Behavioral regulation is an important school readiness skill that has been linked to early executive function (EF) and later success in learning and school achievement. Although poverty and related risks, as well as negative parenting, have been associated with poorer EF and behavioral regulation, chaotic home environments may also play a role in…

Background: Maternal executive function and household regulation both are critical aspects of optimal childrearing, but their interplay is not understood. We tested the hypotheses that (a) the link between challenging child conduct problems and harsh parenting would be strongest for mothers with poorer executive function and weakest among those…

Prosocial behavior in early childhood is a precursor to later adaptive social functioning. This investigation leveraged mother-reported, physiological, and observational data to examine children's prosocial development from age 2 to age 4 (N = 125). Maternal emotion socialization (ES) strategies and children's parasympathetic regulation have each…

This study addressed questions about the relations between personal characteristics and aspects of home environments and young children's subsequent academically relevant peer interaction behaviors in kindergarten in a sample of 108 preschool-age children (57 males, 51 females) from 2 Midwest cities and neighboring communities. A year prior to the…

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care is an ongoing, prospective, 3-year longitudinal study of over 1,300 full-term healthy infants and families from 10 sites across the United States. While the sample is not nationally representative, the subjects come from major regions of the country: the…