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Preschool teachers' perceptions about relationships with students (teacher-child relationships [TCRs]) predict children's subsequent social competence (SC) and academic progress. Why this is so remains unclear. Do TCRs shape children's development, or do child attributes influence both TCRs and subsequent development? Relations between TCRs and other measures were examined for 185 preschoolers (107 girls, 89 longitudinal, and [approximately]75% European American). Teachers rated TCRs and child social/affective behaviors. Teacher-child interactions (TCIs) and children's affect expressiveness were observed. Child SC and receptive vocabulary were assessed. TCRs were significantly correlated with each type of outcome. TCIs, SC, expressed affect, and teacher-rated behaviors also predicted TCRs longitudinally. Results suggest that TCR ratings predict subsequent adaptation because they summarize children's behavioral profiles rather than on TCR quality per se.

A critical skill of childhood is learning social norms. We examine whether the generic pronouns "you" and "we," which frame information as applying to people in general rather than to a specific individual, facilitate this process. In one pre-registered experiment conducted online between 2020 and 2021, children 4- to 9-year-old primarily living in the midwestern U.S. (N = 146, 75 girls, 71 boys, Mage = 7.14, SD = 1.69, 82% White) interpreted actions described with generic pronouns (vs. "I") as normatively correct and selected the speaker who used generic pronouns as the rule-follower, particularly when generic pronouns were presented first. There were no significant effects of age. These results illustrate how generic pronouns influence how children discern unfamiliar norms and form interpersonal judgments.

Defending peers who have been bullied is often thought to put defenders at risk of becoming victimized themselves. The study investigated the concurrent and prospective associations between defending and (peer- and self-reported) victimization, and examined popularity and classroom norms as potential moderators. Participants included 4085 Finnish youth (43.9% boys; M[subscript age] = 14.56, SD = 0.75; 97% born in Finland). Concurrently, defending was positively associated with self-reported victimization in classrooms with high bullying-popularity norms (b = 0.28, SE = 0.16). Defending was negatively associated with peer-reported victimization in classrooms with high defending-popularity norms (b = -0.07, SE = 0.03). Defending was not significantly associated with future victimization, suggesting that it is generally not a risk factor for victimization.

This three-armed randomized controlled trial examined how moral disengagement and social norms account for change in bullying behavior and their potential as targets of anti-bullying components within separate interventions among 1200 French-speaking Belgian elementary students (48% boys, 9-12 year-olds, 57 classes, nine schools) during 2018-2019 (no ethnicity data available). Mediation analysis revealed that students' moral disengagement successfully decreased ([beta] = -0.46), which, in turn, reduced both bullying ([beta] = 0.33) and outsider behaviors ([beta] = 0.20), and increased defending ([beta] = -0.10). Intervening on social norms decreased bullying ([beta] = -0.18), but not through the perceived injunctive class norm as intended. Guidelines to open the "black box" of anti-bullying programs and determine the cost-effectiveness ratio of their components are provided.

This study examined the developmental profiles of children's social reasoning about individual agentive and deontic concerns. Tongan children (N = 140, 47.9% male), aged 4-8 years, were given a set of mentalistic (standard theory-of-mind) and deontic reasoning tasks. On average, children found diverse desires, knowledge access, hidden emotion, and belief emotion easier than the false-belief and diverse belief tasks. Tongan children were sensitive to social norms governing behavior, and this information was recruited for predicting behavior in a false-belief task when embedded in a socially normative context. We discuss the potential for cultural mandates to shape children's social understanding and the impact of culture on our theoretical framing of children's development.

Existing literature has mostly explained the occurrence of bullying victimization by individual socioemotional maladjustment. Instead, this study tested the person-group dissimilarity model (Wright et al., "Journal of Personality and Social Psychology," 50: 523-536, 1986) by examining whether individuals' deviation from developmentally important (relational, socio-behavioral, and physical) descriptive classroom norms predicted victimization. Adolescents (N = 1267, k = 56 classrooms; M[subscript age] = 13.2; 48.7% boys; 83.4% Dutch) provided self-reported and peer-nomination data throughout one school year (three timepoints). Results from group actor--partner interdependence models indicated that more person-group dissimilarity in relational characteristics (fewer friendships; incidence rate ratios [IRR][subscript T2] = 0.28, IRR[subscript T3] = 0.16, fewer social media connections; IRR[subscript T3] = 0.13) and, particularly, lower disruptive behaviors (IRR[subscript T2] = 0.35, IRR[subscript T3] = 0.26) predicted victimization throughout the school year.

