Background: Parents of children with intellectual disabilities (ID) typically report elevated levels of parenting stress, and child behaviour problems are a strong predictor of heightened parenting stress. Interestingly, few studies have examined child characteristics beyond behaviour problems that may also contribute to parenting stress. The…

To describe trajectories of aggressive behaviors for adolescents living in rural areas, we compared the patterns, timing and sex differences in development of physical and social aggression using five waves of data collected from youth in school surveys administered over 2.5 years. The sample (N = 5,151) was 50.0% female, 52.1% Caucasian and 38.2%…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of an intervention designed to improve early parenting by increasing understanding of infant developmental needs and promoting maternal responsiveness as indicated by increased positive behavior support for infants and decreased psychological control. At-risk mothers were randomly assigned to control or…

This study critically contrasts global identity with domain-specific identities (political, religious and occupational) and considers context and gender as integral parts of identity. In a cross-sectional survey, 1038 Greek Cypriot adolescents (449 boys and 589 girls, mean age 16.8) from the three different types of secondary schools (state, state…

Children with significant behavior problems are at risk for poor school adaptation and a host of deleterious school outcomes. Given the time children spend in school, there is a need to better understand the normative contexts and processes within schools that may enhance the positive adaptation of children with significant behavior problems. This…

When the banana is growing, the broadest part of the banana is located at the bottom, while the tapered end points upward. It appears upside down, however, from the banana tree's perspective, it is growing right side up. The author observes that the students in her classroom labeled by society as "at risk," are also, in a sense, "upside down."…

The foundations of brain architecture are established early in life through a continuous series of dynamic interactions in which environmental conditions and personal experiences have a significant impact on how genetic predispositions are expressed. Because specific experiences affect specific brain circuits during specific developmental…

This study assessed the development of spontaneous analogical transfer from story problems to physical tasks by examining the effects of practice alone, without intervention or explicit prompting. Participants were 216 children aged 5-8 years. The microgenetic technique was incorporated with each age group by following them for six consecutive…

Current individual-based, process-oriented approaches (dynamic systems theory and the microgenetic perspective) have led to an increase of variability-centred studies in the literature. The aim of this article is to propose a technique that incorporates variability in the analysis of the "shape" of developmental change. This approach is…

Event-related brain potentials were measured in 7- and 12-month-old infants to examine the development of processing happy and angry facial expressions. In 7-month-olds a larger negativity to happy faces was observed at frontal, central, temporal and parietal sites (Experiment 1), whereas 12-month-olds showed a larger negativity to angry faces at…

A major problem for developmental science is understanding how the cognitive and emotional networks important in carrying out mental processes can be related to individual differences. The last five years have seen major advances in establishing links between alleles of specific genes and the neural networks underlying aspects of attention. These…

The goal of this research was to assess children's beliefs about the reality status of storybook characters and events. In Experiment 1, 156 preschool age children heard realistic, fantastical, or religious stories, and their understanding of the reality status of the characters and events in the stories was assessed. Results revealed that…

In the standard Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), participants have to choose repeatedly from four options. Each option is characterized by a constant gain, and by the frequency and amount of a probabilistic loss. Crone and van der Molen (2004) reported that school-aged children and even adolescents show marked deficits in IGT performance. In this study,…

To speak of cognitive regulation versus emotion regulation may be misleading. However, some forms of regulation are carried out by executive processes, subject to voluntary control, while others are carried out by "automatic" processes that are far more primitive. Both sets of processes are in constant interaction, and that interaction gives rise…

Museum educators often think about what they want children to take away with them from museum visits. But at least as important is what children bring to these visits. Research in developmental psychology shows that children and adolescents progress through a sequence of ways of understanding knowledge and knowing--understanding that lies at the…