Recently, several ERP studies have shown that the human language comprehension system anticipates words that are highly likely continuations of a given text. However, it remains an open issue whether the language comprehension system can also make predictions that go beyond a specific word. Here, we address the question of whether readers predict…

Research on teachers' judgments of student performance has demonstrated that educational assessments may be biased or may more correctly take the achievements of students into account depending on teachers' motivations while making the judgment. Building on research on social judgment formation the present investigation examined whether the…

The majority of research on the link between video games and aggression has focused on the violent content in games. In contrast, recent experimental research suggests that it is video game competition, not violence, that has the greatest effect on aggression in the short-term. However, no researchers have examined the long-term relationship…

The aims of the study were: (1) to examine whether adolescents' attachment and the perceived quality of the communication with their parents relate to effective resolution of parent-child conflicts and (2) to determine whether the pattern of associations changes with adolescents' gender and age. The sample consisted of 295 adolescents who filled…

Neuroendocrine dysfunction is hypothesized to be an early emerging vulnerability marker for depression. We tested whether the main and interactive effects of maternal psychopathology and early child temperamental vulnerability for depression assessed at age three predicted offspring's basal cortisol function at age 6 years. 228 (122 males)…

Faces convey important information about the social environment, and even very young infants are preferentially attentive to face-like over non-face stimuli. Eye-tracking studies have allowed researchers to examine which features of faces infants find most salient across development, and the present study examined scanning of familiar (i.e.,…

Physical child abuse is a predictor of antisocial behavior in adolescence and adulthood. Few studies have investigated factors that moderate the risk of physical child abuse for later occurring outcomes, including antisocial behavior. This analysis uses data from the Lehigh Longitudinal Study to investigate the prediction of antisocial behavior…

Since their discovery in the early 1990s, mirror neurons have been proposed to be related to many social-communicative abilities, such as imitation. However, research into the early manifestations of the putative neural mirroring system and its role in early social development is still inconclusive. In the current EEG study, mu suppression,…

This study examined longitudinal acculturation patterns, and their associations with family functioning and adolescent risk behaviors, in Hispanic immigrant families. A sample of 266 Hispanic adolescents (M[subscript age] = 13.4) and their primary parents completed measures of acculturation, family functioning, and adolescent conduct problems,…

We examined the associations between language skills and concern and disregard for others in young children assessed longitudinally at ages 14, 20, 24, and 36 months, testing the hypothesis that language skills have a specific role (distinct from that of general cognitive ability) in the development of concern and disregard for others. We found…

Two studies investigated the "overpowering hypothesis" as a possible explanation for the currently inconclusive empirical picture on age differences in affective responding to unpleasant events. The overpowering hypothesis predicts that age differences in affective responding are particularly evident in highly resource-demanding situations that…

This paper reports predictors for center care utilization prior to 18 months of age in Norway, a country with a welfare system providing up to one-year paid parental leave and universal access to subsidized and publicly regulated center care. A community sample of 1103 families was interviewed about demographics, family, and child characteristics…

Objective: To investigate the predictors of fresh fruit and vegetable purchases in a low-income population and identify subgroups in which interventions to increase such purchases might prove useful. Methods: Retrospective analysis of 209 shopping transactions from 30 households. Individual and household characteristics obtained from primary…

Language is rife with ambiguity. Do children and adults meet this challenge in similar ways? Recent work suggests that while adults resolve syntactic ambiguities by integrating a variety of cues, children are less sensitive to top-down evidence. We test whether this top-down insensitivity is specific to syntax or a general feature of children's…

Study goals were to explore whether children clustered into groups based on reactions to witnessing bullying and to examine whether these reactions predicted bullying intervention. Seventy-nine children ("M" = 10.80 years) watched bullying videos in the laboratory while their heart rate (HR) was measured, and they self-reported on…