Gang involvement is associated with many negative outcomes. However, the social and emotional development of gang-involved youth has received little empirical investigation. This study examines the social and emotional outcomes of gang-involved youth. Data come from the 2009 Fairfax County Youth Survey administered to eighth, 10th, and 12th grade…

Background: Developmental language disorder (DLD) is common in children, but little is known about its association with quality of life (QoL) in middle childhood. QoL is a complex construct, aligning with an individual's sense of well-being and is related to functional limitations associated with DLD. Biopsychosocial models of disability account…

This poll was conducted between January 6-9, 2023 among a sample of 2,200 adults. The interviews were conducted online and the data were weighted to approximate a target sample of adults based on gender, educational attainment, age, race, and region. Among the key findings are: (1) Among those parents reporting a child switching school types,…

This study examined the perceptions of kindergarten readiness for kindergarten teachers, public prekindergarten teachers in both public and private settings, and parents. Data were collected and analyzed through a quantitative method using an inferential approach. A Likert-style survey was distributed to current kindergarten teachers,…

People with high-functioning Autism (HFA) can accurately identify social categories from speech, but they have more difficulty connecting linguistic variation in the speech signal to social stereotypes associated with those categories. In the current study, the perception and evaluation of talker age by young adults with HFA was examined. The…

Kindergarten retention is a popular practice for children who are considered unready for primary school. However, past research has not yet succeeded to find consistent, strong empirical evidence supporting the practice. In the current study, kindergarten repeaters' development in nine psychosocial domains is compared with that of equally at risk…

The Social Attribution Task, Multiple Choice is introduced as a measure of implicit social cognitive ability in children, addressing a key challenge in quantification of social cognitive function in autism spectrum disorder, whereby individuals can often be successful in explicit social scenarios, despite marked social adaptive deficits. The…

Friendships serve as a source of support and as a context for developing social competence. Although advanced coursework may provide a unique context for the development of friendships, more research is needed to explore exactly what differences exist. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the Adolescent Health and…

Chronic illnesses and disabilities may impair the attainment of age-typical developmental tasks, such as forming relationships with peers and gaining autonomy. Based on a systematic search in electronic databases and cross-referencing, 447 quantitative empirical studies were included which compared the attainment of developmental tasks of…

This study investigated whether the novel Comic Strip Task (CST) could be used to detect Theory-of-Mind impairments (ToM) in 4- to 8-year-old children with high functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Twelve children with either high-functioning autism or Asperger's Disorder and 12 typically-developing children completed the 21-item measure.…

Despite its importance in social development, social understanding has hardly been studied in high-ability children. This study explores differences in social understanding between children in high-ability and regular classrooms, specifically theory of mind (ToM) and perception accuracy, as well as associations between individual characteristics…

We examined social attention and attention shifting during (a) a play interaction between 12-month olds and an examiner and (b) after the examiner pretended to hurt herself. We coded the target and duration of infants' visual fixations and frequency of attention shifts. Siblings of children with autism and controls with no family history of autism…

The present longitudinal study used a social-ecological framework to explore the extent to which peer victimization and aggression were associated with changes in concentration problems and emotion regulation among elementary students in general versus special education, while accounting for student demographics and school contextual factors. Data…

Behaviorally inhibited children display a temperamental profile characterized by social withdrawal and anxious behaviors. Previous research, focused largely on adolescents, suggests that attention biases to threat may sustain high levels of behavioral inhibition (BI) over time, helping link early temperament to social outcomes. However, no prior…

Background: The sociocommunicative problems in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are traditionally linked to impairments in Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to ascribe mental states to others. Although ToM impairments are consistently reported in young children with ASD, findings on more advanced ToM understanding in older individuals with…