Although inhibitory control is typically associated with positive outcomes, several theoretical frameworks suggest that too little "and" too much inhibitory control may be problematic. Using a longitudinal, latent variable approach, we examined whether a multi-method index of inhibitory control at Time 1 (N = 105, 52 girls, M[subscript age] = 3.50 years, 87% White) predicted observed social behavior with an unfamiliar peer and maternal report of preschoolers' mental health difficulties at Time 2 (M[subscript age] = 4.76 years). Data collection occurred between 2017 and 2019. Inhibitory control displayed a U-shaped relation with prospective outcomes, where high "and" low levels of inhibitory control were associated with higher levels of avoidant social behaviors and mental health difficulties. The results are discussed in the context of under- and over-regulation in understanding individual differences in children's social behavior and mental health difficulties.

Little is known about how children's value priorities develop over time. This study identifies children's value priority profiles and follows their development during middle childhood. Australian children (N = 609; ages 5-12 at Time 1) reported their values over 2 years. Latent Transition Analysis indicated four profiles: Social-Focus, Self-Focus, Growth-Focus and Undifferentiated. Within person development was characterized by profile stability or transfer to the Social-Focus profile. Younger children were more likely to have an Undifferentiated profile (or Self-Focus among boys) than older ones. Girls were more likely to have a Social-Focus profile or transfer to it, and less likely to have a Self- or Growth-Focus profile than boys. Social-Focus profile membership over time predicted more prosocial and less aggressive behavior.

One way children are remarkable learners is that they learn from others. Critically, children are selective when assessing from whom to learn, particularly in the domain of word learning. We conducted an analysis of children's selective word learning, reviewing 63 papers on 6,525 participants. Children's ability to engage in selective word learning appeared to be present in the youngest samples surveyed. Their more metacognitive understanding that epistemic competence indicates reliability or that others are good sources of knowledge has more of a developmental trajectory. We also found that various methodological factors used to assess children influence performance. We conclude with a synthesis of theoretical accounts of how children learn from others.

The current study used a novel methodology based on multivocal ethnography to assess the relations between conformity and evaluations of intelligence and good behavior among Western (U.S.) and non-Western (Ni-Vanuatu) children (6- to 11-year-olds) and adolescents (13- to 17-year-olds; N = 256). Previous research has shown that U.S. adults were less likely to endorse high-conformity children as intelligent than Ni-Vanuatu adults. The current data demonstrate that in contrast to prior studies documenting cultural differences between adults' evaluations of conformity, children and adolescents in the United States and Vanuatu have a conformity bias when evaluating peers' intelligence and behavior. Conformity bias for good behavior increases with age. The results have implications for understanding the interplay of conformity bias and trait psychology across cultures and development.

This study examined the coevolution of prosocial and aggressive popularity norms with popularity hierarchy (asymmetries in students' popularity). Cross-lagged-panel analyses were conducted on 2,843 secondary school students (N[subscript classrooms] = 120; M[subscript age] = 13.18; 51.3% girls). Popularity hierarchy predicted relative change in popularity norms over time, but not vice versa. Specifically, classrooms with few highly popular and many unpopular students increased in aggressive popularity norms at the beginning of the school year and decreased in prosocial popularity norms at the end of the year. Also, strong within-classroom asymmetries in popularity predicted relatively higher aggressive popularity norms. These findings may indicate that hierarchical contexts elicit competition for popularity, with high aggression and low prosocial behavior being seen as valuable tools to achieve popularity.

