniquely human emotions, such as shame and guilt (secondary emotions), are reserved for the in-group, whilst other emotions that are not uniquely human and shared with animals, such as anger and pleasure (primary…

Children rely extensively on others' testimony to learn about the world. However, they are not uniformly credulous toward other people. From an early age, children's reliance on testimony is tempered by selective trust in particular informants. Three- and 4-year-olds monitor the accuracy or knowledge of informants, including those that are…

This study is designed to determine whether data obtained cross-sectionally from a sample of subjects in the middle childhood range on selected personality characteristics could be well described by a concave parabolic curve and thus linked to the closure behaviour elicited from the subjects. Specifically, the investigation seeks to determine if…

Research by Nathan Fox and other scientists shows how changes in environmental conditions can help temper the negative effects of a child's predisposition toward fearfulness and anxiety. If certain negative triggers are eliminated or modified, a child's genetic tendency toward inappropriate fearfulness and anxiety may be overcome--or not expressed…

A robust lag was evidenced between the attribution to an individual of a false belief about the world and the attribution of the false emotion associated with this false belief (Bradmetz & Schneider, 1999). This lag was unexpected in the frame of current theories of mind which consider that emotion has a rational cognitive basis. The present paper…

Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) is predicated on a theory of causality. According to Ellis (1962), beliefs regarding an event, and not the event itself, cause emotional reactions. Mentally healthy persons practice this reational theory of causality. Neurotic persons accept an irrational theory of causality based on coincidental or correlational…

This comprehensive volume presents selected articles representing the major viewpoints on learning problems in children. Specialized practitioners in the fields of special education, psychology, psychiatry, and social work are encouraged to reject a narrow, limited perspective, and to view the child with a learning problem as a single, constantly…