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…

Many autistic people and people with non-spectrum neurodevelopmental disabilities (e.g. intellectual disability) report feeling lonely, which can negatively impact their well-being. There is little longitudinal research, however, tracking changes in how autistic people experience, conceptualize, and cope with loneliness throughout their lives. A…

Autism spectrum disorder is a complex neurological disorder characterized by impairments in communication and social interaction, limited patterns of behavior, interests and activities. Given the different forms of autism spectrum disorder and the fact that no two people are the same, an individual approach to each individual is required. Musical…

We present a longitudinal computational study on the connection between emotional and amodal word representations from a developmental perspective. In this study, children's and adult word representations were generated using the latent semantic analysis (LSA) vector space model and Word Maturity methodology. Some children's word representations…

The burden of mental health conditions and poor psychosocial wellbeing among children and adolescents is associated with significant lifetime costs, as mental health conditions is associated with learning lower educational attainment and impeding the development of socioemotional skills which translates into reduced earning potential and labor…

We examined the influence of prior expectations on 4- to 10-year-olds' and adults' preferences and emotions following an undesirable outcome (N = 205; 49% female, 51% male; 6% Asian, 1% Black, 13% Hispanic/Latino [non-White], 57% White, 18% multiracial, and 5% another race/ethnicity; 75% with a college-educated parent). Participants attempted to…

Care-experienced children and young people are likely to experience early adversities that place them at increased risk of developing physical and mental health difficulties. Physical activity can help address the varied needs and interests of care-experienced children and young people and become a tool to manage mental health and well-being…

A large body of research has investigated both the emotional elaboration of facial stimuli in adults and the development of children's recognition of emotional expressions. Yet, it is still not clear whether children's ability to recognize an emotional face may be modulated by prior exposure to a different face, and whether an emotional expression…

Research documenting the effects of trauma in early childhood describes the profound and long-term consequences of child abuse and neglect on the developing brain and the subsequent deficits in critical cognitive and social development. While educators have increasingly endeavoured to understand this impact and become more 'trauma-informed' in…

Anger is a central characteristic of negative affect and is relatively stable from infancy onward. Absolute levels of anger typically peak in early childhood and diminish as children become socialized and better able to regulate emotions. From infancy to school age, however, there are also individual differences in rank-order levels of anger. For…

Background: Parenting a child with a developmental disability presents a variety of long-term physical and emotional challenges. When exploring parent wellbeing, the disability field is dominated by a deficit model despite parents reportedly demonstrating coping and resilience. The current study is embedded in a salutogenic theory (Antonovsky,…

Background: According to the literature, children with Down syndrome (DS) have difficulties recognising facial expressions. Yet abilities to recognise emotional expressions are often assessed in tasks that imply comprehension of words for emotions. We investigated the development of these abilities in children with DS in a longitudinal study that…

The role of the emotions in learning has long been acknowledged but is often overlooked. This article considers the impact one particular emotion, happiness, has on learning and the school curriculum. Recent reports have drawn attention to the importance of happiness (or the lack of it) by highlighting concerns about childhood well-being. At the…

Nine therapists were interviewed regarding their reactions to children displaying sexually problematic behaviour and how they managed these reactions. The framework of countertransference was used to understand therapists' reactions. Data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. The participants reported a wide range of powerful and…

In this article, we describe a theoretical framework for understanding how persistent and extreme exposure to ethnic-political conflict and violence interacts with cognitive, emotional, and self processes to influence children's psychosocial adjustment. Three recent strands of theorizing guide our approach. First, we focus on how observational and…