Foster parents play a pivotal role in the child welfare system. A study that employed focus groups with foster parents was conducted at a private foster care agency with the initial purpose of understanding the characteristics of foster children that foster parents both preferred and not preferred. In the qualitative research tradition, their…

Errorless acquiescence training (EAT) was developed as a graduated, success-focused, and short-term intervention for building social skills. The approach focuses on building the skill of acquiescence (i.e., teaching children to be flexible with the needs and will of peers). The authors predict that acquiescence would serve as a "keystone", that…

Predictive associations between parenting and temperament during the first year of life and child conduct problems were assessed longitudinally in 1,863 offspring of a representative sample of women. Maternal ratings of infant fussiness, activity level, predictability, and positive affect each independently predicted maternal ratings of conduct…

Research Findings: Child care delivery practices promoting continuous, primary caregiver-child relationships (relationship-focused child care) were evaluated for 223 preschool-age children (45% African American, 55% Latino) attending child care centers serving low-income children. Both relationship-focused and non-relationship-focused centers were…

The "Research & Action Report," published twice a year, is a window on the activities and initiatives at the Wellesley Centers for Women. The report typically features news about the Centers, interviews with researchers, commentary on recent events or social trends affecting women and girls, announcements of new publications, and…

The Everyday Learning Series has been developed to focus attention on the every day life experiences of early childhood and to offer insight about how parents and care givers can make the most of these experiences. Having angry feelings or feeling aggressive is normal. Most children learn to manage such feelings in safe and acceptable ways,…

The current study consisted of 2 parts, with the same 4 normally developing 4-yr-old children employed across both parts. The primary aim of Part 1 was to replicate previous research on exemplar training and its impact upon the emergence of repertoires of derived symmetry or mutually entailed relations. In this part of the study, the children were…

The purpose of this article was to introduce the newly developed scale of Child's Attachment to his/her Kindergarten Teacher and adapted scales of child's attachment to his/her mother and father. The main goal of the research was to analyze the relationships between child's attachment to his/her mother, father and kindergarten teacher. One hundred…

A common covarying group of behaviors with ASD are self-injury, aggression, noncompliance, and stereotypies. These problems and related challenging behaviors are problematic in that they are physically dangerous and can impede learning and access to normal activities. Additionally, they require a considerable amount of resources, and compound the…

Delinquent youth display weaker attachment to their parents than do other youth, but the reasons for this remain unclear. One explanation is that delinquent youth poison their relations with parents by lying to them about their friends, behavior, whereabouts, and more. Analysis of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health…

A review of studies published between 1980 and 2005 shows a significant positive effect of specialized training on the competency of caregivers in childcare (d=0.45, S.E.=0.10). Experimental results from the meta-analysis were significantly smaller for settings with no fixed curriculum content, delivery of the training at multiple sites and…

Addressing increasing levels of disruptive behavior and improving discipline is a national matter. The challenge is intensified by teachers' concerns about the growing inclusion of students with emotional and behavioral problems in general education classrooms and the general levels of diversity common in America's schools. Removing children with…

Background: Children's early problem behavior that manifests in multiple contexts is often more serious and stable. The concurrent and predictive validity of ratings of externalizing and internalizing by four informants was examined at preschool and early school age in an at-risk sample. Methods: Two hundred forty children were assessed by mothers…

This study examined self-reported parenting behaviors, and child temperament and behavior, based on parental perceptions of 47 toddlers ages 25 to 31 months. Data were obtained via parental reports and direct assessment. Children were identified as having a speech-language delay (SLD, n = 17) or as typically developing (n = 30) based on…

This study examined the social and behavioral characteristics of children with specific language impairment (SLI) as compared with a group of children with typically developing language skills (TL). The participants were 45 children (17 girls and 28 boys) with SLI and 53 children (27 girls and 26 boys) with TL. Maternal ratings of participants'…