Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) often experience co-occurring psychosocial difficulties, the developmental trajectories of which are still not fully understood. This study sought to explore the manifestation of such difficulties during childhood, through first-hand accounts of those with DLD and their close relatives.…

Cultural comparisons suggest that an understanding of other minds may develop sooner in independent versus interdependent settings, and vice versa for inhibitory control. From a western lens, this pattern might be considered paradoxical, since there is a robust positive relationship between theory of mind (ToM) and inhibitory control in western…

Loneliness becomes more prevalent as youth transition from childhood into adolescence. A key underlying process may be the puberty-related increase in biological stress reactivity, which can alter social behavior and elicit conflict or social withdrawal (fight-or-flight behaviors) in some youth, but increase prosocial (tend-and-befriend) responses…

Little is known about how children's value priorities develop over time. This study identifies children's value priority profiles and follows their development during middle childhood. Australian children (N = 609; ages 5-12 at Time 1) reported their values over 2 years. Latent Transition Analysis indicated four profiles: Social-Focus, Self-Focus,…

Niche construction is the modification of components of the environment through an organism's activities. Humans modify their environments mainly through ontogenetic and cultural processes, and it is this reliance on learning, plasticity and culture that lends human niche construction a special potency. In this paper we aim to facilitate…

Under what conditions will people generalize and remember observed social information? Preschool- (n = 44) and young school-age (n = 46) children and adults (n = 40) heard short vignettes describing characters' actions and motives on a single occasion. Characters were introduced using either proper names or category labels. Test questions asked…

Discussion focuses on ways in which Dodge's (1986) five-step model of social information processing, which has previously been used in organizing knowledge about the cognitive mediators of aggression among children, can be used to enhance the understanding of prosocial behavior. The model describes cognitive steps thought necessary to children's…

The evidence in behalf of the power of parents and others to modify TV's impact is, in fact, evidence that educators have an equally great--or even greater--role to perform. (Author)

The need is present for children to "unlearn" to play in a competitive and unsupportive environment and to return to natural and cooperative ways of playing. The advantage of a noncompetitive play structure is that it provides ground where players practice interacting and speaking supportively and appreciatively to each other. Players are then…

Studied the adjustment status associated with engagement in gender normative versus gender nonnormative aggression for boys and girls. Teacher and self-reports were used to assess internalizing and externalizing difficulties. Found that 9- to 12-year olds who engaged in gender nonnormative aggression were more maladjusted than children who engaged…

This paper focuses on the emergence of a sense of sexual difference during childhood and the attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality internalized by children. Data on a variety of issues associated with growing up gay or lesbian were gathered from young adult homosexuals (N=13) in South Carolina, school guidance counselors (N=142), preservice…

This paper examines whether a morally developed person is one who feels strongly about moral issues, or understands moral issues, or acts ethically when dealing with other people. It argues that the meaning of the term "moral" is concerned with how people ought to treat each other and that studies in morality should deal with the actions…

Two studies examined children's and adolescents' attitudes toward aggression. Found that boys viewed physical aggression as more hurtful than social aggression and girls rated social aggression as more hurtful. Girls rated an aggressor as more angry than did boys. Middle and high school participants viewed social aggression as indicating more…

This report is an attempt to analyze the aggression which occurs within extended dyadic interchanges of parent and child, husband and wife, or sibling and peers. An argument is made for a "performance" theory of children's noxious behaviors based on the assumption that most children, exposed to modeling and reinforcing contingencies through which…

This paper reports the first results of a three-year longitudinal study of the social maps of children beginning the transition to adolescence. This exploratory study is guided by Bronfenbrenner's conception of the ecology of human development stressing the importance of a phenomenological orientation to development in the context of ecological…