The aim of this study was to determine how trajectory clusters of social status (social preference and perceived popularity) and behavior (direct aggression and prosocial behavior) from age 9 to age 14 predicted adolescents' bullying participant roles at age 16 and 17 (n = 266). Clusters were identified with multivariate growth mixture modeling (GMM). The findings showed that participants' developmental trajectories of social status and social behavior across childhood and early adolescence predicted their bullying participant role involvement in adolescence. Practical implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.

Two studies were conducted in 2017 to investigate children's competencies seen as important by communities in Mtwara, Tanzania. Qualitative data from 95 parents (34 women) and 27 teachers (11 women) in Study 1 indicated that dimensions of social responsibility, such as "obedience," were valued highly. In Study 2, the competencies of 477 children (245 girls), aged 4-13 years, were rated by teachers and parents. Factor analysis found the "obedient" factor explained the most variance in parent rating. In line with predictions, urban residence, parental socioeconomic status (SES), and parental education were all positively associated with ratings of "curiosity," and parental SES was negatively associated with obedience and emotional "regulation." Findings illustrate the need for culturally specific frameworks of social-emotional learning.

Advanced theory-of-mind (AToM) development was investigated in three separate studies involving 82, 466, and 402 elementary school children (8-, 9-, and 10-year-olds). Rasch and factor analyses assessed whether common conceptual development underlies higher-order false-belief understanding, social understanding, emotion recognition, and perspective-taking abilities. The results refuted a unidimensional scale and revealed three distinct AToM factors: social reasoning, reasoning about ambiguity, and recognizing transgressions of social norms. Developmental progressions emerged for the two reasoning factors but not for recognizing transgressions of social norms. Both social factors were significantly related to inhibition, whereas language development only predicted performance on social reasoning. These findings suggest that AToM comprises multiple abilities, which are subject to distinct cognitive influences. Importantly, only two AToM factors involve conceptual development.

Infants' language exposure largely involves face-to-face interactions providing acoustic and visual speech cues but also social cues that might foster language learning. Yet, both audiovisual speech information and social information have so far received little attention in research on infants' early language development. Using a preferential looking paradigm, 44 German 6-month olds' ability to detect mismatches between concurrently presented auditory and visual native vowels was tested. Outcomes were related to mothers' speech style and interactive behavior assessed during free play with their infant, and to infant-specific factors assessed through a questionnaire. Results show that mothers' and infants' social behavior modulated infants' preference for matching audiovisual speech. Moreover, infants' audiovisual speech perception correlated with later vocabulary size, suggesting a lasting effect on language development.

This study examined the contribution of nonparental child-care services received during the preschool years to the development of social behavior between kindergarten and the end of elementary school with a birth cohort from Québec, Canada (N = 1,544). Mothers reported on the use of child-care services, while elementary school teachers rated children's shyness, social withdrawal, prosociality, opposition, and aggression. Children who received nonparental child-care services were less shy, less socially withdrawn, more oppositional, and more aggressive at school entry (age 6 years). However, these differences disappeared during elementary school as children who received exclusive parental care caught up with those who received nonparental care services. This "catch-up" effect from the perspective of children's adaptation to the social group is discussed.

Self-regulation is of interest both to psychologists and to teachers. But what the word means is unclear. To define it precisely, two studies examined the American Psychological Association's system of controlled vocabulary--specifically, the 447 associated terms it presents--and used techniques from the Digital Humanities to identify 88 closely related concepts and six broad conceptual clusters. The resulting analyses show how similar ideas are interrelated: self-control, self-management, self-observation, learning, social behavior, and the personality constructs related to self-monitoring. A full-color network map locates these concepts and clusters relative to each other. It also highlights some of the interests of different audiences, which can be described heuristically using two axes that have been labeled "abstract versus practical" and "self-oriented versus other-oriented."

Children prefer learning from, and affiliating with, their racial in-group but those preferences may vary for biracial children. Monoracial (White, Black, Asian) and biracial (Black/White, Asian/White) children (N = 246, 3-8 years) had their racial identity primed. In a learning preferences task, participants determined the function of a novel object after watching adults (White, Black, and Asian) demonstrate its uses. In the social preferences task, participants saw pairs of children (White, Black, and Asian) and chose with whom they most wanted to socially affiliate. Biracial children showed flexibility in racial identification during learning and social tasks. However, minority-primed biracial children were not more likely than monoracial minorities to socially affiliate with primed racial in-group members, indicating their in-group preferences are contextually based.

