Building on recommendations from several of the articles in the special section on conscientiousness in the June 2014 issue of "Developmental Psychology," the present study tested predictions from the interactionist model (IM) of socioeconomic influences on individual development. In an approach consistent with the idea of cumulative…

Relative to positive psychology, a focus on increasing psychological well-being has been recently supported. Positive psychology is the study of influences and processes that contribute to the successful and optimal functioning of individuals. Nurturing and encouraging wellness competencies creates a buffer against mental illness and fosters…

Tenets of the Boivin et al. (1995) social process model were reexamined with two longitudinal samples using both the original and contemporary analytic strategies. Study goals included reconstructing (e.g., quasireplicating) Boivin et al.'s (1995) original findings and evaluating hypothesized relations across both comparable and longer…

This research explored whether experiences with warmth in middle childhood are linked to increased levels of positive affect, decreased levels of negative affect, and decreased levels of disagreeable interactions in text-message communication in adolescence. Participants included 218 children (and their parents and peers) who were on average…

Children with higher working memory or updating (WMU) capacity perform better in math. What is less clear is whether and how this relation varies with grade. Children (N = 673, kindergarten to Grade 9) participated in a 4-year cross-sequential study. Data from 3 WMU (Listening Recall, Mr. X, and an updating task) and a standardized math task…

The purpose of the current study is to investigate social support (from parents, classmates, teachers, and close friends) as a protective factor in the association between depression and suicidal ideation. Data on students' levels of social support, depression, and suicidal ideation were collected from 399 9th-grade students using the Child and…

The topic of cyberbullying is raising international debate and concern. Through the development and dissemination of a questionnaire 12 student researchers were supported in surveying 325 UK students across Years 7, 8 and 9 to gain further knowledge of this area, in relation to children and young people. Results were analysed and comparisons made…

This study investigated the contributions of child and parents' sociodemographics, daily stressors, family environment, and coping strategies, to academic achievement, cognitive functioning and aggression in a sample of 600 children at the intermediate grade levels from Gaza Strip. Each of the predictor variables exhibited a different pattern of…

Background: Although multiple cross-sectional studies have shown symptoms of sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to be statistically distinct, studies have yet to examine the temporal stability and measurement invariance of SCT in a longitudinal sample. To date, only six studies have assessed SCT…

Aggressive victims--children who are both perpetrators and victims of peer aggression--experience greater concurrent mental health problems and impairments than children who are only aggressive or only victimized. The stability of early identified aggressive victim status has not been evaluated due to the fact that most studies of aggressor/victim…

The association of enumeration and number comparison capacities with arithmetical competence was examined in a large sample of children from 2nd to 9th grades. It was found that efficiency on numerical capacities predicted separately more than 25% of the variance in the individual differences on a timed arithmetical test, and this occurred for…

Solving simple arithmetic word problems is a major ability that children must acquire throughout the primary-grade mathematics curriculum. However, this skill is often challenging for them. For instance, "unknown referent problems" are more difficult to solve than "unknown compare problems." In unknown compare problems, the…

In an examination guided by cognitive developmental and attribution theory of how explanations of wealth and poverty and perceptions of rich and poor people change with age and are interrelated, 6-, 10-, and 14-year-olds (N = 88) were asked for their causal attributions and trait judgments concerning a rich man and a poor man. First graders, like…

Despite the importance of social support across the lifespan and extensive research on supportive communication between adults, little is known about how children or adolescents respond to the comforting efforts of their peers. The current study was designed to examine how 5th, 7th, and 9th graders evaluate six peer comforting strategies…

Parent support for reading is one of the many elements that may play a role in the development and sustainment of children's reading motivation; to date, however, research has focused much more on the role that parents play in their preschool and primary-grade children's reading than in their older children's reading. Thus, this paper examines the…