Mentalizing--the ability to represent or infer the mental states of others--continues to develop into and throughout adolescence. Increased mentalizing sophistication during adolescence is thought to support the navigation of increasingly complex social relationships and contexts. However, developmental science has yet to aggregate the seemingly…

Research Findings: This study aimed to explore the mediating role of social competence and the moderating role of teacher-child conflict in the relation between maternal overcontrol and Chinese preschooler's internalizing problems. Participants were 216 children aged 3-4 years, from two kindergartens in Shanghai, China. Mothers completed the…

Social adjustment is critical to educational and occupational attainment. Yet little research has considered how the school's socioeconomic context is associated with social adjustment. In a longitudinal sample of Australian 4- to 8-year-olds (N = 9369; 51% boys) we tested the association between school average socioeconomic status and social…

'Camouflaging' is a set of strategies used by autistic people to hide or compensate for their autistic characteristics to fit into predominantly non-autistic social environments. Many researchers have used the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q) to measure camouflaging. However, there have been questions about the construct validity…

The study examines students' skills at kindergarten entry and gains in skills across kindergarten through first grade (pre-COVID) predicting literacy, language, math, inhibitory control, and social adjustment in the spring of 4th grade, after schools re-opened. Longitudinal data were collected on students (N=785) who were linguistically diverse…

This research aims to examine the practices of school counsellors working in preschool education towards children's school adjustment in academic, social, emotional, and behavioural dimensions. The research is a qualitative study with participants consisting of 30 school counsellors working in preschool education. The participants were determined…

This study examined the reciprocal relations among maternal sensitivity, paternal sensitivity, and children's social adjustment from 54 months of age to 5th grade. Using a subsample from the National Institute of Child Health and Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 829), we employed an autoregressive latent trajectory…

Social camouflaging describes the use of strategies to compensate for and mask autistic characteristics during social interactions. A newly developed self-reported measure of camouflaging (Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire) was used in an online survey to measure gender differences in autistic (n = 306) and non-autistic adults (n = 472)…

Background and Aim of Study: The mental health and social adaptation of young students and cadets in wartime conditions is a new and understudied problem. The aim of the study: to identify the particularities of psychological well-being and social adaptation of students and cadets in wartime conditions. Materials and Methods: Our study was…

This study examined relations between behavioral inhibition in toddlerhood and social, school, and psychological adjustment in late adolescence in China. Data on behavioral inhibition were collected from a sample of 2-year-olds (initial N = 247). Follow-up data were collected at 7 years for peer relationships and 19 years for adjustment across…

Effective mental health services require accurate assessment of psychosocial impairments linked to mental health concerns. Youth who experience these impairments do so within and across various contexts (e.g., school, home). Youth may display symptoms of mental health concerns without co-occurring impairments, and vice versa. Yet, nearly all…

Globally, universities have an interest in recruiting the most talented students; however, limited attention has been given to how these students experience their transition and adjustment to university life. This mixed-methods study analyzes the academic, social, emotional, and institutional dimensions of gifted students' adjustment to university…

This study assessed the potential short-term effects of COVID-19 stay-at-home restrictions on ratings of ASD and comorbid symptoms severity and adaptive functioning of 69 youth, ages 8-16 years with ASD without intellectual disability. Parent/caregiver ratings were being collected in fall and spring over approximately two years when the…

The aim of this short-term longitudinal study was to explore the moderating role of insecure mother--child attachment (i.e., ambivalent and avoidant) in the relations between shyness and indices of adjustment difficulties in early childhood. Participants were 360 children (200 boys and 160 girls, M[subscript age]=4.72 years, SD=0.63) attending…

This study examined whether compromised emotional clarity prospectively contributes to maladaptive social behavior (aggression, anxious solitude) and adverse social experiences (low social status, victimization) in early adolescence; gender differences in these effects also were explored. Youth (N = 636, [x-bar] age = 10.94, SD = 0.37) completed a…