Bistrategic resource control entails using both coercive and prosocial strategies in competition for resources. The present study sought to clarify whether bistrategic involves more than simply using both strategies some of the time. Examining 88 preschoolers' coercion and prosociality over an entire school year, results showed that coercive…

Scholars have distinguished conceptually between multiple forms of social withdrawal among children and adolescents, but this distinction has yet to be investigated fully during emerging adulthood. Therefore, the overarching goal of this study was to employ a person-oriented approach to examine differences between subtypes of withdrawal on…

Sociocultural differences in children's use and understanding of emotional display rules have been under-researched. In the present study, 56 Dutch and 56 Iranian children aged 10-11 years took part in a structured interview about their experiences of using emotional display rules. In comparison with the Dutch children, the Iranian sample was more…

Residential college environments provide young people with distinctive relationship opportunities and challenges. A major purpose of the present study was to learn whether college students respond differently to conflict-of-interest vignettes in three different relationship contexts. Students were more likely to make negative interpretations about…

Children's reasoning about the appropriateness of accepting credit for one's own prosocial behavior was examined. Participants aged 7-11 years old in Japan and the USA (total N = 206) were presented with a series of stories in which a protagonist performs a good deed and is asked about it by another character. Across stories, the protagonist…

Current emotion knowledge (EK) measures examine only one component of the multifaceted construct. We examined the reliability and the construct validity of a new measure of EK, the emotion matching task (EMT). The EMT consists of four parts which measure the components of receptive EK, expressive EK, emotion situation knowledge, and emotion…

Although cross-cultural research concerning children's emotions is growing, few studies have examined emotion dysregulation in culturally diverse populations. This study compared 6- to 8-year-old children's reported methods of expressing and controlling anger, sadness, and physical pain, and their justifications for doing so across four groups in…

Two groups of male adolescents, incarcerated young offenders (N = 64, mean age = 16.3 years) and a comparison group of community youth (N = 60; mean age = 16.6 years), were administered the Empathy Continuum (measuring cognitive-affective responses to persons in emotionally evocative videotaped vignettes) and questionnaire measures of empathy,…

In this study, children's attachment relationships with their professional caregivers in center day care were observed for 48 children. We explored whether more positive caregiving was associated with a more secure attachment relationship and whether this association was stronger for more temperamentally irritable children compared to less…

Examined validity of the California Attachment Procedure (CAP), which does not involve mother-child separations. Overall, toddlers were more likely to be classified as secure in the CAP than in the Strange Situation (SS) test. The CAP yielded higher rates of security, particularly for children in day care, and security in the CAP correlated more…

This study compared the peer functioning of a community sample of preschool boys with pervasive hyperactivity (N=33) and comparison boys (N=34), and examined the extent to which any differences in peer functioning between these groups could be explained by comorbid child conduct problems and parenting factors. The quality of boys' peer relations…

The effects of an eight-week instructional program in creative dance/movement on the social competence of low-income preschool children were assessed in this study utilizing a scientifically rigorous design. Forty preschool children from a large Head Start program were randomly assigned to participate in either an experimental dance program or an…

Comparative behavioral research is important for a number of reasons and can contribute to the understanding of human behavior and development in many different ways. Research with animal models of human behavior and development can be a source not only of general principles and testable hypotheses but also of empirical information that may be…

The purpose of this study was to examine the social cognitions of peer-identified socially withdrawn children. Participants included 457 children from grades four, five and six (54% females, 46% males). Children completed a selection of self- and peer-report measures including: (1) peer-rated behavioral nominations; (2) hostile intent biases and…

Examined family- and sibling-type differences in sibling relationship quality and links between sibling relationship quality and child behavior problems among 192 families with a 5-year-old target child and an older sibling. Found that sibling negativity was highest in single-mother families. Found that full-siblings were more negative than half-…