This collection explores key issues related to infant and toddler wellbeing, offering diverse international perspectives on how wellbeing is culturally understood. Scholars from Drawing from Australia, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Brazil, Greece, Norway, Portugal and the UK present local conceptualizations that contribute to a broader, global…

Ownership is a cornerstone of many human societies and can be understood as a cooperative arrangement, where individuals refrain from taking each other's property. Owners can thus trust others to respect their property even in their absence. We investigated this principle in 5- to 7-year-olds (N = 152) from 4 diverse societies. Children…

Parent emotion talk (ET), a type of emotion-related socialization practice, is theorized to foster children's emotion-related regulation and socioemotional skills. Yet, there has been limited research linking parent ET to children's effortful control, a top-down regulatory process. Despite the observed cultural differences in ET between Chinese…

As the result of an increasingly technologically "connected" world, citizens are finding it difficult to effectively exercise civic responsibilities in relation to global issues such as climate change, poverty, and warfare (Tully, 2009). New understandings of the concept of "citizenship" are being extended beyond traditional…

Current policy guidance stresses the need for early identification of obstacles to learning and appropriate intervention. New standards for learning (Early Years Foundation Stage) place personal, social and emotional development (PSED) as central to learning and development. This paper reports a survey and follow-up interviews with early years…

Within psychology, most aspects of ownership have received scant attention or have been overlooked completely. In this chapter, the authors outline 21 reasons why it will be important (and interesting) to understand the psychological basis of ownership of property, including its developmental origins: (1) Daily life; (2) A human universal, and…

A child's ability to develop relationships and connections with others, a sense of who he or she is in the world, and an ability to control impulses and emotions are at the core of social-emotional development. In early childhood, parent reports are one of the most common methods for assessing this type of development. However, parents from…

Filling a significant gap in the literature, this book examines the impact of culture on the social behaviors, emotions, and relationships of children around the world. It also explores cultural differences in what is seen as adaptive or maladaptive development. Eminent scholars discuss major theoretical perspectives on culture and development and…

Tested a proposed developmental pathway for toddlers' mastery of skills in generating non-ritualized forms of cooperative coordinated action with peers. Studied nonverbal imitative acts among U.S. toddlers and toddlers of the Seltaman people of Papua New Guinea. Found that ready imitation of one another emerged during the same developmental period…

Examines sociolinguistic codes and social relations in daycare settings populated by children of four different social classes. Observations suggest that particular forms of social relations and attendant social control mechanisms do not have a one-to-one correspondence with particular sociolinguistic codes. Discusses links between gender…

The paper defines and discusses various social learning theories. Central to most theories of how an individual acquires socially acceptable behaviors are the processes of imitation, or observational learning, and identification, or modeling. The effectiveness of each process is noted. (SB)

This action research project implemented a program for improving social skills in order to establish positive interaction among 4th grade students at a northern Chicago suburban school. Social skills deficiency was documented through behavior checklists and referrals, teacher observations and student reflection. Teachers reported that low incomes,…