Few studies have examined childhood and adolescent animal cruelty motives. Using a sample of 261 inmates surveyed at both medium and maximum security prisons in a southern state, the present study examined the impact of demographic attributes and situational factors relating specifically to a range of animal cruelty motivations. Almost half of the…

Parents generally want the best for their children. They want their young children to feel supported while being challenged and encouraged and led toward independence. Parenting that is most supportive of a child's development and adjustment to the outside world is characterized by consistent enforcement of standards for behavior, concern for…

Perceptual perspective taking is regarded as a major milestone in sociocognitive development that sighted children have generally mastered by the age of 4-5 years. In children who are blind, however, most prior research reports a strong developmental delay of several years compared with sighted peers. After examining the current state of research,…

The study presented here discusses rules and agreements in a preschool group from the viewpoint of the development of a community of learners. What kinds of rules and agreements exist in the preschool group, how they are articulated and how they are adopted at the beginning of the preschool year were the questions addressed in this small-scale…

A modified elicited imitation task was used to examine the development of the ability to resist and overcome interference in the 2nd and 3rd years of life. In the modified task, distractor props were included in the test array, so that children could imitate the modeled sequence but could also produce actions with the additional props provided,…

Preschoolers' prosocial and aggressive behaviours were explored longitudinally, with a focus on the inferred underlying motives of these behaviours. Forty-four children (initially 22-40 months of age) were observed in naturalistic interactions with peers, during a 2-month period, for each of three consecutive years. Three categories of prosocial…

Rich with clinical insights, this volume reviews the state of the science of identifying and treating autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in very young children. Leading authorities examine critical research issues and present innovative approaches to assessing social, cognitive, adaptive, communication, and sensory-motor impairments in the first two…

Studies in Hong Kong indicated that there is a tendency for young children to use internalizing as a means to cope with their daily difficulties. Mother-child relationship has been seen as a factor affecting a child's adaptive coping skills. In this study, we explored the prevalence of internalizing problems among primary school children in Hong…

Objective: The present project examined the relationships among early maternal maltreatment risk, children's self-regulation, and later development. It was expected that early maltreatment risk would impact children's emerging self-regulation which in turn, would foster pre-academic delays and behavioral problems. Method: The project used…

Background: Sleep problems are prevalent in American children. A critical need is to identify sources and processes related to sleep disruptions and their sequelae. We examined a model linking parental marital conflict and children's emotional insecurity, sleep disruptions, and their adjustment and academic problems. Method: One hundred and…

Archival data from a survey of parent observations was used to determine the prevalence of social and behavioral problems in children with agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC). Parent observations were surveyed using the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) for 61 children with ACC who were selected from the archive based on criteria of motor…

Objective: The societal changes experienced by Western societies in recent decades have raised concerns about increases in the level of children's mental health problems. Although studies of secular changes in the prevalence of psychiatric diagnoses have indeed shown increases, their results may have been influenced by methodological problems,…

Concurrent and longitudinal relations among parental emotional expressivity, children's sympathy and children's prosocial behavior were assessed with correlations and structural equation modeling when the children were 55-97 months old (N = 214; M age = 73 months, SD = 9.59) and eight years later (N = 130; ages 150-195 months old, M = 171 months,…

Children identified as having emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) may have different out-of-home care placements than their peers without EBD. This study compared the factors influencing placement movements for 362 children with EBD and 363 children without EBD, using clinical "Child Behavior Checklist" (CBCL) scores at baseline…

Using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we examine the association between parental major depressive and generalized anxiety disorders and child behavior problems across family types: married, cohabiting, involved nonresident father, and noninvolved nonresident father. Among 3-year-olds in all families, maternal anxiety/depression is…