One point of intersection in ethnic and racial identity research is the conceptual attention paid to how positively youth feel about their ethnicity or race, or "positive ethnic-racial affect." This article reports results of a series of meta-analyses based on 46 studies of this dimension and psychosocial, academic, and health risk outcomes among ethnic and racial minority youth. The overall pattern of results suggests that positive ethnic-racial affect exhibited small to medium associations (r range = |0.11| to |0.37|) with depressive symptoms, positive social functioning, self-esteem, well-being, internalizing, externalizing, academic achievement, academic attitudes, and health risk outcomes. Implications for theory and research about the role of positive ethnic-racial affect among youth growing up in an increasingly diverse society are discussed. [This article was prepared as part of the Ethnic and Racial Identity in the 21st Century working group. Group members are: William E. Cross Jr., George P. Knight, Stephen M. Quintana, Eleanor Seaton, Robert M. Sellers, and Tiffany Yip.]

Child maltreatment often has a negative impact on the development of social behavior and health. The biobehavioral mechanisms through which these adverse outcomes emerge, however, are not clear. To better understand the ways in which early life adversity affects subsequent social behavior, changes in the neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) in children (n = 73) aged 8.1-11.5 years following a laboratory stressor were examined. Girls with histories of physical abuse have higher levels of urinary OT and lower levels of salivary cortisol following the stressor when compared to controls. Abused and control boys, however, do not differ in their hormonal responses. These data suggest that early adversity may disrupt the development of the stress regulation system in girls by middle childhood.

Children and adolescents evaluated group inclusion and exclusion in the context of generic and group-specific norms involving morality and social conventions. Participants ("N" = 381), aged 9.5 and 13.5 years, judged an in-group member's decision to deviate from the norms of the group, whom to include, and whether their personal preference was the same as what they expected a group should do. Deviating from in-group moral norms about unequal allocation of resources was viewed more positively than deviating from conventional norms about nontraditional dress codes. With age, participants gave priority to group-specific norms and differentiated what the group should do from their own preference about the group's decision, revealing a developmental picture about children's complex understanding of group dynamics and group norms. (Contains 6 figures.)

This study examined whether ethnic segregation is concurrently (fall) and prospectively (fall to spring) associated with social status among 4th- and 5th-grade African American and European American children ("n" = 713, ages 9-11 years). Segregation measures were (a) same-ethnicity favoritism in peer affiliations and (b) cross-ethnicity dislike. Social status measures were same- and cross-ethnicity peer nominations of acceptance, rejection, and cool. Among African Americans, fall segregation predicted declines in cross-ethnicity (European American) acceptance and same-ethnicity rejection, and increases in same-ethnicity acceptance and perceived coolness. For European American children, fall segregation predicted declines in cross-ethnicity (African American) acceptance and increases in cross-ethnicity rejection. Results indicate that segregation induces asymmetric changes in social status for African American and European American children. (Contains 4 tables.)

Rule violations are likely to serve as key contexts for learning to reason about public identity. In an initial study with 91 children aged 4-9 years, social emotions and self-presentational concerns were more likely to be cited when children were responding to hypothetical vignettes involving social-conventional rather than moral violations. In 2 further studies with 376 children aged 4-9 years, experimental manipulations of self-focused attention (either by leading children to believe they were being video-recorded or by varying audience reactions to transgressions) were found to elicit greater attention to social evaluation following moral violations, although self-presentational concerns were consistently salient in the context of social-conventional violations. The role of rule transgressions in children's emerging self-awareness and social understanding is discussed. (Contains 3 figures.)

Adolescents' social judgments and emotion attributions about exclusion in three contexts, nationality, gender, and personality, were measured in a sample of 12- and 15-year-old Swiss and non-Swiss adolescents (N = 247). Overall, adolescents judged exclusion based on nationality as less acceptable than exclusion based on gender or personality. Non-Swiss participants, however, who reflected newly immigrated children to Switzerland, viewed exclusion based on nationality as more wrong than did Swiss participants and attributed more positive emotions to the excluder than did Swiss participants. Girls viewed exclusion in nationality and personality contexts as less legitimate than did boys, and they attributed less positive emotions to excluder target in the nationality context than did boys. The findings extend existing research on exclusion by focusing on both emotion attributions as well as judgments and by investigating exclusion in a sample that included a recent immigrant group.

