Recorded reaching and looking preferences and movement kinematics among 5- to 15-month-olds divided into 3 age groups. Found that 5- to 12-month-olds preferred looking first at a large object; 8.5- to 12-month-olds showed preference for reaching to smaller (graspable) objects. Kinematic measures suggested that onset of object-oriented action…

Investigated ways in which indicators of parental autonomy granting (decision-making input and parental knowledge of adolescents' daily experiences) differed as a function of context and personal qualities. Found that firstborns were granted more autonomy than second borns, especially in families with firstborn girls and second-born boys. Girls in…

This longitudinal study examined processes involved in transactional models of socialization, focusing on maternal intrusive support for children's academic achievement. Results suggested that low achievement elicited intrusive support through the mechanisms of increased maternal worry and increased child uncertainty. Day-to-day analyses suggested…

This longitudinal study with 62 children and adolescents examined the validity of the consolidation/transition model in the context of moral reasoning development. Results of standard statistical and Bayesian techniques supported the hypotheses regarding cyclical patterns of change and predictors of stage transition, and demonstrated the utility…

Observed toddlers' imitation and responses to maternal control. Found that girls imitated more than boys. Responsive imitation measures were coherent and longitudinally stable, and correlated significantly with responsiveness to maternal control. Suggested that a young child's willingness to imitate parent in a teaching context and to comply in a…

Tested whether adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems, heavy alcohol use, fathers' parenting, and family conflict varied over time with fluctuations in fathers' alcohol impairment. Found that adolescent symptomology and family environment did not vary over time as function of different trajectories of paternal alcohol impairment.…

Investigated the development of number concepts and addition skills in Japanese children. Found that children's use of addition strategies, rather than their solution accuracy, changed primarily as a function of schooling, not age. Children's Base 10 number concepts improved with the amount of schooling, as well as with other social and…

Examined cognitive and academic test scores in follow-up of 104 of 111 original participants in Abecedarian Project. Found that project children attained higher scores on both cognitive and academic tests, with moderate to large treatment effect sizes observed through age 21. Preschool cognitive gains accounted for a substantial portion of…

Investigated body image across life span in cross-section of women ages 20-84 years. Found that although body dissatisfaction remained stable, self-objectification, habitual body monitoring, appearance anxiety, and disordered eating all significantly decreased with age. Self- objectification mediated the relationship between age and disordered…

Followed for 1.5 years younger siblings of parenting and nonparenting teenagers. Found that relative to other youths, sisters of parenting teens exhibited a sharp increase in drug and alcohol use and partying behavior across time and had the highest pregnancy rate at Time 2. For girls, many hours spent caring for their sisters' children related to…

Studied nearly 150,000 maternal word-tokens used by low-income mothers in mother-child conversations. Found that 99 percent of maternal lexical input consisted of 3,000 most frequent word. Density of sophisticated words and density with which such words were embedded in helpful/instructive interactions at age 5 predicted over one-third of variance…

Tested for moderation in the relation of family risk factors to adolescent substance use. Surveyed 1,810 participants at 11.5 years and followed with 2 yearly assessments. Found that impact of parental risk factors was decreased among participants with higher task attentional orientation and positive emotionality (resilience) and was increased…

Examined in six experiments toddlers' use of syntactic cues to learn proper names and count nouns. Found that by 24 months, both girls and boys were significantly more likely to select a labeled object if they had heard a proper name than if they had heard a count noun. At 20 months, neither girls nor boys demonstrated this effect. (Author/KB)

Used new longitudinal clustering technique to identify and compare groups of children with distinct longitudinal profiles of peer social preference during elementary school. Identified a stable popular group, stable average group, and unpopular group, all with decreasing social preference. Groups showed overlap over time with closest corresponding…

Examined whether maltreated children were more likely than nonmaltreated children to develop poor-quality representations of parents and whether these representations predicted children's rejection by peers. Found that maltreated children's representations were more negative/constricted and less positive/coherent than nonmaltreated children's.…