The well-known associations of peer status (acceptance and rejection) with prosocial and aggressive behaviors have mostly relied on peer status measures assessed at a single time point. This study adopted a person-oriented approach to examine longitudinal links between stable peer status profiles assessed at two time points and prosocial and…

Parent-child attachment is robustly associated with typical patterns of emotion regulation but rarely examined in relation to changes in emotion in response to events. We studied how attachment is related to emotion reactivity to positive and negative events and to immediate and delayed emotion recovery from social exclusion. The sample (78%…

The challenge and pleasures of studying child and adolescent peer experiences come from the complexity and the significance of these relationships for development in childhood and adolescence. In spite of the recognized strengths of the current literature on the effects of experiences with peers, research on peer experiences is often limited by an…

With the increasing availability of electronic devices, social media platforms are pervasive in adolescents' lives. Much of adolescents' peer interactions occur virtually--to the point that the line between online and off-line relationships has become blurred. This article aims at sharing starting points with researchers who are in the initial…

Gossip is an important part of adolescent development. Although gossip can be used for negative influence, it can also be used for positive relational purposes such as establishing norms and creating intimacy. Discerning the gossip sharer's motives is important for receivers to determine how to react. However, the lack of visual and tonal cues in…

Adolescents' interactions with friends were severely disrupted during stay-at-home orders associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The current study (N = 144, 49% female, 80% European American) considered adolescents' perceptions of this disruption and the implications of the disruption for their emotional adjustment. Adolescents reported that not…

Peer victimization has been assessed by using various methods, with little attention to methodological variance. Peer victimization assessments of 238 girls (M age = 9.77 years; 50% Black, 50% White) made by peers, teachers, and self in school, and peers and observers in afterschool playgroups, enabled examination of context and reporter effects…

Children ages 6-7 and 9-10 and emerging adults (n = 115) judged whether a character should approach a group of peers when they had a gender-neutral, gender-norm-consistent, or gender-norm-inconsistent activity. They also provided justifications and judgments about whether the character would be teased. Approaching peers with a…

Despite findings that developmental timing of maltreatment is a critical factor in predicting subsequent outcomes, children's developmental stage is understudied in maltreatment research. Moreover, childhood maltreatment is associated with the development of maladaptive peer relationships and psychopathology, with social cognition identified as a…

The current investigation uses longitudinal data to begin to understand the correlates of gender integration and youth emotional adjustment. Participants were 207 adolescents (mean age = 11.11 years, 53% female). The results demonstrated that, when compared to only having gender-segregated peer affiliates, gender-integrated peer affiliates, as…

The aim of the current study was to address the potential moderating roles of emotional display rule knowledge and race in the relation between false-belief understanding and preschoolers' positive interactions and behaviors with peers and teachers. Participants included 87 African American and Latinx preschoolers (52 boys and 35 girls, mean age…

Friendship is a developmentally significant relationship in childhood and adolescence that contributes to socioemotional, social-cognitive, and psychological development and well-being. It is a dyadic relationship based on mutual affection, with both friends thinking of each other as friends. Despite this definitional understanding of the dyadic…

In peer relations research, interest is increasing in studying the neural underpinnings of peer experiences in order to understand how peer interactions relate to adjustment and well-being. This review provides an overview of 27 studies examining how positive and negative peer experiences with personally familiar peers relate to neural processes.…

The goal of this study was to examine how individual differences in physiological arousal and reactivity moderated the relation between peer victimization and reactive and proactive aggression. Participants were 58 adolescents (61.2% boys; 54.9% African American) in the age range of 12--15. Participants self-reported peer victimization, reactive…

The goal of the present study was to test the hypothesis that, when children respond to peer provocation assertively, their physiology at that moment will be marked by high levels of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). Participants were 35 European American (66%), African American (27%), Latino American (3%), and mixed race/ethnicity (3%) children…