Research Findings: Empathy plays an important role in children's early social-emotional development. However, there are not many instruments available for measuring the different aspects/levels of empathy in preschool children. Moreover, few studies examined the validity of the existing measures for empathy in Chinese children. The present study…

Research Findings: A successful transition from preschool to elementary school requires a high level of behavioral adaptation. The aim of our study was to analyze child-related factors in preschool that facilitate a positive behavioral adaptation in the transitional period to elementary school. A cluster analysis was conducted with the data from…

Research findings: Developing adequate socioemotional competencies is of great relevance for later health and academic outcomes. Shared book reading creates valuable social situations that provide opportunities to talk about characters' emotions and social interactions with children and thus might contribute to children's socioemotional…

Although tattling is a common practice among young children, there is little systematic research about its socioemotional correlates. The current study focused on children's tattling between the ages of 5 and 7, assessing both their explicit attitudes toward tattling and their actual reporting of a transgression and relating them to individual…

Research Findings: Research suggests that behavioral self-regulation skills are critical for early school success, including success in literacy, but few studies have explored the relations that behavioral self-regulation may have with different components of early literacy development. The present study investigated the longitudinal contribution…

Research Findings: The present cross-sectional study investigated the question of whether 6 different temperament dimensions (inhibition to novelty, social orientation, motor activity, positive emotionality, negative emotionality, and attention) influenced cognitive and affective theory of mind (ToM) in 168 children (86 three/four-year-olds and 82…

Research Findings: Drawing from a diverse community sample of 89 children, ages 4-6, their primary caregivers and teachers, this study examined the interplay of child emotional behavior problems, parent emotion socialization practices, and gender in predicting teacher-child closeness. Teachers reported on perceptions of closeness with children.…

Practice and Policy: The preschool years represent a critical time to foster family engagement in education for children growing up in poverty. Yet the ways in which Latino families with lower levels of income engage with their children's education at home and at school might look different from how middle-income parents from the dominant U.S.…

Research Findings: The present study investigated the social and cognitive precursors of vocabulary knowledge in 239 Turkish preschoolers both concurrently (Time 1 [T1] Mage = 53.29 months, SD = 10.19) and subsequently 1 year later (Time 2 [T2] Mage = 65.40 months, SD = 10.55). We examined the role of parenting behaviors by focusing on emotional…

Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to examine differences in the development of conflict management strategies, focusing on 3- and 5-year-olds, through a comparison of 3 neighboring Asian cultures, those of China (n = 114), Japan (n = 98), and Korea (n = 90). The dual concern model of conflict management was adopted to probe which…

Research Findings: Emotional and social competence are critical to a child's current and future well-being. A. D. Paterson et al. (2012) studied a sample of mothers and proposed that an adult's approach to the socialization of a child's emotions can be summarized in his or her parenting style as measured by the Emotion-Related Parenting Styles…

Research Findings: The present study investigated the role of ethnic similarity in the peer preferences and play quality of Latino and Chinese children enrolled in Head Start classrooms and the relationship between peer acceptance and social adjustment in these groups. Participants were 244 children (M = 4.6 years old) from Head Start preschools…

Research Findings: We examined relations of effortful control with parent emotion socialization practices and child social behavior using a person-centered approach in children ages 18 months to 5 years. A total of 76 parents (66 mothers, 10 fathers) completed questionnaires at screening and 6-month follow-up. There were no age differences in…

Research Findings: Self-regulation in young children predicts later social adjustment and academic success across cultural contexts. Therefore, it is crucial to identify factors that promote or inhibit behavioral self-regulation skills. In this study, we focus on gender and socioeconomic status (SES; parental education and income) as possible…

This study investigates social and ethnic differences in the use of early childhood education and care (ECEC) centers with different learning environments in an ECEC system with universal state-subsidized provision and low fees. Based on the German National Educational Panel Study-Kindergarten Cohort from 2011, we matched data on 587 groups in 253…