Research Findings: A description of the development and preliminary validation of the Affect in Play Scale-Preschool version (APS-P) is presented by demonstrating associations among preschool children's play, creativity, and daily behavior using multiple methodologies. Thirty-three preschool-age children completed a standardized 5-minute play task…

Despite growing research results indicating that shyness is a risk factor for psychosocial maladjustment in childhood, less is known about the conceptual mechanisms that may underlie these associations. The purpose of the current study was to explore links between self-reported shyness, coping strategies and social functioning in middle childhood.…

Mechanisms that lead depressive symptoms to undermine parenting are poorly understood. This review examines cognitive, affective, and motivational processes thought to be responsible for the impact of depressive symptoms on parenting. We present a five-step, action-control model and review 152 studies relevant to 13 regulatory processes. Evidence…

Purpose: To evaluate the prevalence of ICD-10 psychiatric disorders in a population of pregnant teenage women from a Brazilian public hospital. Method: 1000 pregnant teenage women were evaluated using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview, a structured interview which establishes diagnoses according to the International Classification…

The "Touching Hearts, Touching Minds" initiative was funded through a 2003 United States Department of Agriculture Special Projects grant to revitalize nutrition education and services in the Massachusetts Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Program. The 30 nutrition education materials and…

Much of the research on children's coping styles is based on a downward extension of adult coping theories. In a departure from this approach, coping competence theory seeks to account for children's ability to cope with daily challenges on the basis of developmental research. The theory, which states that challenges call for distinct coping…

Research shows that stereotype threat reduces performance by diminishing executive resources, but less is known about the psychological processes responsible for these impairments. The authors tested the idea that targets of stereotype threat try to regulate their emotions and that this regulation depletes executive resources, resulting in…

In "Language awareness and language learning" (Svalberg, 2007) I concluded that the otherwise diverse and multidisciplinary field of language awareness (LA) is given coherence by its focus on engagement with language. I argued that LA is seen as active and not merely as a state of conscious awareness or sensitivity. This paper goes one step…

In this article, the authors describe 3 interrelated investigations among White undergraduate and graduate students that document the development and initial validation of the White Privilege Attitudes Scale (WPAS). The WPAS assesses the multidimensional nature of White privilege attitudes, reflecting affective, cognitive, and behavioral…

The Young Adult Social Behavior Scale was developed for the purpose of measuring self-reported relational and social aggression and behaviors of interpersonal maturity in adolescents and young adults (the sample included 629 university students; 66% female; 91.6% White). Despite previous research suggesting that relational and social aggression…

It is well-established that coping and enhancement drinking motives predict college student drinking and that personality traits predict drinking motives. Little is known, however, about personality and drinking patterns among individuals who drink for both enhancement and coping reasons. University students in the current study completed…

Ideally, the unit of analysis in psychology is the individual. However, many psychological methods do not cope well, either at the level of construct definition or at the level of measurement, with individuality in behavior. There is little leeway for constructs to be both idiosyncratically tailored to the individual, and still identified as…

We first examined how war-related traumatic events impact on peer and sibling relations, and how the quality of these relations in turn are associated with children's mental health, indicating a mediation model. Second, we tested the moderating (protective) effects of good peer and sibling relations in attenuating the link between trauma and…

The central goal of this longitudinal study was to develop a laboratory-based index of children's covert cheating behavior that distinguished normative rule violations from those that signal risk for antisocial behavior. Participants (N = 215 children) were drawn from a community population and oversampled for externalizing behavior problems…

This study examined whether the Head Start Research-based Developmentally Informed (REDI) program is more effective than the standard Head Start program at improving the language, emergent literacy, and social-emotional skills of preschoolers. Head Start centers in three Pennsylvania counties were randomly assigned either to use the REDI program…