We provide evidence for multidirectionality, variability, and plasticity in the nature and direction of change in physical health, cognitive functioning, and well-being during the middle years of the life course. The picture of well-being in midlife based on longitudinal data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study is a more positive…

Optimal cognitive development is defined in this article as the highest level of cognitive function reached in each cognitive domain given a person's biological and genetic disposition, and the highest possible maintenance of cognitive function over the adult life course. Theoretical perspectives underpinning the development of a framework…

This special section on the development of emotion regulation highlights several important new directions for research. Specifically, the findings of these studies indicate that: (1) emotion regulation develops across the lifespan and not just in early childhood and does so in complex ways, (2) it is necessary to distinguish among emotions to…

In this article, we review, on three grounds, the nature of the life story. First, we evaluate the appropriateness of the proposal that the life story emerges in adolescence (the time of the traditional identity crisis). Second, we examine the relation between big stories (of which the life story is one) and small stories. Finally, we consider…

Directional dependency is a method to determine the likely causal direction of effect between two variables. This article aims to critique and improve upon the use of directional dependency as a technique to infer causal associations. We comment on several issues raised by von Eye and DeShon (2012), including: encouraging the use of the signs of…

Null hypothesis testing (NHT) is the most commonly used tool in empirical psychological research even though it has several known limitations. It is argued that since the hypotheses evaluated with NHT do not reflect the research-question or theory of the researchers, conclusions from NHT must be formulated with great modesty, that is, they cannot…

Our study re-examines the relationship between parenting and school performance among Asian students. We use two sources of data: wave I of the Adolescent Health Longitudinal Survey (Add Health), and waves I and II of the Taiwan Educational Panel Survey (TEPS). Analysis using Add Health reveals that the Asian-American/European-American difference…

The emotional responses to achievement contexts of 149 preschool children from three cultural groups were observed. The children were Japanese (N = 32), African American (N = 63) and White American of mixed European ancestry (N = 54). The results showed that Japanese children differed from American children in expressing less shame, pride, and…

This study examined the effects of the accumulation of family risk factors on children's literacy skills, both in preschool and in first grade. Children's (N = 106) vocabulary, conventions of print, phonological awareness, knowledge of letters, reading decoding, and reading comprehension were assessed. Family risk factors, consisting of household…

In Experiment 1, Japanese children (4-, 5-, 7-, and 10-year-olds (n = 78)) and adults (n = 36), answered questions about the possibility of psychogenic bodily reactions, i.e., bodily outcomes with origins in the mind. The 4- and 5-year-old preschoolers typically denied that bodily conditions could originate in mental states. Developmentally,…

This study investigated a novel approach to obtaining data on parent and infant emotion during the Face-to-Face/Still-Face paradigm, and examined these data in light of previous findings regarding early autism risk. One-hundred and eighty eight non-expert students rated 38 parents and infant siblings of children who did (20) or did not (18) have…

This study examined developmental differences in, and cognitive bases of, coping flexibility in children with and without ADHD. Younger (age 7 to 8) and older (age 10 to 11) children with and without ADHD (N = 80) responded to hypothetical vignettes about problematic interactions with peers that shifted from controllable to uncontrollable over…

We examined support and conflict with parents and close friends in a sample of ethnically diverse young adults (European-, Asian-, Cuban-, Latin-, and Mexican Americans). College students (N = 495) completed six subscales from the Network of Relationships Inventory (NRI; Furman & Buhrmester, 1985). Friends were rated higher than parents on global…

We examined self-descriptions of children of Somali refugee families in Australian primary schools, focusing on how children's school-related skills and needs relate to the interpretive frames of mainstream and ethnic cultures. Three groups of Grade 5 and 6 children (Somali, Disadvantaged, Advantaged) made choices among school-related skills, and…

To examine the ontogeny of emotion-attention interactions, we investigated whether infants exhibit adult-like biases in automatic and voluntary attentional processes towards fearful facial expressions. Heart rate and saccadic eye movements were measured from 7-month-old infants (n = 42) while viewing non-face control stimuli, and neutral, happy,…