Young infants are sensitive to self-directed social actions, but do they appreciate the intentional, target-directed nature of such behaviors? The authors addressed this question by investigating infants' understanding of social gaze in third-party interactions (N = 104). Ten-month-old infants discriminated between 2 people in mutual versus averted gaze, and expected a person to look at her social partner during conversation. In contrast, 9-month-old infants showed neither ability, even when provided with information that highlighted the gazer's social goals. These results indicate considerable improvement in infants' abilities to analyze the social gaze of others toward the end of their 1st year, which may relate to their appreciation of gaze as both a social and goal-directed action.

Research connecting children's understanding of mental states to their peer relations at school remains scarce. Previous work by the authors demonstrated that children's understanding of mental states in the context of a faux pas--a social blunder involving unintentional insult--is associated with concurrent peer rejection. The present report describes a longitudinal follow-up investigation of 210 children from the original sample, aged 5-6 or 8-9 years at Time 1. The results support a bidirectional model suggesting that peer rejection may impair the acquisition of faux pas understanding, and also that, among older children, difficulties in understanding faux pas predict increased peer rejection. These findings highlight the important and complex associations between social understanding and peer relations during childhood.

The association among mothers', fathers', and infants' risk and cognitive and social behaviors at 24 months was examined using structual equation modeling and data on 4,200 on toddlers and their parents from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort. There were 3 main findings. First, for cognitive outcomes, maternal risk was directly and indirectly linked to it through maternal sensitivity whereas paternal risk was only indirectly related through maternal sensitivity. Second, for social behaviors, maternal and paternal risks were indirectly linked through maternal sensitivity and father engagement. Third, maternal and paternal levels of risk were linked to maternal supportiveness whereas mothers' and children's risk were linked to paternal cognitive stimulation. Implications are that policy makers must take into account effects of mothers', children's, and fathers' risk on young children's functioning.

In accord with increasing recognition of the situation specificity of childhood social behaviors, individual and contextual differences in children's responses to potential peer conflict were examined (hostile attribution, behavioral strategies, and affective reactions; N = 367, 9-2 years, 197 girls). Situational cues from 2 sources, the antagonist and a witnessing best friend, were designed to suggest the antagonist's intentions. Multilevel modeling indicated that children's responses generally varied more according to cues from the antagonist than friend, but the latter also affected responses, especially when conflicting with other situational information. Cognitive and affective responses were also influenced by gender, social goals, friendship quality, and self-efficacy for peer interaction. Findings provide theoretical insight on the context of peer conflict.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show differences in face processing abilities from early in development. To examine whether these differences reflect an atypical versus delayed developmental trajectory, neural responses to familiar and unfamiliar faces in twenty-four 18- to 47-month-old children with ASD were compared with responses of thirty-two 12- to 30-month-old typically developing children. Results of 2 experiments revealed that neural responses to faces in children with ASD resembled those observed in younger typically developing children, suggesting delayed development. Electrophysiological responses to faces were also related to parent report of adaptive social behaviors for both children with ASD and typical development. Slower development of the face processing system in ASD may be related to reduced self-directed "expected" experience with faces in early development.

The effects of social group norms (inclusion vs. exclusion vs. exclusion-plus-relational aggression) and school norms (inclusion vs. no norm) on 7- and 10-year-old children's intergroup attitudes were examined. Children (n = 383) were randomly assigned to a group with an inclusion or exclusion norm, and to 1 of the school norm conditions. Findings indicated that children's out-group attitudes reflected their group's norm but, with increasing age, they liked their in-group less, and the out-group more, if the group had an exclusion norm. The school inclusion norm instigated more positive attitudes toward out-group members, but it did not moderate or extinguish contrary group norms. The use of school norms to counteract the effects of children's social group norms is discussed.

