Motivation is a key factor for child development, but very few studies have examined child and family predictors of both child task and perceived motivation. Thus, the three aims of this 6-month longitudinal study in preschoolers with global developmental delays (GDD) were to explore: 1) differences between task and perceived motivation in…

Endeavors supporting college students' positive psychosocial development are gaining attention and investment in various countries and social contexts. Higher education experiences provide new academic, social, and vocational advancement opportunities at a critical developmental stage. However, higher education can also cause distress due to the…

Extracurricular activities represent a key setting for prevention and promoting positive youth development. However, to date, a crucial aspect of activity participation--activity breadth (participation in a variety of extracurricular settings)--has been largely overlooked as a resource for bolstering adolescents' long-term adjustment, especially…

Teacher-student trust is associated with the social and emotional development of students, their school connectedness and engagement, and their academic achievement. However, few studies have examined how trust develops between teachers and students in ninth grade, a critical year in high school for students to start off on-track. Even less…

Transitioning from primary school to secondary school is an important and defining stage for many pupils which can bring both positive and negative effects on pupil's wellbeing. It is a time that involves rapid physical, social and emotional development which can bring about feelings of loneliness, pressure of social acceptance, stress and a rise…

Background: The elaborated environmental stress hypothesis (EESH) provides a framework that describes how motor skills may indirectly cause internalizing problems through various mediating psychosocial factors. While there is evidence to support this framework, little is known about how the proposed relationships may vary across different stages…

Perceived discrimination is common and a significant source of stress that may have implications for personality development across adulthood. In this study, we examined whether experiences with discrimination were associated with maladaptive changes in the 5 major dimensions of personality using 2 longitudinal samples that differed in age and…

The transition to formal education is a critical transition in children's lives that has importance for socio-emotional and behavioral functioning. In the transition process, teachers are key players who work intensively with children and their families. This article focuses on teachers' perceptions of children´s socio-emotional behavior during…

Mitigating the perils of transition to early adolescence, while also supporting the promise of this stage of human development, has been a major focus of middle school reform (Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, 1989; Jackson & Davis, 2000). As a result, there are many classroom-based educational programs that target the social and…

Interactions between teachers and students contribute to the quality of the classroom setting and growing evidence that the affective undertone of these interactions matters when considering outcomes for both the students and the teachers they serve. Although numerous measures of teacher-student interactions exist, relying on self-report or…

The increasingly prolonged transition to adulthood has raised concerns about the nature and timing of growth in the attainment of important psychosocial competencies in young people. Changes over time in self-reported competencies (work orientation, identity, intimacy) were examined in 198 Canadians, who were followed for the first 4 years of…

Social and play skills are important developmental tasks for young children. Typically developing children learn appropriate social skills quite naturally and without specific intervention while interacting with other children in playful environments. Young children with disabilities, however, usually need social skills interventions, and these…

This study concerns the types of influence exerted by staff individuals and units and nonstaff individuals and units in the activities of regional economic and social development organizations. Four different social units, each involving different theoretical considerations, are involved in the analysis. These four social units are: social action…

Discusses various aspects of adolescents' needs and feelings in relation to their efforts to become competent human beings. (SS)

Compared disabled (n=45) and nondisabled (n=45) undergraduates to determine how disabled compare to nondisabled in developmental tasks required of college students; whether academic performance can be predicted on basis of developmental skills; and whether age at onset of disability influences college student developmental skills. Found…