This study presents a novel task examining young children's affective responses to evaluative feedback--specifically, social acceptance and rejection--from peers. We aimed to determine (1) whether young children report their affective responses to hypothetical peer evaluation predictably and consistently, and (2) whether young children's responses…

Until now children's attention to the beliefs of people they wish to persuade has been examined experimentally via tasks that were artificial in important respects. To determine whether such research has underestimated children's psychological perspective taking, two studies that manipulated task elements pertinent to ecological validity were…

The goals of this study were to examine the relations between and trajectories of mothers' and children's social positive expressivity (PE). Mothers' and children's PE were observed annually for four years beginning when children were approximately 18 months old (N = 247; 110 girls). Based on correlations, there was evidence of rank-order…

Although the construct of solitary-active behavior calls for the aggregation of solitary-functional play and solitary-pretend play, there is little empirical support for combining them into one construct. Furthermore, little work has been done in early childhood to examine these behaviors on the playground. The purpose of this study was to observe…

This study focused on the associations between individual variations in children's motor abilities and individual differences in social participation and play behavior. Indoor and outdoor play behavior patterns of 88 kindergarten children were observed, and a battery of standard assessments of basic motor functions was administered. The findings…