Preschool-aged children (M = 42.44 months-old, SD = 8.02) participated in a short-term longitudinal study investigating the effect of educational media exposure on social development (i.e., aggression and prosocial behavior) using multiple informants and methods. As predicted, educational media exposure significantly predicted increases in both…

This study examined associations between parents' attributions of culpability and their observed interventions into sibling conflict. A total of 61 primary caregivers judged who was at fault for a sibling conflict and subsequently discussed the event with their two children (aged 4-10 years). Nonunilateral fault attributions (blaming both children…

Data from 508 Caucasian children in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development shows that the DRD4 (but not 5-HTTLPR) polymorphism moderates the effect of child-care quality (but not quantity or type) on caregiver-reported externalizing problems at 54 months and in kindergarten and teacher-reported social skills at kindergarten and…

Research on language in individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) has been fueled by persistent theoretical controversies for two decades. These shifted from initial focus on dissociations between language and cognition functions, to examining the paradox of socio-communicative impairments despite high sociability and relatively proficient…

“Let’s do it again,” shout the children as they complete an activity in music class. A casual observer would be aware that the children are fully engaged but may not be sure of the lesson focus. Is it to help children learn a new orchestra piece? To teach about the beat? To teach form? To teach rhythm? To teach children to read a music score? To…

Teacher-Child Interaction Therapy (TCIT), which is an adaptation of the empirically-based treatment of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), addresses the needs of children and teachers through increasing positive teacher-child interactions while educating teachers on effective discipline techniques. The theoretical and empirical basis for PCIT…

Social emotional competence is an essential developmental skill recognized as the most critical for school and later success. Rising rates in behavioral referrals and preschool expulsion have brought increased attention to the importance of helping children develop social-emotional skills in the early years. In early childhood education a central…

"Social skills training" is not a specific curriculum, but rather a collection of practices that use a behavioral approach for teaching preschool children age-appropriate social skills and competencies, including communication, problem solving, decision making, self-management, and peer relations. "Social skills training" can…

Possible links between lower birth weight, childhood diet, and learning in Taiwan are evaluated. The population representative Elementary School Children's Nutrition and Health Survey in Taiwan 2001-2002 and the national birth registry were used to examine school and social performance using the modified Scale for Assessing Emotional Disturbance…

This investigation focused on the quality of parent-provider relationships in a Part C early intervention program. An observational coding system was developed as an exploratory tool to describe aspects of the parent-provider relationship over a 1-year period. In particular, we were interested in the extent to which the quality of the…

Consistent with Biological Sensitivity to Context and Differential Susceptibility hypotheses, this study found that children who, as infants, were more temperamentally reactive were more sensitive to the quality of childcare they experienced as toddlers, but not to the amount of childcare with peers they had experienced since birth. Children with…

The purpose of this study is to review major Chinese policies related to creativity education. We first identify and describe the role of innovation and creativity in economic and social development policies over the past 20 years, then analyze how the call for enhanced Chinese innovation and creativity was actualized in corresponding education…

In 2004, McMurray and Aslin edited for "Infancy" a special section on eye tracking. The articles in that special issue revealed the enormous promise of automatic eye tracking with young infants and demonstrated that eye-tracking procedures can provide significant insight into the emergence of cognitive, social, and emotional processing in infancy.…

The goal of this study was to investigate children's descriptions and evaluations of their reasons for leaving others out of a peer group. A total of 84 children (divided into 7-, 11-, and 17-year-old age groups) provided a narrative account of a time they excluded a peer and were subsequently asked to evaluate their reasons for exclusion. With…

Enriching caregiving practices foster the course and outcome of child development. This study examined 2 developmentally significant domains of positive caregiving--cognitive and socioemotional--in more than 127,000 families with under-5 year children from 28 developing countries. Mothers varied widely in cognitive and socioemotional caregiving…