Children's social skills are an important class of learned behaviors that facilitate success in the classroom; the primary method used in the assessment of social skills involves having parents or teachers complete standardized checklists using judgments of frequency or intensity. Children's (N = 1,102) social skills were modeled as time-varying…

This study examined the role of language, attention/impulse control, and mother-child play in predicting later peer competence by assessing 252 children at ages 3 and 8 years. Children born term (n = 90) or preterm (n = 162) were included to examine the question of how variability in skills influenced social outcomes and whether relations were…

Examined the effects of early child care experiences on children's social development between 1.5 and 15 years of age. Found that out-of-home care experiences appeared to influence social competence by fostering individual differences that remained stable through childhood and early adolescence. (Author/HTH)

The current study examines the social and behavioral development of school-age children with different histories of overweight onset. Eight thousand children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) participated. Three groups of children were identified for analysis: (1) those who were persistently overweight from…

This study examines the effects of intervention during the elementary grades on changes in school bonding from middle school through high school, using hierarchical linear modeling. Findings suggest that social development interventions through elementary school can have positive long-term effects on school bonding and demonstrate the importance…