Examined infant-mother attachment in Mali's Dogon ethnic group. Found that distribution of Strange Situation classifications was 67 percent secure, 0 percent avoidant, 8 percent resistant, and 25 percent disorganized. Infant attachment security related to quality of mother-infant communication. Mothers of disorganized infants had significantly…

Examined concordance between foster mothers' attachment state of mind and infants' attachment quality. Found that two-way correspondence between maternal state of mind and infant attachment quality was similar to that of biological mother-infant dyads. Age at placement was not related to attachment quality. Concordance between maternal state of…

Examined data from NICHD study to determine relationship of children's child care experience to peer competence at 24 and 36 months, after controlling for effects of family and child characteristics. Found consistent, modest relations between early child-care experiences and peer competencies. Maternal sensitivity and children's cognitive and…

Investigated the degree to which individual differences in child-parent attachment were mediated by genetic, shared environmental, and nonshared environmental influences. Found an overall concordance rate of 67 percent at the secure/insecure level. Twin similarity on the continuous measure of attachment security was consistent with a modest role…

Examined mothers' patterns of welfare receipt in the 3 years following birth of a child. Found strong negative associations between receiving welfare and parenting behavior and child outcomes at age three. Parenting by mothers who had left welfare by their child's third birthday was more likely to be authoritarian if mother had left public…

Examined cognitive and socioemotional development of 733 children from age 4 until age 8 as a function of quality of their preschool experiences. Found evidence that care quality has a modest long-term effect on cognitive and socioemotional development at least through kindergarten. Classroom practices related to language and academic skills. The…

Evaluated a path model of teacher expectancy effects in 376 first- through fifth-grade urban children. Found that classroom environment and developmental differences moderated the strength of teacher expectancy effects on students' year-end achievement. Results suggested that teacher expectations may tend to magnify achievement differences in the…

Examined how relational stressors and supports interface with aggression to influence early adjustment trajectories from Fall of kindergarten year to Spring of first grade. Found that with few exceptions, relational experiences predicted adjustment beyond children's aggressive risk status. Chronicity of aggressive risk status and relational…

Presented paired-comparison familiarization-novelty recognition task to 4-month-olds. Found that peak look duration during pretest and familiarization periods predicted recognition performance. Recognition was unaffected by choice-trial length. Longer gaze durations during pretest and familiarization were associated with more time in heart…

Examined physiological regulation as a moderator in the relations between exposure to verbal and physical parental marital conflict and 8- to 12-year-olds' adjustment and physical health. Found that higher vagal tone buffered children against increased externalizing, internalizing, and health problems related to marital conflict. Higher delta…

Examined influence of object labels and shape similarity on 16- to 21-month-olds' inferences. Found that infants generalized non-obvious property of unlabeled objects to test objects with highly similar shapes. For objects labeled with novel nouns, infants relied on shape similarity and shared labels to generalize properties. For objects labeled…

Six match-to-sample picture/object selection experiments explored 3- to 5-year-olds' knowledge about superordinate words and acquisition of this knowledge. Findings indicated that number of standards (one versus two), types of standards (different versus same basic-level categories), and nature of representation (pictures versus objects)…

Two experiments tested a model of young children's induction that specified contributions of linguistic labels and perceptual similarity to children's induction. Results support model predictions and point to a developmental shift, from treating linguistic labels as an attribute contributing to similarity to treating them as markers of a common…

Observed in a laboratory setting how dyads, ages 4 and 6 years or 6 and 8 years, negotiated division of toys. Found that children used a preponderance of constructive problem-solving strategies rather than contentious tactics. Degree of conflict of interests and quality of sibling relationships predicted use of problem-solving and contentious…

Examined development of child and adolescent self-concept in two overlapping age cohorts as a function of the self-concept domain, social/developmental/educational transitions, and gender. Structural equation modeling addressed questions about stability of individual differences over time. Multilevel modeling addressed questions about mean-level…