Despite the importance of school connectedness and bullying victimization in students' school burnout, to our knowledge, very few studies have analyzed their reciprocal associations, and most of them have used cross-sectional designs. So, the nature and directions of these relations have not been established yet. The general aim of this study was…

The development of emotion understanding in young Chinese preschoolers was examined. The overall developmental trend, as measured by the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC), proved similar to that found among preschoolers in Western Europe. However, Chinese children performed better at understanding the distinction between real and apparent…

Testing of directional dependence is a method to infer causal direction that recently has attracted some attention. Previous examples by e.g. von Eye and DeShon (2012a) and extensive simulation studies by Pornprasertmanit and Little (2012) have demonstrated that under specific assumptions, directional-dependence tests can recover the true causal…

Despite the robust link between dispositional optimism and well-being across the lifespan, the developmental origins of dispositional optimism are unknown. Understanding the pathways that lead to greater optimism during the transition from adolescence into young adulthood may be important given that this stage of the life course involves the…

The concept of direction dependence has attracted growing attention due to its potential to help decide which of two competing linear regression models (X ? Y or Y ? X) is more likely to reflect the correct causal flow. Several tests have been proposed to evaluate hypotheses compatible with direction dependence. In this issue, Thoemmes (2015)…

Externalizing behaviors observed in early childhood have been found to be stable, particularly for boys, but little research has investigated the antecedents of these behaviors, especially how the antecedents may differentially relate to externalizing behaviors in boys and girls. The goal of this study was to explore predictors of externalizing…

The current study examined the heterogeneity in the development of school-based prosocial behavior from Grades 1 to 12 and the role of multiple early childhood antecedents in predicting heterogeneous developmental trajectories of prosocial behavior in a sample of 784 children facing early risks and vulnerabilities (predominantly from low-income…

Theory of mind is one of the most important cognitive factors in social information-processing, and deficits in theory of mind have been linked to aggressive behavior in childhood. The present longitudinal study investigated reciprocal links between theory of mind and two forms of aggression--physical and relational--in middle childhood with three…

The purpose of the study was to evaluate bidirectional associations between peer acceptance and both emotion and effortful control during kindergarten (N = 301). In both the fall and spring semesters, we obtained peer nominations of acceptance, measures of positive and negative emotion based on naturalistic observations in school (i.e., classroom,…

Being surrounded by peers who are accepting of aggression is a significant predictor of the development and persistence of aggression in childhood and adolescence. Whereas past research has focused on social reinforcement mechanisms as the underlying processes, the present longitudinal study analysed the role of external control beliefs as an…

We investigated the association between marital quality and child behavior, assessing mother-child relationship quality as a potential mediator. The sample included 78 mothers with two target children (mean ages = 9.82 and 12.05 years, respectively). Mothers reported on their children's behavior as well as their marital quality, while each child…

The goal of the current investigation was to test emotion dysregulation as a mechanism explaining the longitudinal association between peer rejection and depressive symptoms across 1 school year in middle childhood and to determine whether this process differed based on gender and grade. Youth in Grades 3 through 6 (N = 131; 71 girls) and their…

Adolescents' negative social expectations of their peers were examined as long-term predictors of problematic self-reported social functioning. Early adolescent negative expectations were hypothesized to predict risk-averse functioning in late adolescence that would ultimately contribute to confirmation of those expectations. Utilizing…

Employing a multi-method approach, we investigated observed and parent-rated child behavioral inhibition (BI) and maternal reports of their own negative affectivity (NA) as predictors of young children's internalizing problems. Participants were 201 children who were siblings between 2.5 and 5.5 years of age (mean = 3.86, standard deviation =…

Directional dependency is a method to determine the likely causal direction of effect between two variables. This article aims to critique and improve upon the use of directional dependency as a technique to infer causal associations. We comment on several issues raised by von Eye and DeShon (2012), including: encouraging the use of the signs of…