Guided by family risk and allostasis theoretical frameworks, the present study utilized a prospective longitudinal design to examine associations among family risk experiences, basal cortisol patterns, and cognitive functioning in children. The sample included 201 low-income children living within a midsize city in the Northeastern United States.…

How do we Christian educators help children live their lives holistically? The purpose of this study is to address this question and to examine a method for children and Christian families in Korea to form Christian faith through daily rituals at home. Using participant observation and focus group interviews, I examined what the children and…

Previously we found in preschool that child-directed pretend play in small playing groups importantly improves cognitive competence in mixed-age environment and that the effect is based on close coupling between affective and cognitive domain. To foster affective and cognitive intertwining, it is reasonable to select the most favored pretend plays…

The author has written this latest volume to help parents and educators understand children's cognitive development and provide suggestions on how to nurture children to their full potential. A companion to "The Adolescent Brain", this rich resource: (1) Examines the neurobiology of childhood, explaining the body/brain systems that develop during…

Residential crowding in both U.S. and U.K. samples of 36-month-old children is related concurrently to the Bracken scale, a standard index of early cognitive development skills including letter and color identification, shape recognition, and elementary numeric comprehension. In the U.S. sample, these effects also replicate prospectively.…

Head Start is a federally funded preschool program for poor children designed to help close the gap between those children and their more advantaged peers before they begin public schooling. Given that Head Start appears to have positive long-run impacts on its recipients, a natural and important next question to ask is: What are the channels…

This survey of 11-, 12-, and 15-year-old English schoolchildren suggests that (1) at each level of family environment, increases in affective characteristics are associated with increments in cognitive scores, and (2) at each level of attitudes toward school and locus of control, increases in family environment scores are related to increments in…

Presents a model for understanding children's formation of schemas of self, other, and how self and other do and should communicate emotion. Attributes important roles to families' tendencies to display or not display emotion and to their rules regarding desirability and importance of communicating emotion. Notes that child characteristics and…

This paper challenges those involved in early childhood education to reexamine unquestioned assumptions concerning the benefits of early schooling. A synergic effect is posited by bringing together research areas that had formerly remained somewhat autonomous: Neurophysiology, vision, hearing, parent attitudes, affective domain, comparative school…