Lester, Conradt, and Marsit (2016) have assembled a set of articles that bring to readers of "Child Development" the scope and impact of the exponentially growing research on epigenetics and child development. This commentary aims to place this work in a broader context of theory and research by (a) providing a conceptual framework for…

Although epidemiological data provide evidence that early life experience plays a critical role in human development, the mechanism of how this works remains in question. Recent data from human and animal literature suggest that epigenetic changes, such as DNA methylation, are involved not only in cellular differentiation but also in the…

Developmentalists are often interested in understanding change processes, and growth models are the most common analytic tool for examining such processes. Nonlinear growth curves are especially valuable to developmentalists because the defining characteristics of the growth process such as initial levels, rates of change during growth spurts, and…

Drawing on developmental and policy research, this study examined whether 3 dimensions of caseworker-recipient interaction in welfare offices functioned as critical ecological contexts for recipient families. The sample consisted of 1,098 families from 10 welfare offices in National Evaluation of Welfare to Work Strategies (NEWWS). In multilevel…

This study examined the ways in which exposure to moral reasoning statements affected the subsequent behavioral choices of 144 seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade boys at different stages of moral judgement. The presentation of reasoning had different effects on the behavioral choices of subjects at two different stages. (Author/SB)

Implications of this study on child-development theory, education, and psychotherapy are discussed. (MB)

Two studies: (1) assessed the infant's ability to perceive differences between two-dimensional and three-dimensional stimuli; and (2) tested the infants' ability to transfer responses across dimensions. (Author/SB)

The role of cognitive development in the formation of social judgments was investigated in 2 experiments examining children's use of task outcome information in attributional judgments of ability and task difficulty. (SB)

Perceptual counterparts of a series of conservation of length tests were presented to subjects who were categorized as conservers or nonconservers conservation of length pre-tests, and to conservers and nonconservers given conservation length training. Perceptual performance of the untrained nonconservers was significantly worse than that of the…

Examined the influence of both peer and adult models who displayed either consistent, conflicting, or inconsistent moral judgments on the moral judgments and explanations of first graders. The influence of rationale provision was also assessed. (Author)

Results were interpreted as suggesting that sociocultural factors may change the rate of development but not its course. (Author/JMB)

Cross-lagged correlational analyses and multiple-regression analyses of the data collected in these two studies supports the causal model that, while intentionality and internality both emerge when a common cognitive construct develops, heightened internality also significantly enhances a child's ability to learn intentionality. (Author/JMB)

The comparative value of various parameters of neonatal prematurity for differentiating intellective, scholastic, and social functioning in middle childhood was assessed for a sample of 38 prematurely born and 26 maturely born subjects aged 7 to 9.5 years. (Author/JMB)