An important question for the acculturation of adolescents from immigrant families is whether they retain ethnic labels that refer to their national origin (e.g., Mexican, Chinese) or adopt labels that are dominant in American society (e.g., Latino, Asian American, American). Approximately 380 adolescents from Asian and Latin American immigrant…

A sample of 398 children was followed up from ages 5 to 12 to investigate the relation between peer group rejection and classroom participation. The participation trajectories of individuals and groups of children who were rejected for differing periods of time were examined both during and after rejection using piecewise growth curve analyses.…

When can children speaking Japanese, English, or Chinese map and extend novel nouns and verbs? Across 6 studies, 3- and 5-year-old children in all 3 languages map and extend novel nouns more readily than novel verbs. This finding prevails even in languages like Chinese and Japanese that are assumed to be verb-friendly languages (e.g., T. Tardif,…

Reciprocal associations among measures of family resources, parenting quality, and child cognitive performance were investigated in an ethnically diverse, low-income sample of 2,089 children and families. Family resources and parenting quality uniquely contributed to children's cognitive performance at 14, 24, and 36 months, and parenting quality…

Lexical priming was assessed in children with reading disability (RD) and in age-matched controls (M= 11.5 years), in visual and auditory lexical decision tasks. In the visual task, children with RD were found to have deficits in semantic (SHIP-BOAT), phonological/graphemic (GOAT-BOAT), and combined (FLOAT-BOAT) priming. The same pattern of…

A crucial skill in scientific and everyday reasoning is the ability to interpret data. The present study examined how data features influence data interpretation. In Experiment 1, one hundred and thirty-three 9-year-olds, 12-year-olds, and college students (mean age = 20 years) were shown a series of data sets that varied in the number of…

Preschoolers' (M[subscript age]=48.7 months) social breadth (the number of peer children interact with and the frequency of these interactions) and the relations between breadth and externalizing behaviors were examined using the Q-connectivity method. After considering age, sex, and classroom effects on social breadth, children's externalizing…

Adolescents' beliefs about the legitimacy of parental authority and obligation to obey were examined in 568 Chilean adolescents (11-14 years old at Wave 1), followed once a year for 4 years. Adolescents' beliefs about parental legitimacy and obligation to obey declined with age. The steepest decline occurred during early adolescence, particularly…

This experiment tests the hypothesis that background, adult television is a disruptive influence on very young children's behavior. Fifty 12-, 24-, and 36-month-olds played with a variety of toys for 1 hr. For half of the hour, a game show played in the background on a monaural TV set. During the other half hour, the TV was off. The children…

This study identified mechanisms through which child-mother attachment security at 36 months was associated with mother- and teacher-reported friendship quality at 3rd grade. Data from a subsample of 1,071 children (536 boys) participating in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth…

This study examined interrelationships among children's cortisol reactivity and their psychological reactivity to interparental conflict in a sample of 208 first graders (mean age = 6.6 years). Assessments of children's psychological reactivity to conflict distinguished among their distress, hostile, and involvement responses across multiple…

This study provides experimental evidence for automatic, relationship-specific social information processing in 13-year-old adolescents. Photographs of participants' liked, disliked, and unknown peers were used as primes in an affective priming task with happy and angry facial expression probes and in a hypothetical vignette task. For the…

This investigation examined the associations between maltreatment and aggression using a gender-informed approach. Peer ratings, peer nominations, and counselor reports of aggression were collected on 211 maltreated and 199 nonmaltreated inner-city youth (M age = 9.9 years) during a summer day camp. Maltreatment was associated with aggressive…

Teacher-child relationships were examined as predictors of cortisol change in preschool children. Saliva for assays was collected from one hundred and ninety-one 4-year-olds (101 boys) in the mornings and afternoons on 2 days at child care, and before and after a series of challenging tasks and a teacher-child interaction session outside the…

A meta-analysis examined the relations between children's adjustment and children's cognitive, affective, behavioral, and physiological responses to interparental conflict. Studies included children between 5 and 19 years of age. Moderate effect sizes were found for the associations between cognitions and internalizing and externalizing behavior…