With a sample of African American and European American 3rd- and 4th-grade children (N = 486, ages 8-11 years), this study examined classroom ethnic composition, peer social status (i.e., social preference and perceived popularity as nominated by same- and cross-ethnicity peers), and patterns of ethnic segregation (i.e., friendship, peer group, and cross-ethnicity dislike). African American--but not European American--children had more segregated relationships and were more disliked by cross-ethnicity peers when they had fewer same-ethnicity classmates. African American children's segregation was positively associated with same-ethnicity social preference and perceived popularity and with cross-ethnicity perceived popularity. European American children's segregation was positively associated with same-ethnicity social preference but negatively associated with cross-ethnicity social preference and perceived popularity.

This study contributes to ongoing scholarship at the nexus of translational research, education reform, and the developmental and prevention sciences. It reports 2-year experimental impacts of a universal, integrated school-based intervention in social-emotional learning and literacy development on children's social-emotional, behavioral, and academic functioning. The study employed a school-randomized, experimental design with 1,184 children in 18 elementary schools. Children in the intervention schools showed improvements across several domains: self-reports of hostile attributional bias, aggressive interpersonal negotiation strategies, and depression, and teacher reports of attention skills, and aggressive and socially competent behavior. In addition, there were effects of the intervention on children's math and reading achievement for those identified by teachers at baseline at highest behavioral risk. These findings are interpreted in light of developmental cascades theory and lend support to the value of universal, integrated interventions in the elementary school period for promoting children's social-emotional and academic skills.

Quartets of Chinese (n = 125) and Canadian (n = 133) 7-year-old children were observed as they played with a single attractive toy. Chinese children exhibited more assertive and general rule bids, engaged in more spontaneous giving, and reacted more positively to assertions of others whereas Canadian children more frequently referred to norms of sharing. Evidence of cultural scripts for dealing with potential conflict, that is, sharing for Canadian children and hierarchical organization for Chinese children, emerged. Passive and reticent behaviors in Chinese children and assertion and object control by Canadian children were associated with group acceptance, results suggesting the meaning of these patterns of social behavior may differ in these two countries.

The issue of informant discrepancies about child and adolescent functioning is an important concern for clinicians, developmental psychologists, and others who must consider ways of handling discrepant reports of information, but reasons for discrepancies in reports have been poorly understood. Adolescent attachment and informant depressive symptoms were examined as 2 explanations for absolute and directional discrepancies about adolescent symptoms, relationships, and social behavior in a sample of 189 eleventh-grade students (mean age = 16.5 years). Adolescent attachment predicted absolute discrepancies, with greater attachment coherence associated with fewer discrepancies in reports of adolescent depressive symptoms, parent-adolescent conflict, and adolescent externalizing behavior. Parents' but not adolescents' depressive symptoms sometimes predicted absolute discrepancies. Mothers' depressive symptoms and adolescent attachment predicted the direction of discrepancies for mother-peer reports only.

Many studies have examined associations between children's theory of mind and social behavior with familiar peers, but to date none have examined how theory of mind might relate to behavior toward unfamiliar peers in a play setting. Forty-four 4-year-olds (21 girls, 23 boys) participated in standard theory-of-mind tasks and in a play session with 3 or 4 other children who were unfamiliar. Children were also tested on general vocabulary ability. No relations were found between theory of mind and social engagement. However, positive associations were found between theory of mind and time spent observing, but not interacting with, other children. Possible explanations of the links between theory of mind, temperament, and social interest are considered.

Studies show that children who use relational aggression process social information in unique ways; however, findings have been inconsistent and limited by methodological weaknesses. This short-term longitudinal study examined developmental changes in 245 (49% female; ages 8-13) 3rd through 8th graders' normative beliefs about relational aggression and tested the hypothesis that individual and classroom-level norms predict relational aggression 1 year later. Results showed that the transition to middle school was marked by increased approval of relational aggression, and individual norms predicted future relational aggression. Importantly, a contextual model showed that students in peer groups highly supportive of relational aggression became increasingly aggressive. Findings extend social information processing theories of relational aggression to focus on the role of peer group cognitions.

