Our primary objective was to examine the extent to which moment-to-moment associations between preschool-aged children's behavior and maternal emotional support differed for mothers showing different levels of parasympathetic engagement. We used behavioral observations of maternal and child behavior and maternal changes in cardiac vagal tone…

Understanding executive functions (EFs) development is of high value to global developmental science. Recent calls for a more inclusive and equitable developmental science argue that tasks and questionnaires that are developed using only a subset of the population are not likely to be appropriate for EFs measurement in global contexts unless…

Social communication and executive functioning challenges as well as co-occurring anxiety/depression may make acquiring the skills needed to manage daily life tasks difficult for diploma-track autistic youth, thus limiting their participation in adult roles. This study describes the associations between executive function, social communication…

Despite frequent reliance on teacher and parent ratings of children's behavior for multi-informant assessment, agreement between teachers' and parents' ratings is low. This study examined the predictive utility of teacher and parent ratings for children's self-regulatory outcomes (i.e., executive function, continuous performance task) in four…

Background: Parenting strategies such as communicating clear expectations, providing calm directions, and teaching specific skills can strengthen young children's social-emotional development. Parenting programs for children with disruptive behavior often emphasize gaining compliance via effective directives, and less on how to facilitate child…

We examined representations of attachment security using story stem narratives (Manchester Attachment Story Task, MCAST) and a family drawing task in 50 Greek children between 4 and 6 years old. Additionally, we examined the association between attachment classification based on the family drawing task and maternal reports of social and emotional…

Guided primarily by life history theory, this study was designed to identify how and why early exposure to caregiver intimate relationship instability uniquely predicts children's externalizing symptoms in the context of other dimensions of unpredictability characterized by residential and parental job transitions. Participants included 243…

The present research explored the relation between socio-cognitive skills, as Theory of Mind and affective empathy, social behaviour, attachment style and scholastic success in children, aged from 8 to 11 years (N = 159; 90 females, 69 males; M[subscript age] = 9,60; DS = 0.78). Several assessment tools were administered to children on mentalizing…

The decision to intentionally withhold truthful information, or deception, is a key component of moral development and may be a precursor to more serious anti-social tendencies. Two factors, executive function (EF) and temperamental fear are each thought to influence childhood deception. Few studies, however, have explored deception in relation to…

In light of emerging evidence suggesting that the affective quality of parent-child relationships may relate to individual differences in young children's executive functioning (EF) skills, the aim of this study was to investigate the prospective associations between attachment security in toddlerhood and children's EF skills in kindergarten.…

We propose a model linking the early parent-child mutually responsive orientation (MRO), children's temperament trait of effortful control, and their internalization of conduct rules. In a developmental chain, effortful control was posited as a mediator of the links between MRO and children's internalization. MRO was further posited as a moderator…

Background: Changes in reward processing are thought to be involved in the etiology of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), as well as other developmental disorders. In addition, different forms of therapy for ADHD rely on reinforcement principles. As such, improved understanding of reward processing in ADHD could eventually lead to…

Two studies tested hypotheses about the distinctive psychological consequences of children's patterns of responding to interparental conflict. In Study 1, 174 preschool children (M = 4.0 years) and their mothers participated in a cross-sectional design. In Study 2, 243 preschool children (M = 4.6 years) and their parents participated in 2 annual…

The degree to which experiential avoidance may represent a functional response class was examined by comparing the perseverance of participants displaying high versus low levels of experiential avoidance, as assessed by the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (Hayes et al., 2004), during a "psychological biathlon" consisting of 2 challenging tasks…

There is evidence for co-occurrence of social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD) and communication/language difficulties in children. Our research investigated the feasibility of vocalisation technology, its combination with observational software and the efficacy of a novel coding scheme and assessment technique. It aimed to…