This study examined parental romantic attachment security as a mediator of prospective associations between hostile interparental conflict and parental discipline (i.e., power-assertive, permissive, and inductive discipline) for mothers and fathers of young children. Furthermore, this study utilized a novel, automatic assessment of romantic…

Guided by emotional security theory, this study examined the family-level antecedents of children's reaction patterns to interparental conflict in a sample of 243 preschool children (M age = 4.60 years; 48% Black; 16% Latinx; 56% girls) and their parents in the Northeastern United States. Behavioral observations of children's responses to…

Theory and research have described developmental processes leading to damaged parent-child relationships, such as those that occur during a divorce. However, scholars dispute the scientific status of the literature on children who form unhealthy alliances with one parent against the other-termed parental alienation (PA). This comprehensive…

The present study examines perceptions of relationship quality as antecedents of best friendship dissolution. Participants included 230 students in Florida (United States; 54.3% girls; ages = 8-13; 39.6% European American, 27.0% Hispanic American, 21.7% African American, and 2.6% Asian American) and 496 students in Lithuania (49.0% girls; ages =…

One long-standing theoretical model of shyness proposes that the origins and maintenance of shyness are associated with an approach-avoidance motivational conflict (Asendorpf, 1990), such that shy individuals are motivated to socially engage (high approach motivation) but are too anxious to do so (high avoidance motivation). However, this model…

Youth with greater levels of narcissism face a wide array of difficulties in interactions with others. However, there exists a curious lack of research on their close relationships, such as friendships. In this study, we examined associations between narcissism and friendship features over time. Participants were 261 eighth and ninth graders (112…

Longitudinal multimethod data across three time points were examined to explore the associations between previously institutionalized toddlers' (N = 71; 59% female) socioemotional skills (Time Point 1: 18 months to 3-years-old), executive functioning (i.e., attention, working memory, inhibitory control) in the preschool years (Time Point 2:…

There is considerable variability in developmental outcomes of children whose mothers experience depression. Few longitudinal studies have examined contributions of paternal involvement in the association between maternal postnatal depression (PND) and offspring development. We examined pathways from maternal PND at 8 weeks (Edinburgh Postnatal…

Young children born preterm may be more affected by environmental influences than their full-term peers. Few studies have investigated whether such effects exist for older children and young adolescents. With participants aged 9 and 13 years, we examine whether children born preterm could be differentially affected by the quality of their…

There is a well-documented interdependency between destructive interparental conflict (IPC) and parenting difficulties (i.e., spillover effect), yet little is known about the mechanisms that "carry" spillover between IPC and parenting. Guided by a cascade model framework, the current study used a longitudinal, multimethod,…

Family systems research has identified two key processes (spillover and compensatory), linking interparental relationship quality to the parent-child relationship. However, previous research has focused on the parent as the sole initiator and had not often considered the role of the child in these processes. The present study adds to the…

Coercion theory well characterizes the behavioral aspects that often lead to dysfunctional family processes. Recent conceptualizations have incorporated emotion into models of coercive interactions, yet empirical evidence has been limited. In this study, repeated measures of mother-child dyads (N = 319) were assessed over the course of 2 years to…

This study examined the moderating role of effortful control in the association between interparental conflict and externalizing problems in a diverse sample of preschool children (N = 243; M age = 4.60 years). Using a multimethod, multi-informant, prospective design, findings indicated that the relation between interparental conflict and…

Understanding when children develop a sense of group boundaries has implications for conflict and its resolution. Integrating social identity development theory and the developmental peace-building model, we investigated whether preferences for ethno-religious ingroup symbols mediate the link from child age to outgroup prosocial giving among 5- to…

Interference control is central to cognitive control and, more generally, to many aspects of development. Despite its importance, the understanding of the processes underlying mean interference effects across development is still limited. When measured through conflict tasks, mean interference effects reflect both the strength of the initial…