Children's peer relationships are frequently assessed with peer nominations. An important methodological issue is whether to collect unlimited or limited nominations. Some researchers have argued that the psychometric differences between both methods are negligible, while others have claimed that one is superior over the other. The current…

This study examined whether children understand that people selectively conceal or express emotion depending upon the context. We prepared two contexts for a verbal display task for 70 first-graders, 80 third-graders, 64 fifth-graders, and 71 adults. In both contexts, protagonists had negative feelings because of the behavior of the other…

Preschoolers' inhibitory control and early math skills were concurrently and longitudinally examined in 255 Chinese, African American, Dominican, and Mexican 4-year-olds in the United States. Inhibitory control at age 4, assessed with a peg-tapping task, was associated with early math skills at age 4 and predicted growth in such skills from…

Institutional rearing adversely affects children's development, but the extent to which specific characteristics of the institutional context and the quality of care provided contribute to problematic development remains unclear. In this study, 72 preschoolers institutionalised for at least 6 months were evaluated by their caregiver using the…

The current study examined interactions among genetic influences and children's early environments on the development of externalizing behaviors from 18 months to 6 years of age. Participants included 233 families linked through adoption (birth parents and adoptive families). Genetic influences were assessed by birth parent temperamental…

Personal recollections constitute autobiographical memory that develops intensively during the preschool years. The two-wave longitudinal study focuses on gender differences in preschool children's independent recollections. The same children (N = 275; 140 boys, 135 girls) were asked to talk about their previous birthday and the past weekend…

Chinese children (N = 185, aged 3-7 years) were assessed on their abilities to freely label facial expressions and emotional situations. Results indicated that the overall accuracy of free-labeling facial expressions increased relatively quickly in children aged 3-5 years, but slowed down in children aged 5-7 years. In contrast, the overall…

Using a questionnaire, the present study examined parents' beliefs regarding the development of children's beliefs about science, religion, and the paranormal. The study also investigated parental encouragement of children's beliefs, as well as parents' own beliefs within these domains. Results revealed that parents make distinctions between…

Associations between type and age of entry into Norwegian universally-accessible childcare and children's behavior problems at age 3 years were examined in this study. Data from 73,068 children in the large population-based, prospective Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) were used, and included information about childcare arrangements,…

This study explored children, preschool, and family characteristics that contribute to individual differences in the developmental trajectories of social competence and internalizing and externalizing behavior. Teachers reported on personality and social adjustment of 304 children at ages 3, 4, 5, and 6 years. Predictors of social adjustment…

The present study aimed to investigate cultural construction of children's perceptions of popularity determinants using a cross-cultural approach. This study examined 327 Chinese and 312 American fifth-graders' perceptions of what individual characteristics and peer relationships would make a peer popular. Consistent with cultural emphases,…

The Emotion Matching Task (EMT; Izard, Haskins, Schultz, Trentacosta, & King, 2003) was developed to assess emotion knowledge in preschoolers and was demonstrated to show adequate convergent and predictive validity in an American sample (Morgan, Izard, & King, 2010). In light of the need for valid measures for assessing emotion knowledge in…

People's response to stress depends to a large extent on their sense of perceived control over the situations they encounter. This longitudinal study of 136 children (70 girls) examined associations between attachment patterns and maternal sensitivity at 12 months of age, and perceived primary and secondary control at 11 years of age. Compared…

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether temperament and cognitive abilities are related to recognition performance of Caucasian and African faces and of a nonfacial stimulus class, Greebles. Seventy Caucasian infants were tested at 3 months with a habituation/dishabituation paradigm and their temperament and cognitive abilities…

This study assessed the benefit of a multisensory intervention on the recognition of geometrical shapes in kindergarten children. Two interventions were proposed, both conducted by the teachers and involving exercises focused on the properties of the shapes but differing in the sensory modalities used to explore them. In the "VH" intervention, the…