Attachment is the emotional bond between children and their caregivers (parents or otherwise). Infants and young children usually have more than one selective attachment, and all of these attachment relationships, including those between children and teachers, have important effects on cognitive and social development. Secure attachment to a…

Recently, research has begun to identify cognitive and social-emotional predictors of early academic success. Yet few studies have examined the mechanisms by which children's social-emotional skills are associated with later academic success. The present study examines the associations between preschool emotion knowledge, kindergarten attention…

Young children's experiences outside of both home and school are important for their development. As women have entered the labor force, child care has become an increasingly important context for child development. Child care experiences prior to school entry have been well-documented as important influences on children's academic and…

This study examined the relationship between social functioning and emergent academic development in a sample of 467 preschool children (M=55.9 months old, SD=3.8). Teachers reported on children's aggression, attention problems, and prosocial skills. Preliteracy, language, and early mathematics skills were assessed with standardized tests. Better…

The current study evaluated the turn-taking skills of preschoolers with disabilities who participated in a social communication intervention that targeted initiations, responses, and turn-taking skills, and taught children to repair and revise and to avoid interruptions and overlaps. Ten children who enrolled in an inclusive at-risk classroom met…

Early exposure to the multiple risk factors associated with poverty is related to an elevated risk for academic difficulty. Therefore, it is important to promote academic resilience as early as possible and to identify factors that support resilience. Given the positive relation between early language skills and later academic outcomes, examining…

Despite policy and theoretical support for mixed-age classrooms in early childhood, research examining associations between age-mixing and children's outcomes is inconclusive and warrants further investigation, particularly in preschools serving children who are at risk for poor adjustment to formal schooling. One recent study conducted in…

Establishing positive peer relationships is integral to children's social development and is linked to a variety of long-term outcomes and life skills. The present study provides an in-depth examination of the ways in which child care providers guide young children in their early social experiences with peers during infancy, when social competence…

Early Head Start children may be more likely to exhibit difficulties with social-emotional functioning due to the high-risk environments in which they live. However, positive parenting may serve as a protective factor against the influence of risk on children's outcomes. The current study examines the effects of contextual and proximal risks on…

With the rising number of Latino and dual language learner (DLL) children attending pre-k and the importance of assessing the quality of their experiences in those settings, this study examined the extent to which a commonly used assessment of teacher-child interactions, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), demonstrated similar…

The quality of the child care environment and caregiver practices can potentially have significant, lasting impact on children's social development. This study involves the development and a small-scale efficacy trial of the Carescapes program, a video-based training program that focuses on promoting positive social development in young children…

Few researchers have questioned the validity of traditional parenting dimensions (based largely on Baumrind's [Baumrind, D. (1967). Child care practices anteceding three patterns of preschool behavior. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 75, 43-88; Baumrind, D. (1971). Current patterns of parental authority. Developmental Psychology, 4, 1-103] work)…

We examined children's growth in school-related learning and social skills over the pre-Kindergarten (pre-K) year in state-funded programs designed to prepare children for kindergarten. We expected that children's gains in academic and social skills could be attributed to variations in the structural and classroom process dimensions of program…

This study describes pre-kindergarten teachers' use of kindergarten transition practices and examined the extent to which these practices were associated with kindergarten teachers' judgments of children's social, self-regulatory, and academic skills upon their entry into kindergarten. Participants were 722 children from 214 pre-kindergarten…

We examined the role of the teacher-child relationship quality (close, dependent, and conflictive) on preschoolers' (N=95) academic readiness for kindergarten, and we tested children's prosocial and aggressive behavior and peer group exclusion as mediators of this relation. A unique feature of this study is the ethnically and socio-economically…