Examined relationship between emotion regulation at ages 5, 10, and 18 months, and compliance at 30 months. Found that infants with low levels of regulatory behavior were more likely to be noncompliant as toddlers. High cardiac vagal tone was related to noncompliance to toy clean-up, whereas low cardiac vagal tone was related to noncompliance to…

Solicited 6- to 10-year olds' and adults' perceptually ambiguous drawings to which two different meanings could be attributed. Analyzed movement sequences to determine whether movements were modified in ways determined by the model's meaning. Found that drawing was sensitive to meaning at all ages. Sensitivity differed as a function of the model…

Examined body dissatisfaction, physical attractiveness, and body mass index in adolescents at 13, 15, and 18 years of age. Found that sex differences in body dissatisfaction emerged between 13 and 15 years and were maintained. Girls' body dissatisfaction increased, whereas boys' decreased. Body dissatisfaction was weakly related to others' rating…

Two studies examined whether 1-year olds' name learning during joint attention was guided by expectation that names will be in the form of spoken words. Results showed that 13-month olds, but not 20-month olds, learned a new sound/object correspondence, as evidenced by their choosing targets reliably in responses to hearing the word or sound on…

Three experiments examined role of lexical-form class in preschoolers' establishment of word-to-object mappings in referentially ambiguous situations. Results indicated that preschoolers were most likely to reject two words for the same object if both were proper names, and were less likely to reject if both were adjectives or if one was proper…

Examined how child and family factors influence individual differences in the language development of African-American children between 18 and 30 months of age. Found that vocabulary and utterance length increased linearly. Children from more stimulating and responsive homes had larger vocabularies, used more irregular nouns and verbs, and had…

Five experiments compared metamemory abilities in 6- to 9-year olds with autism, mentally retarded children, and normal controls. Found that children with autism were not impaired on any of the metamemory tasks, although they were less likely than controls to make spontaneous use of memory strategies involving other people. Unexpectedly few…

Examined 6-, 8-, and 10-year olds' conceptions of flags as social conventions and their understandings of the symbolic and psychological consequences associated with transgressions toward flags. Found that despite age-related increases in understanding of flags as meaningful collective symbols, children at all ages considered transgressions to be…

Explored aggression and delinquency in unrelated adoptive sibling pairs and biologically-related sibling pairs in the Colorado Adoption Project at 7, 9, 10, 11, and 12 years. Found that boys and adopted children were higher in externalizing behavior problems than girls and biologically related pairs. Sex differences in delinquency were more…

Parents of Swedish twin pairs ages 7 to 9 years and of British twin pairs ages 8 to 16 years completed the Child Behavior Checklist. Found that genetic factors influenced aggressive antisocial behavior to a greater extent than nonaggressive antisocial behavior, which was also significantly influenced by the shared environment. There was a…

Examined relationship between child behavior and peer preference from the person-group similarity and the social-skill models with 2,895 first graders. Found support for both predictive models, with the acceptability aggression and withdrawal varying across classrooms and the effects of inattentive/hyperactive behavior and prosocial behavior…

Examined the differential predictive power and effects of representations of child/mother and child/father attachment for children's representation of self and socioemotional competence. Found that the child's positiveness of self was better predicted by quality of child/mother attachment representation than child/father attachment representation.…

Examined developmental differences in parental availability and child dependency in late childhood and early adolescence and their association with peer relations. Found that children's perceptions of mother's availability and boys' perceptions of father's availability did not change with age. Dependency decreased with age. Positive friendship…

Two studies assessed changes in attentional engagement as a function of exposure to "teachers" differing in perceived power and the communication style associated with perceived power. Results suggested that adult ambiguity (more characteristic of those with perception of low power) leads to reductions in children's attentional engagement.…

Examined whether children's cognitive biases moderated impact of stressful divorce-related events on adjustment in 9- to 12-year olds. Found that endorsing negative cognitive errors for hypothetical divorce events moderated relations between stressful divorce events and self- and maternal-reports of internalizing and externalizing symptoms for…