Youth's friendships serve important functions in development; however, internalizing symptoms may undermine these relationships. Two studies are presented that examine the association of depressive and anxiety symptoms with friendship adjustment. Study 1 tested concurrent effects and Study 2 tested prospective effects over 6 months. Like past…

The present study focused on the role of cognitive, emotional, and interpersonal factors in predicting defending of bullied peer. Specifically, the degree to which peer status moderates the effects of emotional and cognitive factors on defending behavior was tested. The sample included 489 students (257 girls) from grades 4 (mean age, 10.6 years)…

This study examined whether children's social behavior mediated the associations between specific dimensions of temperament and peer acceptance, and whether these associations were moderated by gender. We also explored the role of child's age on the associations between temperament and social functioning. Primary caregiver reports of temperament…

This study investigated the evolving relations between peer victimization and social/emotional difficulties in middle to late childhood. Peer assessments of peer victimization and social/emotional difficulties (aggressive behavior, social withdrawal, and emotional vulnerability) were collected over 4 years for 1,035 children attending Grades 3-6…

Contextual differences in the association between different forms of aggressive behavior and victimization were studied with a sample of 197 boys and 149 girls from mixed-sex schools and in 336 girls from all-girl schools (M = 10.21 years of age) in two cities in Colombia. Results showed that boys generally engage in more physical than relational…

The eight contributions to this special issue provide an informative focus on many aspects of peer-based victimization in schools. Often using sophisticated quantitative and analytic procedures, they advance our knowledge in several important domains, pointing out important contextual variables, interactions, and mediating factors in the negative…

Youth out-of-school time (OST) programs and activities can provide developmental benefits for participating youth. Yet little research has examined the contextual predictors of youth OST participation. To address this issue, we examined a collection of child-, family-, school-, and neighborhood-level characteristics as predictors of OST…

This 4-year study of 698 young adolescents examined the covariates of early onset substance use from Grade 6 through Grade 9. The youth were randomly assigned to a family-centered Adolescent Transitions Program (ATP) condition. Variable-centered (zero-inflated Poisson growth model) and person-centered (latent growth mixture model) approaches were…

Provocative ideas about the nature, development, and effects of children?s friendships were included in the lectures of Harry Stack Sullivan, which were edited and published in the 1950s. Sullivan emphasized the love, intimacy, and collaboration found in the close friendships that children form around 8 to 10 years of age. Later research has…

Trait conceptions, such as smart, antisocial, and shy, can serve as tools for interpreting and making predictions about the social world. An understanding of children?s trait conceptions can lead to important insights into the way children acquire an understanding of human mental life. The present study was designed to examine positivity biases…

Emotion-related regulation is a topic of considerable current interest; however, this was not always true. We briefly discuss the history of interest in the topic and then the current state of the field, including definitions of the construct. In addition, we summarize some of the important issues for future attention, including definitional…

This paper reviews how cascading levels of contextual influences, starting with family factors and extending to neighborhood and school factors, can affect children's behavioral and emotional development. The ability of contextual factors to trigger or to attenuate children's underlying temperament and biological risk factors is emphasized.…

The field of children's learning was thriving when the Merrill-Palmer Quarterly was launched; the field later went into eclipse and now is in the midst of a resurgence. This commentary examines reasons for these trends, and describes the emerging field of children's learning. In particular, the new field is seen as differing from the old in its…