Global self-esteem, appearance satisfaction, and self-reported dieting are interrelated. This study examines the temporal ordering of global self-esteem and appearance satisfaction across the early adolescence transition, from age 10 to age 14, as well as the independent associations of self-esteem and appearance satisfaction on self-reported…

Knowledge of child rearing and child development is relevant to parenting and the well-being of children. Using a sociodemographically heterogeneous sample of 268 European American mothers of 2-year-olds, we assessed the state of mothers' parenting knowledge; compared parenting knowledge in groups of mothers who varied in terms of parenthood and…

The authors studied multiple parenting cognitions and practices in European American mothers (N=262) who ranged from 15 to 47 years of age. All were 1st-time parents of 20-month-old children. Some age effects were 0; others were linear or nonlinear. Nonlinear age effects determined by spline regression showed significant associations to a "knot"…

Cultural variation in durations, relations, and contingencies of mother-infant person- and object-directed behaviors were examined for 121 nonmigrant Latino mother-infant dyads in South America, Latina immigrants from South America and their infants living in the United States, and European American mother-infant dyads. Nonmigrant Latina mothers…

Measured vagal tone and heart period at 2 months and 5 years in children and their mothers to evaluate the development of vagal regulation at rest and during an environmental task. Found that children reached adult levels of baseline vagal tone by 5 years and did not differ from mothers in baseline-to-task change in vagal tone or heart period.…

The role of maternal chronological age in prenatal and perinatal history, social support, and parenting practices of new mothers (N=335) was examined. Primiparas of 5-month-old infants ranged in age from 13 to 42 years. Age effects were zero, linear, and nonlinear. Nonlinear age effects were significantly associated up to a certain age with little…

A total of 467 mothers of firstborn 20-month-old children from 7 countries (103 Argentine, 61 Belgian, 39 Israeli, 78 Italian, 57 Japanese, 69 Korean, and 60 US American) completed the "Jackson Personality Inventory" (JPI), measures of parenting cognitions (self-perceptions and knowledge), and a social desirability scale. Our first…

Five experiments used a categorization habituation-of-looking paradigm to investigate infants' categorization of animals and vehicles based on static versus dynamic attributes of stimuli (color images versus dynamic point-light displays). Findings showed that 6-month-olds categorize animals and vehicles based on static and dynamic information, and…

The relations among specific aspects of language (comprehension, production, semantics, and utterance length), relations between language and symbolic play, and maternal influences were evaluated in mother-toddler dyads when the children were 13 and 20 months of age. Found toddler language ability did not generally predict toddler play and that…

Mothers in Argentina, France, Japan, and the United States were observed interacting with their 5- and 13-month-old infants. Maternal speech was classified into expressions concerning affect and information. Mothers in all cultures used both classifications with their infants and spoke to older infants more than younger infants. (BC)

This study examined unique associations of multiple distal context variables (family socioeconomic status [SES], maternal employment, and paternal parenting) and proximal maternal (personality, intelligence, and knowledge; behavior, self-perceptions, and attributions) and child (age, gender, representation, language, and sociability)…