Using data ("n" = 3,790 with 2,119 in the 3-year-old cohort and 1,671 in the 4-year-old cohort) from 353 Head Start centers in the Head Start Impact Study, the only large-scale randomized experiment in Head Start history, this article examined the impact of Head Start on children's cognitive and parent-reported social-behavioral outcomes…

Little research has examined whether social information processing (SIP) measures from early childhood predict externalizing problems beyond the shared association with familial risk markers. In the present study, family antecedents and first-grade externalizing behaviors were studied in relation to preschool and 1st-grade SIP using data from…

This study adds to the growing literature linking children's experiences in the environment to individual differences in their developing skills in attention, memory, and planning. The authors asked about the extent to which stimulating and sensitive care in the family and in the child-care or school environments would predict these cognitive…

This study tested the independent and interactive influences of classroom (concentrations of peer prosocial behaviors and victimization), family (household moves, mothers' education), and school (proportion of students receiving income assistance) ecologies on changes in children's social competence (e.g., interpersonal skills, leadership…

Frequent shared activities between mother and child may compensate for disruptive features of mothers' work or may transmit psychological benefits of work to children. Results also suggest that family processes differ as a function of work circumstances. (BC)