Tattling, defined as the reporting to a second party of norm violations committed by a third party, is a frequent but little-studied activity among young children. Participant observation and quantitative sampling are used to provide a detailed characterization of tattling in 2 preschools (initial mean age = 4.08 years, N = 40). In these populations, tattling represents the majority of talk about peers' behavior to third parties. It is usually truthful, it rarely refers to transgressions committed against other individuals, it is not often ignored by adults, it is performed more frequently by dominant children, and it correlates with teacher reports of relational aggression. These exploratory results suggest several new avenues of research into children's developing understanding of social norms.

The purpose of this study was to examine relations between shyness-sensitivity and social competence, school performance, and psychological well-being in Chinese children with rural and urban backgrounds. Participants were students in rural migrant children schools and city schools in China (Ns = 411 and 518, respectively; M age = 10 years). Data were obtained from peer evaluations, teacher ratings, self-reports, and school records. It was found that shyness was associated with social and school problems and depression in urban children. However, shyness was generally associated with indexes of adjustment such as leadership, teacher-rated competence, and academic achievement in rural migrant children. The results indicate the role of context in defining the functional meaning of social behavior in children's adjustment.

This multimethod study of 101 mothers, fathers, and children elucidates poorly understood role of children's attachment security as "moderating" a common maladaptive trajectory: from parental power assertion, to child resentful opposition, to child antisocial conduct. Children's security was assessed at 15 months, parents' power assertion observed at 25 and 38 months, children's resentful opposition to parents observed at 52 months, and antisocial conduct rated by parents at 67 months. Moderated mediation analyses indicated that in insecure dyads, parental power assertion predicted children's resentful opposition, which then predicted antisocial conduct. This mechanism was absent in secure dyads. Early insecurity acts as a catalyst for a dyad embarking on mutually adversarial path toward antisocial outcomes, whereas early security defuses this maladaptive trajectory.

Neural correlates of social-cognition were assessed in 9- to- 17-year-olds (N = 34) using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Participants appraised how unfamiliar peers they had previously identified as being of high or low interest would evaluate them for an anticipated online chat session. Differential age- and sex-related activation patterns emerged in several regions previously implicated in affective processing. These included the ventral striatum, hippocampus, hypothalamus, and insula. In general, activation patterns shifted with age in older relative to younger females but showed no association with age in males. Relating these neural response patterns to changes in adolescent social-cognition enriches theories of adolescent social development through enhanced neurobiological understanding of social behavior.

To test the hypothesis that biological motion perception is developmentally integrated with important social cognitive abilities, 12-month-olds (N = 36) were shown a display of a human point-light figure turning to observe a target. Infants spontaneously and reliably followed the figure's "gaze" despite the absence of familiar and socially informative features such as a face or eyes. This suggests that biological motion displays are sufficient to convey rich psychological information such as attentional orientation and is the first evidence to show that biological motion perception and social cognitive abilities are functionally integrated early in the course of typical development. The question of whether common neural substrates for biological motion perception and analysis of gaze direction underlies the functional integration seen behaviorally is discussed.

Based on a sample of 406 seven-year-old twins, this study examined whether exposure to friends' social or physical aggression, respectively, moderates the effect of heritability on children's own social and physical aggression. Univariate analyses showed that children's own social and physical aggression were significantly explained by genetic factors, whereas friends' social and physical aggression represented "true" environmental factors that were unrelated to children's genetic dispositions. Multivariate analyses further suggested a possible gene-environment interaction in the link between friends' and children's physical aggression but not in the link between friends' and children's social aggression. Instead, friends' social aggression was directly related to children's social aggression, in addition to genetic effects on this behavior. Theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.

This study examined whether the affect children feel toward peers would influence children's social-cognitive evaluations and behaviors. The sample consisted of 209 fifth-grade children (11- to 12-year-olds; 119 boys and 90 girls). For each child, 3 target peers (liked, disliked, and neutral) were identified via a sociometric nomination procedure. The names of the targets were then inserted into hypothetical vignettes in which the target peer's behavior had a negative consequence for the child. After each vignette, questions about intent, outcome expectations, and self-efficacy beliefs were asked. In addition, self-reports regarding relationship-specific proactive and reactive aggression and regarding victimization were collected. The results demonstrate that children social-cognitively differentiate between the relationship types and that relationship-specific evaluations are associated with relationship-specific behaviors.

