Three studies were conducted to explore Chinese children's understanding of shyness. In Study 1 (N = 174, M age = 10.18) interviews with Chinese children revealed a group of diverse attributes that characterized their conceptions of shyness. In Study 2 (N = 273, M age = 10.19) a rating procedure was used to identify attributes that were…

Unintentional injury is the leading cause of pediatric mortality among American children, but the role of environmental context remains poorly understood as a risk for child injury. Couched in Bronfenbrenner's (1977) ecological theory, this study analyzed data from a sample of almost 900 children to identify relations between the home and…

We examined the relations among children's effortful control, school liking, and academic competence with a sample of 240 7- to 12-year-old children. Parents and children reported on effortful control, and teachers and children assessed school liking. Children, parents, and teachers reported on children's academic competence. Significant positive…

Moral gender differences have been discussed in terms of Kohlbergian stages and content of orientations and taken to correspond to universal stable male and female features. The present study instead focuses on moral motivation and explains differences in terms of role expectations. We assessed moral motivation in 203 adolescents by a newly…

This study examined variation in friendship formation and friendship stability as a function of children's and their friends' victimization, overt aggression, and relational aggression. Participants were 605 pre- and early adolescents in fifth through eighth grades (M age = 12.05) assessed twice over a three-month period. Scores for stability and…

Perceptions of children and teachers were examined to address concerns regarding children's welfare following sociometric testing. Third-graders (N = 91) were interviewed; teachers also reported on each child's responses to the testing. Results indicate that children were not hurt or upset by the testing, most enjoyed the procedures, did not feel…

Individual differences in child temperament have been associated with individual differences in language development. Similarly, relationships have been reported between early nonverbal social communication (joint attention) and both temperament and language. The present study examined whether individual differences in joint attention might…

Short-term stability in adolescents' self-reported friendship networks was examined as a function of (1) participants' gender, (2) friendship status (best vs. secondary), (3) friendship gender composition (same sex vs. opposite sex), and (4) friendship contexts (school only vs. nonschool only vs. multiple). Adolescents (N = 102) took part in five…

Tested on a sample of 1,365 Hong Kong primary school students from five grades, teacher preference or the extent to which the classroom teacher likes a child in the class was found to both mediate and, to a lesser extent, moderate the relations between children's social behaviors and peer acceptance across age groups. The mediating effect suggests…

This study proposed and tested a developmental model of impression formation based on observed behavior, prior expectancies, and additional incongruent information. Participants were 51 kindergartners, 53 second graders, and 104 college students who provided trait and liking judgments after watching a child actor engage in behaviors from three…

This paper reports on three studies of shy behavior in Mainland Chinese children. In Study 1 (N = 107, M age = 10.05), a Chinese Shyness Scale (CSS) was developed based on Chinese teachers' open-ended descriptions of children's shy behavior. In Study 2 (N = 388, M age = 10.80) and Study 3 (N = 198, M age = 10.20), the construct validity of the two…

Converging evidence indicates that maltreated foster children have more behavior problems and poorer peer relations than nonmaltreated, biologically reared youths. However, it is unclear whether deficits in peer relations operate independently or as a result of increased behavior problems and whether outcomes for foster children differ by sex. To…

With remarkable ease, young children acquire significant insight into mental states, their experiences, psychological processes in themselves and others, and the natural world. It is a challenge to developmental theory to understand how they do so. The contributors to this special issue highlight how children's powerfully inductive mental…

Children's autobiographical memory is hypothesized to be a function of their understanding of mind (Perner & Ruffman, 1995; Welch-Ross, 1995). In the context of mother-child reminiscing, children may learn about and display their understanding of mind (Nelson, 1999; Welch-Ross, 1997). We studied links among maternal reminiscing style, children's…

Research suggests that both emotion-laden discourse and positive affect facilitate the construction of emotional and relational understanding. Despite this, research has not typically examined simultaneously the connections among affect, emotional discourse, and socioemotional development. In this study, 51 preschool children (M age = 52.80…