The present study examined the early parenting and temperament determinants of children's antisocial and positive behaviors in a low-income, diverse ethno-racial sample. Participants were from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project, which included 960 European American (initial M age = 15.00 months; 51.2% female) and 880 African…

We introduce a new method, "differential language analysis" (DLA), for studying human development in which computational linguistics are used to analyze the big data available through online social media in light of psychological theory. Our open vocabulary DLA approach finds words, phrases, and topics that distinguish groups of people…

Community violence exposure (CVE) is associated with numerous psychosocial outcomes among youth. Although linear, cumulative effects models have typically been used to describe these relations, emerging evidence suggests the presence of curvilinear associations that may represent a pattern of emotional desensitization among youth exposed to…

The relation of observed emotional reactivity and regulation in infancy to executive function in early childhood was examined in a prospective longitudinal sample of 1,292 children from predominantly low-income and rural communities. Children participated in a fear eliciting task at ages 7, 15, and 24 months and completed an executive function…

A transactional model examining the longitudinal association between vagal regulation (as indexed by vagal withdrawal) and maternal sensitivity from age 2.5 to age 5.5 was assessed. The sample included 356 children (171 male, 185 female) and their mothers who participated in a laboratory visit at age 2.5, 4.5, and 5.5. Cardiac vagal tone was…

Younger and older adults differ in performance on a range of social-cognitive skills, with older adults having difficulties in decoding nonverbal cues to emotion and intentions. Such skills are likely to be important when deciding whether someone is being sarcastic. In the current study we investigated in a life span sample whether there are…

When children experience habitual peer difficulties, adults often remind them that many people care about them. How do such reminders of support impact children's emotional responses to acute experiences of peer disapproval? Intuitively, support reminders would exert compensatory effects attenuating the emotional impact of acute disapproval.…

This study examined contextually inappropriate (CI) anger in relation to emotion recognition and situation knowledge, negative social experiences, and externalizing behavior among low-income 4-year-olds attending Head Start (n = 134). Approximately 23% showed anger when presented with positive/neutral slides and videos (valence-incongruent CI…

University/college can be a challenging time as students face developmental tasks such as building new social networks and achieving academically. Social anxiety may be disadvantageous in this setting given that social situations often include drinking and individuals with social anxiety tend to self-medicate through alcohol use. However, findings…

Co-rumination is a dyadic process between relationship partners that refers to excessively discussing problems, rehashing problems, speculating about problems, mutual encouragement of problem talk, and dwelling on negative affect. Although studies have addressed youths' "tendency" to co-ruminate, little is known about the nature of…

The goal of this study was to examine physiological and environmental predictors of children's sympathy (an emotional response consisting of feelings of concern or sorrow for others who are distressed or in need) and whether temperamental effortful control mediated these relations. Specifically, in a study of 192 children (23% Hispanic; 54%…

The emotional reactivity hypothesis holds that, over the course of phylogeny, the selection of animals with less reactive temperaments supported the development of sophisticated social-cognitive skills in several species, including humans (Hare, 2007). In the ontogenetic human case, an emotional reactivity hypothesis predicts that children with…

Investigating heterogeneity in antisocial behavior early in life is essential for understanding the etiology, development, prognosis, and treatment of these problems. Data from the longitudinal National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) study of Early Child Care were used to identify homogeneous groups of young antisocial children…

The present study examined life stage and cultural differences in the degree to which familiarity of one's physical location and interaction partner is associated with daily well-being. Participants reported all the activities they engaged in and how they felt during these activities on a previous day using the Day Reconstruction Method (Kahneman,…

How perspective-taking ability changes with age (i.e., whether older adults are better at understanding others' behaviors and intentions and show greater empathy to others or not) is not clear, with prior empirical findings on this phenomenon yielding mixed results. In a series of experiments, we investigated the phenomenon from a motivational…