The present study investigated child depression symptoms, social skills, and mother-child conflict from mid-childhood to mid-adolescence. Bidirectional effects involving all three constructs were anticipated, as were differential effects for child gender. Participants included 893 families from the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development…

Research suggests that the quality of interactions and relationships teachers share with students and students' social skills are interrelated, but it is less clear if this relationship is bidirectional or consistent across elementary school. The purpose of this research study was to estimate the possible longitudinal and reciprocal effects of…

Parents play an important role in adolescents' development of empathy. However, less understood is what dimensions of parental behavior predict changes in empathy during early adolescence and whether effects of parental behavior are moderated by pubertal timing or differ by sex. This study used data from an ethnically diverse sample of 704 youth…

Teachers provide emotional and behavioral supports essential for success in the classroom. This study examined the roles of child interpersonal skills, teacher expectations, and school racial and poverty compositions on the quality of relationships formed between teachers and children. A subsample from the Early Childhood Longitudinal…

The purpose of this study was to examine whether gender would moderate the association between teacher--child relationship and children's social skills in a sample of preschool children. Classroom teachers (N = 32) rated the quality of the teacher--child relationship (Student--Teacher Relationship Scale; STRS) and children's social skills (Social…

Introduction: The goal of this study was to examine the relationship between teacher-student relationship quality, student teacher's self-efficacy belief, and students' behavioral and academic orientations. In this way, the current research might be helpful to understand and document the direct and indirect impacts of teacher self-efficacy beliefs…

We examined the extent to which children's skilled understanding and production of appropriate language (verbal ability) may relate to their peer functioning. Participants included two independent samples of children with and without Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD; Study 1, N = 124; Study 2, N = 137) who were administered a…

Research suggests that the relation between student-teacher conflict and children's externalizing behavior might be reciprocal, and possibly also between student-teacher conflict and children's social skills. Because children with externalizing behavior also tend to display low levels of social skills, we do not know if one or both of these…

Relations between paternal autonomy support and four aspects of adolescent social competence and responsibility at age 16 were examined using data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. With controls on maternal autonomy support, significant relations were observed between paternal autonomy support and three of the four…