Parasympathetic nervous system functioning as indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is widely used as a measure of physiological regulation. We examined developmental patterns of children's resting RSA and RSA reactivity from 2 to 15 years of age, a period of time that is marked by considerable advances in children's regulatory abilities.…

Children of combat deployed parents are at risk of behavioral problems. Parental emotion socialization (PES) has been theorized to influence children's behaviors; many studies lend support to this theory. However, longitudinal studies examining PES with experimental designs are sparse. In this study, we estimated PES growth trajectories following…

Intrusive parenting has been traditionally considered a negative parenting style and includes actions that are overly directive and controlling of children's behavior. However, current research aims to contextualize this parenting behavior. This study examined the relation between intrusive parenting and early childhood behavior problems or…

We compared language comprehension and production across the second year of life in children of clinically depressed mothers who later remitted with children of nondepressed mothers. Altogether, 157 mother-child dyads participated: 46 with mothers diagnosed at infant age 5 months as having major, minor, or other depressive disorders who fully…

The current study examined the interaction between maternal depressive symptoms and child temperament in predicting subsequent child language skills. Participants were 252 mother-child dyads recruited from the All Our Families longitudinal cohort, a primarily middle-class sample (62.9% completed postsecondary education) from Alberta, Canada (90.5%…

The goal of this study was to broaden the developmental understanding of the implications of interparental conflict (IPC) and threat appraisals of conflict for adolescents' relationships with peers. Guided by the cognitive contextual framework and evolutionary perspectives, we evaluated a developmental model in which adolescents who are exposed to…

Face scanning is an important skill that takes place in a highly interactive context embedded within social interaction. However, previous research has studied face scanning using noninteractive stimuli. We aimed to study face scanning and social interaction in infancy in a more ecologically valid way by providing infants with a naturalistic and…

Multiple theoretical frameworks posit that interactions between the autonomic nervous system and higher-order neural networks are crucial for cognitive regulation. However, few studies have simultaneously examined autonomic physiology and brain activity during cognitive tasks. Such research is promising for understanding how early adversity…

The children of teen mothers are at elevated risk for becoming teen parents themselves. The current study aimed to identify how levels of mothers' education were associated with risk of teenage childbearing for children of teen versus nonteen mothers. Through structural equation modeling, we tested whether children's environmental and personal…

Guided by models of family unpredictability, this study was designed to identify the distinctive sequelae of disorganized interparental conflict, a dimension of interparental conflict characterized by abrupt, inexplicable changes in parental emotional lability, conflict tactics, and verbalizations. Participants included 208 kindergarten children…

This study examined the longitudinal contribution of four different childcare arrangements attended during the preschool years to social behaviors and academic achievement up to age 15 years. Children participating in a Canadian longitudinal survey with available information on childcare attendance between ages 3 and 5 years (N = 6,852) were…

Antisocial peer behavior and low parental knowledge of adolescents' activities are key interpersonal risk factors for adolescent substance use. However, how the magnitude of associations between these risk factors and substance use may vary across adolescence remains less well understood. The present study examined the age-varying associations of…

The Socialization of Emotion (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998; Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Cumberland, 1998) model creates a theoretical framework for understanding parents' direct and indirect influences on children's emotional development, including the influence of parent characteristics on subsequent emotion specific parenting. Large…

The present study examined, within a longitudinal family-informed design and across middle childhood, the predictive associations between preference for solitude and social wariness, two forms of social withdrawal, and peer difficulties. Specifically, preference for solitude, rather than social wariness, was expected to predict peer victimization…

Prior work suggests that substance-dependent mothers insensitively respond to their child's emotional needs, which can increase children's risk for psychopathology. However, the mechanisms and processes underlying these associations remain unclarified. Mothers' insensitivity to children's distress is an especially unique predictor of child…