The factors that place children with Asperger syndrome at risk for comorbid psychiatric symptoms, such as anxiety and depression, remain poorly understood. We investigated the possibility that the children's emotional and behavioral difficulties are associated with social information and attribution processing. Participants were children with…

The concept of "therapeutic education" is being increasingly used in contemporary education policy studies to identify learning initiatives which are dominated by objectives linked to personal and social skills, emotional intelligence and building self-esteem. Contemporary educational goals connected with such strategies have been…

Children need to learn teamwork and communication skills so that they can work successfully as a part of a community. Social-skill deficits in children have been linked to delinquency, school drop out, and substance abuse (McCay & Keyes, 2001). Physical education can teach students the importance of working together to create a positive learning…

This article presents a psychometric study of the short form of the Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults (SELSA-S). Data were collected via self-report measures and mail surveys from several samples including university students, spouses of military personnel, and psychiatric patients. A total of 1,526 individuals took part in this…

This study examines the effects of the Fast Track program, which is a multicomponent, intensive intervention for children with early-onset conduct problems and continues from 1st grade through high school. Prior research has shown that Fast Track produces small positive effect sizes on children's social and behavioral outcomes at the end of 1st…

We developed and began construct validation of the Measure of Adolescent Heterosocial Competence (MAHC), a self-report instrument assessing the ability to negotiate effectively a range of challenging other-sex social interactions. Development followed the Goldfried and D'Zurilla (1969) behavioral-analytic model for assessing competence.…

Relations among authoritative and authoritarian parenting styles, children's effortful control and dispositional anger/frustration, and children's social functioning were examined for 425 first and second graders (7-10 years old) in Beijing, China. Parents reported on parenting styles; parents and teachers rated children's effortful control,…

Little research has evaluated the validity of the Coping Deficit Index (CDI) of the Rorschach Comprehensive System (CS). Because the CS Depression Index (DEPI) has frequently been found to yield false negatives, the CDI has been proposed as an alternative means of assessing social coping skills that may relate to depression. This study examined…

The goal of this study was to examine how the parenting dimensions of both mothers and fathers independently and together predict adolescent outcomes in three domains: sympathy, self-worth, and social competence. One-hundred eight adolescents completed self-report measures on their perceived relationship with parents, sympathy, social competence,…

This paper presents a selective review of the literature addressing the influence of young children's conversational environments and interactions on their psychological understanding of persons. Our dual purposes are to reveal some consensus on the current state of knowledge and to foster a programmatic approach to future research. The initial…

This article describes the "Discovery Time" programme, a largely child-directed developmental programme, and discusses it in relation to the sociocultural approach to learning. It considers the effects of the programme on the development of children's oral language and cooperative social skills in a Year 1 classroom. Survey information…

We present a developmental model that describes normal peer relations and highlights processes that underlie the emergence of problems with peers in childhood. We propose that children's relationships with peers begin in the first years of life, with stable individual differences and preferences for particular peers emerging by three years of age.…

Over the last 15 years, the role of emotions in children's peer relations has received greater attention. The purpose of the meta-analytic review was to determine the magnitude of the relation between negative emotionality (NE) and positive emotionality (PE) and social status. Based on 54 independent samples, the overall effect size for the…

A substantial number of school age children suffer from difficulties in integrating sensory input in an adaptive manner (termed sensory integration dysfunction--SID). These students are at high risk for emotional, social, and educational problems. This article defines SID, describes typical behaviors of children with SID, and presents guidelines…

Observing young children at play is a very common and useful method for identifying the presence or absence of certain developmentally appropriate skills. Such observations can vary from general overviews of typical classroom activities to extensive and highly detailed data-collection systems. Although educators should use a series of…