This study explored the salient characteristics of transactions within parent-child engagement and investigated relationships between transactional characteristics and future identification of autism. The main aims of the study were to (1) examine if parents/children and their initial behaviors impact the length of transaction; (2) determine…

Children's spatial activities and parental spatial talk were measured to examine their associations with variability in preschoolers' spatial skills (N = 113, Mage = 4 years, 4 months; 51% female; 80% White, 11% Black, and 9% other). Parents who reported more diversity in daily spatial activities and used longer spatial talk utterances during a…

This study examined gene-environment correlation (rGE) in intellectual and academic development in 561 U.S.-based adoptees (57% male; 56% non-Latinx White, 19% multiracial, 13% Black or African American, 11% Latinx) and their birth and adoptive parents between 2003 and 2017. Birth mother intellectual and academic performance predicted adoptive…

Stereotyped beliefs about the teen years may guide individuals' cognition, behaviors, and well-being. This study explored associations between parents' generalized views of typical adolescents and parent and teen well-being and examined parent-adolescent communication (PAC) as a potential mechanism in that association. One-hundred twenty…

The present study examined mothers' emotional availability (EA) during daytime free play and bedtime as a mediator of linkages between maternal nighttime sleep and infant-mother attachment. Participants included 153 mothers (85% White) with infants (53% female). When infants were 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12 months, maternal sleep was assessed using…

Age-related developments in sleep during the preschool years are normative and consequential. Yet, very few studies have examined the antecedents of individual differences in such developments, and most have used parental reports of child sleep. This study aimed to investigate the roles of mutual responsiveness in mother-child interactions and…

Research Findings: This study aims to examine the latent profiles of parents' mediation and their predictors, as well as links between different profiles and children's problematic media use. A total of 1415 children aged 3-6 years (47.8% boys) and their paired parents were recruited in Shanghai, China and surveyed demographic information,…

Infants can help and share in the second year of life. However, there is limited knowledge as to variability in these behaviors as a function of target (e.g., caregiver vs. unfamiliar adult) and the influence of caregiver support on infant prosocial behavior. Infants (N = 268, 124 female) at 1-2 years of age (M = 1.47, SD = 0.27) and again at 2-3…

The number of older siblings a child has is negatively correlated with the child's verbal skills, an effect that is well known in the literature. However, few studies have examined the effect of older siblings' sex, of the age gap between siblings, of having foreign-speaking parents, as well as the mediating role of parental interaction. Using…

Anti-racist efforts require talking with children about race. The present work tested the predictors of U.S. adults' (N = 441; 52% female; 32% BIPOC participants; M[subscript age] = 35 years) conversations about race with children across two timepoints in 2019. Approximately 60% of adult participants talked to their children (3-12 years) about…

Purpose: Fathers play a critical but underresearched role in their children's cognitive and linguistic development. Focusing on two-parent families with a mother and a father, the present longitudinal study explores the amount of paternal input infants hear during the first 2 years of life, how this input changes over time, and how it relates to…

It is well established that deictic gestures, especially pointing, play an important role in children's language development. However, recent evidence suggests that other types of deictic gestures, specifically show and give gestures, emerge before pointing and are associated with later pointing. In the present study, we examined the development…

Recent evidence suggests that deaf children with CIs exposed to nonnative sign language from hearing parents can attain age-appropriate vocabularies in both sign and spoken language. It remains to be explored whether deaf children with CIs who are exposed to early nonnative sign language, but only up to implantation, also benefit from this input…

Although more is known about how general parenting practices predict social-emotional strengths in children, less research has looked at parent involvement in education and children's social-emotional strengths. This study examined the extent to which parent involvement, specifically home-based involvement, parent-teacher trust, and home-school…

Mind-mindedness (MM) refers to caregivers' proclivity to treat a child as having an active and autonomous mental life. It has been shown to be a powerful predictor of many developmental outcomes and to mitigate the impact of risk conditions. However, longitudinal studies on MM reporting changes over time and individual differences among mothers…