This study examined the dual roles of adolescents' perceptions of social acceptance and sociometric popularity in predicting relative changes over time in adolescents' social functioning. Observational, self-report, and peer report data were obtained from 164 adolescents who were interviewed at age 13 years and then again at age 14 years, as well as their same-sex close friends. Adolescents who felt positively about their own social standing fared well over time, regardless of their level of sociometric popularity. Further, low popularity was particularly problematic for adolescents who failed to see themselves as fitting in. Results suggest that during adolescence, when it becomes increasingly possible for teens to choose their own social niches, it is possible to be socially successful without being broadly popular.

Forty-four Head Start classrooms were randomly assigned to enriched intervention (Head Start REDI--Research-based, Developmentally Informed) or "usual practice" conditions. The intervention involved brief lessons, "hands-on" extension activities, and specific teaching strategies linked empirically with the promotion of: (a) social-emotional competencies and (b) language development and emergent literacy skills. Take-home materials were provided to parents to enhance skill development at home. Multimethod assessments of three hundred and fifty-six 4-year-old children tracked their progress over the course of the 1-year program. Results revealed significant differences favoring children in the enriched intervention classrooms on measures of vocabulary, emergent literacy, emotional understanding, social problem solving, social behavior, and learning engagement. Implications are discussed for developmental models of school readiness and for early educational programs and policies.

Imitation, vocabulary, pretend play, and socially insightful behavior were investigated in 5,206 same- and opposite-sex 2-year-old twin pairs in the United Kingdom. Individual differences in imitative ability were due to modest heritability (30%), while environmental factors shared between twins (42%) and unique to each twin (28%) also made significant contributions to the variance. Imitation correlated significantly, although modestly, with vocabulary, pretend play, and socially insightful behavior, and the strongest relationship was with vocabulary. A model that represented the covariance between the variables as being due to correlated latent genetic and environmental factors fitted the data well, with shared environmental factors influencing most of the covariance. Parents who encourage imitation may also tend to foster the development of language, pretence, and socially insightful behavior.

A sample of 341 5 1/2-year-old children participating in an ongoing longitudinal study was the focus of a study on the relation between cardiac vagal regulation and peer status. To assess cardiac vagal regulation, resting measures of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and RSA change (suppression) to 3 cognitively and emotionally challenging tasks were derived. Results indicated that vagal regulation was positively associated with peer status. In addition, mediational analyses revealed that the relation between vagal regulation and peer status was mediated through better social skills for girls and better social skills and fewer behavior problems for boys. These findings are discussed in terms of the role of vagal regulation in the facilitation of children's positive social behavior.

Language is drawn on extensively in friendships but has received scant attention in the developmental literature. This study compared friendship quality in 16-year-old adolescents with and without specific language impairment (SLI), testing the extent it is predicted by individual differences in social behaviors and language ability. Participants were 120 adolescents with SLI and 118 typically developing (TD) adolescents. After considering the effects of nonverbal IQ and prosocial and difficult behavior, language measures were found to be associated with friendship quality. The TD participants enjoyed normal friendships, whereas the participants with SLI were more likely to exhibit poorer quality (although 60% experienced good quality of friendships). Longitudinal analyses identified early language difficulties as predictive of poorer friendship quality in adolescence.

Kohlberg's (1966) hypothesis that the attainment of gender constancy motivates children to attend to gender norms was reevaluated by examining these links in relation to age. Ninety-four 3- to 7-year-old children were interviewed to assess whether and how constancy mediates age-related changes in gender-related beliefs. As expected, results indicated a general pattern of an increase in stereotype knowledge, the importance and positive evaluation of one's own gender category, and rigidity of beliefs between the ages of 3 and 5. Moreover, the stability phase, rather than full constancy, mediated some of these relations. After age 5, rigidity generally decreased with age, with relations primarily mediated by consistency.