Research Findings: Empathy plays an important role in children's early social-emotional development. However, there are not many instruments available for measuring the different aspects/levels of empathy in preschool children. Moreover, few studies examined the validity of the existing measures for empathy in Chinese children. The present study…

Educators recognize children's social competence as an indicator of school readiness. Children's social competence may be promoted prior to kindergarten through parents' discipline. We assessed parent discipline as a predictor of 37 low-income pre-schoolers' social skills over four months. Parents answered open-ended questions about how they would…

The purpose of this study was to explore the psychometric properties of the Portuguese version of the Child Routines Questionnaire: Preschool (CRQ:P), a parent-report measure developed to assess daily routines specific to preschool-age children. Participants included 208 parents of preschool children (M[subscript age] = 3.97 years old; SD = 0.95;…

At all ages, a child who can sustain attention, regulate emotions, inhibit impulsive behaviour, and relate appropriately to adults and peers is able to take advantage of learning opportunities in the classroom, and beyond. This study assesses differences in children's socio-emotional development according to family background, and whether early…

Unmet mental health needs are common in young children. Recent research on mental health care utilization has focussed mainly on parental perspectives. This study seeks to determine which types of behaviours exhibited by children predict the perceived need for action among both parents and daycare teachers. Parents and daycare teachers reported on…

Relationships between sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) and age and IQ were investigated in children with autism and/or ADHD covering broader age and IQ ranges than in previous studies. Mothers rated 1436 children with autism and 1,056 with ADHD (2-17 years, IQs 9-149) on Pediatric Behavior Scale SCT items. Increasing age correlated with SCT in the…

The assessment instruments for diagnosing children with autism spectrum disorder have been developed mostly in affluent, English-speaking countries. Among the most popular has been the Autism Diagnostic Interview--Revised. This article reports its use in Iran with the dual aims of confirming the factor structure of the revised Autism Diagnostic…

This study examined whether the mechanism linking changes in Mexican-origin adolescent mothers' depressive symptoms to children's subsequent self-regulation and academic readiness was via their emotion scaffolding when their children were 2, 3, 4, and 5 years of age. Data included home interviews with adolescent mothers (N = 204), observations of…

This research examined differences in beliefs about the acceptability of aggression and behavioral responses to aggression of preschool-aged children. Two groups, identified from teacher ratings, participated in the research. One group of children exhibited relationally aggressive behaviors, and a comparison group was identified with…

Humans possess a tendency to rapidly and consistently make character evaluations from mere facial appearance. Recent work shows that this tendency emerges surprisingly early: children as young as 3-years-old provide adult-like assessments of others on character attributes such as "nice," "strong," and "smart" based…

This study evaluated whether parenting and childcare experience across infancy and toddlerhood were associated with children's reading, math, and social-behavioural skills prior to kindergarten entry. Analyses also examined whether race or ethnicity moderated associations. A representative sample of Hispanic, Black, and White children from the…

Playing with peers is one of the most important contexts for the acquisition of social competencies in early childhood. This study examined the relation between children's play behavior, social acceptance in the peer group, and number of reciprocal friendships. One hundred and twenty eight children, aged between three and five years, participated…

This research brief provides a national portrait of the characteristics, development, and well-being of children and families at the beginning of the Head Start program year, using recent data from the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES 2014). This brief highlights descriptive information from the Fall 2014 Data Tables and Study…

Learning to behave in socially competent ways is an essential component of children's development. This study examined the relations between children's social, communicative, and cognitive skills and their behaviours during a cooperative task, as well as how these relationships change at different ages. Early school-age (5-8 years old) and middle…

It is argued that self-regulation skill is necessary both for displaying constructive behaviour and for controlling negative social behaviour, and self-regulation might affect social behaviours by increasing the ability to understand others' minds. In this research, in order to examine different aspects of self-regulation and their similarities…