Play materials designed to enhance children's pretense were investigated; namely, how the specific characteristics of the play sets (thematically open-ended village set vs thematically closed-ended train set) influenced children's play communication regarding their co-construction of shared meanings. Participants included 44 7-year-old focal…

Children with asthma face serious mental health risk, but the pathways remain unclear. This study aimed to examine bullying victimisation and perpetration in children with asthma and a comparison sample without a chronic health condition, and the role of bullying in moderating psychosocial adjustment outcomes for those with asthma. A sample of…

The aim of the study is to examine the predictive effect of self-regulation on peer relations. Data were collected from 3486 children. Of the study sample, 1736 were girls (49.9%) and 1747 were boys (50.1%). All the children were from high SES families and attending private preschools in 10 cities in Turkey. The results showed that all peer…

The study investigates child social competence a three different measurement levels (overall level, factor level, and item level), in a sample of parents and children participating in interventions towards emerging or present child problem behaviours. Parents of 550 children aged 3-12 (71% boys) evaluated social competence using the Home and…

This mixed-methods study's main goal was to examine whether teachers' conflict intervention strategies are contingent upon children's insistence level (i.e., unwillingness or inability to understand others' perspectives) and whether this support leads to different outcomes. An additional goal was to under-stand teachers' perceptions of peer…

The Dual Failure Model suggests that peer victimization (social failure) and academic difficulties (academic failure) mediate the association between externalizing and later internalizing problems. The present study sought to better understand why children with externalizing problems develop later internalizing problems by testing the Dual Failure…

This empirical study investigated the manifestation of prosocial sharing behaviours and how this interplayed with preschool-aged children's Theory of Mind (ToM), described in cognitive science as one's ability to ascribe mental states to others and how the ascribed states are used to explain and predict the actions f others, when using media and…

The construct of moral disengagement has increasingly been used by researchers to account for the asymmetry between children's moral reasoning and their moral behavior. According to this theory, moral disengagement occurs most aptly when children are motivated to violate their moral beliefs, such as when they hold antisocial goals during social…

Socially disruptive behavior during peer interactions in early childhood is detrimental to children's social, emotional, and academic development. Few studies have investigated the developmental underpinnings of children's socially disruptive behavior using genetically sensitive research designs that allow examination of parent-on-child and…

Research on school bullying often focuses on the directional path of bullying and/or victimization leading to psychosocial problems, while such one-dimensional views have been shown to be too simplistic. Furthermore, recent research has shown that patterns of bullying at school differ for boys and girls, which makes gender a particularly relevant…

Background: Individuals with fragile-X syndrome exhibit developmental delay, hyperexcitation and social anxiety; they also show lack of attention and hyperactivity. Few studies have investigated whether levels of functioning change with increasing age. Here, we explored developmental changes across adolescence in the cognitive and behavioural…

This study examines the early emergence of sensory reactivity and novelty awareness and their relations to children's behaviours with peers. A total of 260 parents (242 mothers, 18 fathers) and 10 teachers of 260 children (131 male, 129 female; M?=?63?months; SD?=?8.80; range?=?39-81) participated. Structural equation models indicate that sensory…

School playtime (recess) provides children an opportunity to engage in a range of active and sedentary play behaviors on a daily basis. However, little data have investigated changes in playtime behaviors over time. The aim of this study was to investigate how children's physical activity levels, the size of their social group, play behaviors and…

Many young people cannot remember a time before Instant Messaging (IM), cell phone text messaging, video conferencing, blogging, e-mailing, and MySpace and Facebook postings existed. Thanks to the ubiquitous nature of technology in the 21st century, digital natives are accustomed to seeing, and being seen, on a scale that was unimaginable by their…

Three variables were tested as moderators of the relationship between peer deviancy training and child antisocial behavior in a longitudinal study of 267 boys and girls from ages 5.3 to 9.3 years. Deviancy training was directly measured by observation of the discourse and play of children with same-gender classmates. Peer deviancy training was…