Background: Initiating meaningful moments of interaction with people with profound intellectual disabilities can prove to be difficult for support staff. Exploring the behaviour of support staff that precedes the initiations of behaviour by people with profound intellectual disabilities helps to shed light upon the potential facilitating effects…

This study aims to identify early childhood sociability trajectories and examine their longitudinal associations with behavior problems. Using a population-based data set presented by the Panel Study on Korean Children, sociability trajectories from age 2 to age 4 were identified by latent class growth analysis. Associations between sociability…

Empirical studies have documented a variety of social abnormalities in infancy that indicate risk for later social and behavioral difficulties. There is very little research illustrating the presence of such behavioral vulnerabilities with frequent repeated measures, and the feasibility of designing interventions for improving social engagement in…

This study examined emotion understanding and reconciliation in 47 (24 girls) 4-6-year-old preschool children. Participants first completed emotion recognition tasks and then answered questions regarding reconciliation tendencies and affective perspective-taking in a series of overt and relational aggressive conflict scenarios. Children's teachers…

In this study, we examined the characteristics of adolescents' deep interests or "sparks," the role of relationships in supporting the development of sparks, and whether having a spark was associated with positive developmental outcomes. Participants included 1,860 15 years olds from across the United States who participated in the…

The social vulnerabilities associated with young children with autism are recognized as important intervention targets due to their influence on subsequent development. Current research suggests that interventions that combine motivational and social components can create meaningful changes in social functioning. Simultaneously, it is hypothesized…

The aim of this study is to answer the following question: what do children tell about their well-being in Finnish day care centres? The theoretical and methodological framework of this study is based on a narrative approach. The research material was collected by participating in the everyday life of three groups of children and listening to…

Examining motivational variables may prove to be particularly fruitful towards our understanding of classroom processes, student behaviors and school outcomes. The present study examined the role of personal and contextual goals (goals and goal structures) towards explaining social relationships (peer, teacher-student and home-school). 1493 fifth…

Although many individuals with AS keenly desire social relationships, they are often unsuccessful in developing and maintaining them. Emotional intelligence (EI) as both an ability and trait is a construct that offers potential to enhance understanding of emotional and social characteristics of individuals with AS. Twenty-five young adults (aged…

Physical educators at all levels have observed learners in a school-based physical education setting as well as physical activity or sport settings outside of organized school curricula demonstrating behaviors deemed inappropriate or inconsistent with professional standards. Because sport is such a public, social, and international phenomenon,…

A frequently noted but largely anecdotal behavioral observation in Williams syndrome (WS) is an increased tendency to approach strangers, yet the basis for this behavior remains unknown. We examined the relationship between affect identification ability and affiliative behavior in participants with WS relative to a neurotypical comparison group.…

Children with autism often exhibit low levels of social engagement, decreased levels of eye contact, and low social affect. However, both the literature and our direct clinical observations suggest that some components of intervention procedures may result in improvement in child-initiated social areas. Using an ABAB research design with three…

The authors investigated whether adversity in a female, before she conceives, will influence the affective and social behavior of her progeny. Virgin female rats were either undisturbed (controls) or exposed to varied, unpredictable, stressors for 7 days (preconceptual stress [PCS]) and then either mated immediately after the end of the stress…

The recent publication of David Heise's "Expressive Order" (2007) provides an occasion for discussing some of the key ideas in Affect Control Theory. The theory proposes that a few dimensions of affective meaning provide a common basis for interrelating personal identities and social actions. It holds that during interpersonal interactions, social…

Personal relationships can provide comfort and pleasure or strain and disappointment. Relationships which provide the greatest opportunities for support and companionship may also be the ones most open to negative exchanges. Theoretical perspectives can help predict how positive and negative interpersonal experiences can together affect…