Bronfenbrenner's (1979) ecological model proposes that events in higher order social ecosystems should influence human development through their impact on events in lower order social ecosystems. This proposition was tested with respect to ecological violence and the development of children's aggression via analyses of 3 waves of data (1 wave…

Babies and young children in the child welfare system have a high prevalence for physical, cognitive, and social-emotional delays--and often don't have access to the services and supports that could make all the difference. This is the book that will help professionals go beyond abuse prevention and ensure comprehensive healthy development of…

Although the onset of illicit substance use during adolescence can hit parents abruptly like a raging flood, its origins likely start as a trickle in early childhood. Understanding antecedent factors and how they grow into a stream that leads to adolescent drug use is important for theories of social development as well as policy formulations to…

Many academic and public policies promote rapid immigrant assimilation. Yet, researchers have recently identified an emerging pattern, known as the "immigrant paradox," in which assimilated children of immigrants experience diminishing developmental outcomes and educational achievements. This volume examines these controversial findings by asking…

This article provides a review and synthesis of concepts, research programs, and measures in the infant and child temperament area. First, the authors present an overview of five classical approaches to the study of child temperament that continue to stimulate research today. Subsequently, the authors carve out key definitional criteria for…

Ninety-six Colombian children (mean age = 7.7 years) and adolescents (mean age = 14.6 years) made judgments about stealing and physical harm in the abstract and in the context of survival and revenge. All participants judged it wrong to steal or hurt others because of considerations with justice and welfare, and most also judged it wrong to engage…

There is evidence for developmental hierarchies in the type of information to which infants attend when reasoning about objects. Investigators have questioned the origin of these hierarchies and how infants come to identify new sources of information when reasoning about objects. The goal of the present experiments was to shed light on this debate…

Children with autism exhibit a host of motor disorders including poor coordination, poor tool use and delayed learning of complex motor skills like riding a tricycle. Theory suggests that one of the crucial steps in motor learning is the ability to form internal models: to predict the sensory consequences of motor commands and learn from errors to…

This continuation of a previous study (Taumoepeau & Ruffman, 2006) examined the longitudinal relation between maternal mental state talk to 15- and 24-month-olds and their later mental state language and emotion understanding (N = 74). The previous study found that maternal talk about the child's desires to 15-month-old children uniquely predicted…

Evaluating whether a limited sample of evidence provides a good basis for induction is a critical cognitive task. We hypothesized that whereas adults evaluate the inductive strength of samples containing multiple pieces of evidence by attending to the relations among the exemplars (e.g., sample diversity), six-year-olds would attend to the degree…

Violation-of-expectation (VOE) tasks have revealed substantial developments in young infants' knowledge about support events: by 5.5 months, infants expect an object to fall when released against but not on a surface; and by 6.5 months, infants expect an object to fall when released with 15% but not 100% of its bottom on a surface. Here we…

This special section was motivated by a resurgence in the view that it is impossible to investigate perceptual and cognitive development without considering how it is affected by, and intertwined with, infants' and children's action in the world. This view has long been foundational to the field, yet contemporary investigations of the effects of…

The ability to make sense out of the actions of others is critical to people's daily functioning. Adults are social experts: They understand that people's actions are directed at goals and are driven by intentions. In this article, the authors highlight key findings from studies examining infants' understanding of human action. These findings…

Perceptual reorganisation of infants' speech perception has been found from 6 months for consonants and earlier for vowels. Recently, similar reorganisation has been found for lexical tone between 6 and 9 months of age. Given that there is a close relationship between vowels and tones, this study investigates whether the perceptual reorganisation…

A growing body of evidence indicates that for some children, early incidences of challenging behaviors are predictors of later difficulties. These incidences of challenging behaviors may predict mental health issues, social adjustment issues and/or increased challenging behaviors that will impede school success and impact transition to adult life…