Olivia Lima writes in this article that because she is not trained as a therapist or counselor, but rather as a researcher in cognitive development, she cannot speak to the clinical role of empathy. However she does consider empathy central to her work teaching Child Psychology. Keeping that in mind, she begins her first class by telling the…

Children and adolescents encounter different hurtful experiences in school settings. How these events are processed (e.g., whether they think that the transgressor was hostile) is likely to depend on the relationship with the transgressor. In this study, we examined how adolescents (58 girls and 35 boys, mean age = 14.03 years, SD = 0.60) dealt…

In this article author Prairie Boulmier writes that Paul Tough, author of "How Children Succeed," has emerged as a visible and respected voice on education reform and research in the U.S. Boulmier describes "How Children Succeed" and its focus on an increasing knowledge base that supports so-called "noncognitive"…

Young children answer many questions every day. The extent to which they do this in an adult-like way -- following Grice's Maxim of Quantity by providing the requested information, no more no less -- has been studied very little. In an experiment, we found that two-, three- and four-year-old children are quite skilled at answering…

Early intervention takes its form from a variety of fields. It has its obvious roots in the fields that primarily provide early intervention services--special education, allied health, and early childhood education. Early intervention also draws from public health as a coordinated approach to addressing the biological, psychological, and social…

The amount of information that students can successfully learn and recall at least 1 day later is called an acquisition rate (AR) and is unique to the individual student. The current study extended previous drill rehearsal research with word recognition by (a) using students identified with a learning disability in reading, (b) assessing set sizes…

Background: The high prevalence of attention problems in children warrants concern, as it is a risk factor for internalizing and externalizing problems. There lies a need to understand possible factors that may mediate this link so that interventions may be targeted to alleviate these mediators and interrupt the link between attention problems and…

Young children have been described as critical consumers of information, particularly in the domain of language learning. Indeed, children are more likely to learn novel words from people with accurate histories of object labeling than with inaccurate ones. But what happens when informant testimony conflicts with a tendency to see the world in a…

People often displace their anger and aggression against innocent targets, sometimes called scapegoats. Tragic historic events suggest that members of ethnic minority out-groups may be especially likely to be innocent targets. The current experiment examined displaced aggression of Dutch youths against Dutch in-group peers versus Moroccan…

My paper situates literacy in the pre-symbolic implications of the maternal relation. Turning to child psychoanalysis, particularly Melanie Klein's theories of infancy and symbolization, my paper discusses the role the child's inner life plays in her engagements with literacy. Citing cases of second language learning, I pose literacy as…

Background: Peer influence on adolescent delinquency is well established, but little is known about moderators of peer influence. In this study, we examined adolescents' (targets) and their peers' psychopathic personality traits as moderators of peer influence on delinquency in peer networks. We used three separate dimensions of the psychopathic…

Two studies investigated young 2- and 3-year-old Turkish children's developing understanding of normativity and freedom to act in games. As expected, children, especially 3-year-olds, protested more when there was a norm violation than when there was none. Surprisingly, however, no decrease in normative protest was observed even when the actor…

Background: Childhood internalizing and externalizing problems are closely related and often co-occur. Directional models have been employed to test how these problems are related, while few studies have tested a third variables model. Objective: This study investigates whether internalizing and externalizing problems are reciprocally or…

Children's early social experiences shape their developing neurological and biological systems for good or for ill, writes Ross Thompson, and the kinds of stressful experiences that are endemic to families living in poverty can alter children's neurobiology in ways that undermine their health, their social competence, and their ability…

Objectives: With the continued push to implement empirically supported treatments (ESTs) into community-based organizations, it is important to investigate whether working condition disruptions occur during this process. While there are many studies investigating best practices and how to adopt them, the literature lacks studies investigating the…