We examined the relations between parental interpersonal sensitivity and youth social problems and explored the mediational role of child emotion dysregulation. Mothers (N = 42; M age = 39.38) and fathers (N = 41; M age = 39.38) of youth aged 7-12 (N = 42; M age = 9.12) completed measures of their own interpersonal sensitivity and reported on…

For some time now, questions have been asked about the impact of television and video materials on the cognitive and social development of preschoolers and older children. More recently, these same questions have been asked in relation to the extensive exposure to these media that infants and toddlers are currently experiencing. To answer these…

This paper reports on and discusses one Scottish secondary school's attempts to develop an understanding of discrimination and prejudice with S1 (Year 7 in England) pupils using a simulation based on a truncated version of Jane Elliott's "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" experiment of the 1960s. The research questions were: (1) Did the pupils learn…

Much theorization and research have been done independently on thinking styles and psychosocial development. The primary objective of this research was to further investigate the predictive power of thinking styles for psychosocial development through replicating Zhang and He's (in press) study of Chinese university students in Shanghai, mainland…

This study examined the effects of aggressive and prosocial contexts of peer groups on children's socioemotional and school adjustment. Data on informal peer groups, social functioning, and different aspects of adjustment were collected from multiple sources in a sample of elementary school children (149 boys, 181 girls; M age = 10 years).…

Friendships are essential for adolescent social development. However, they may be pursued for varying motives, which, in turn, may predict similarity in friendships via social selection or social influence processes, and likely help to explain friendship quality. We examined the effect of early adolescents' (N = 374, 12-14 years) intrinsic and…

Background: Measuring the perception of friendship in adults with Down syndrome (DS) has long been a research challenge. While there have been studies investigating the number of friends children with DS have in, the study of how adults with DS view the concept of friendship has been relatively unexplored. The aim of this study was to evaluate the…

A meta-analysis found that attending full-day (or all-day) kindergarten had a positive association with academic achievement (compared to half-day kindergarten) equal to about one quarter standard deviation at the end of the kindergarten year. But the association disappeared by third grade. Reasons for this fade-out are discussed. Social…

Background: Previous research has identified a number of factors that appear to influence attitudes toward physical education, but little research has focused upon the transition between Key Stages (KS) 2 and 3, when many children transfer from primary to secondary schools. Nevertheless, there are clues that this transition can be a significant…

As a result of rapid demographic changes in our society, more children from diverse racial/cultural backgrounds join our early childhood classrooms. The majority of early childhood teachers, on the other hand, are middle-class and of European-decent. This paper provides early childhood teachers with both theoretical and practical understandings…

Despite a continuing stream of concern on the part of researchers, demographers, and cultural pundits about a crisis in boys' social development and schooling, surprisingly little attention has been paid to what is perhaps the richest pool of data: current, observable teaching practices that clearly work with boys. In schools of all types in all…

The "self" is a complex multidimensional construct deeply embedded and in many ways defined by our relations with the social world. Individuals with autism are impaired in both self-referential and other-referential social cognitive processing. Atypical neural representation of the self may be a key to understanding the nature of such impairments.…

The purpose of this comparative efficacy study was to investigate the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) and a speech-generating device (SGD) in developing requesting skills, social-communicative behavior, and speech for three elementary-age children with severe autism and little to no functional speech. Requesting was selected as the…

In this article, the author shares his experiences in his undergraduate years and how he was influenced by his professors regarding human history. The author believes that social change very often arose from encounters with strangers who possessed some obviously superior skill or knowledge that locals could borrow and adjust to their own use. His…

The process of establishing a healthy male identity can be difficult for many boys. The limited definitions of masculinity available to boys and men are generally characterized by competition, repression of fear and emotion, and physical and emotional strength. Boys of color and those of lower economic status tend to encounter even fewer healthy…