Fine motor skills enable children to make precise and coordinated movements with their hands and support their ability to engage in everyday activities and learning experiences. In a longitudinal study of 1,058 4-year-old children in rural Pakistan (n = 488 girls), we examined how prior and concurrent levels of home stimulation relate to change in…

This study examined how family context at age 18 (parent-adolescent conflict, parental support, parent education) predicted between-person variation in subjective well-being (SWB; depressive symptoms and self-esteem) trajectories from age 18 to 50 years. Timing of leaving home, getting married, and becoming a parent were explored as life…

Despite much research and progress in understanding the development of emotion regulation over the past 3 decades, there is still much to be understood about how developing individuals modulate their affect as they go about their daily life. The papers in this special issue highlight context and dynamics as 2 important intersecting foci for future…

This study examines the relations among parental beliefs and practices about mathematics, children's beliefs about mathematics, participants' gender, and family socioeconomic status (SES). The study was conducted in Chile, a country with significant gender gaps in standardized test results in mathematics, with boys receiving significantly higher…

Residential mobility is a normal feature of family life but thought to be a source of disruption to a child's development. Mobility may have its own direct consequences or reflect families' capabilities and vulnerabilities. This article examines the association between changes of residence and verbal and behavioral scores of children aged 5,…

Ethnic-racial identity (ERI) development is a central developmental process for youth of color. Although a great deal of research establishes the importance of cultural socialization by parents to the development of ERI, limited empirical work has examined peers' role in these processes. This study uses 4 cross-sectional data sets (N = 127, 312,…

This study examined interparental conflict as a linear and curvilinear predictor of subsequent changes in adolescents' negative emotional reactivity and cortisol functioning during family conflict and, in turn, their psychological difficulties. In addition, adolescents' negative emotional reactivity and cortisol functioning during family conflict…

The present study examined longitudinal associations between preschoolers' executive function (EF) and adult educational attainment, impulse control, and general health directly and through its cascading effects on childhood and adolescent EF using a large, national, and prospective longitudinal sample of participants. Data were drawn from the…

Some researchers indicate that the transition to high school deflects adolescent developmental trajectories. Others assert that it provides a new possibility for the promotion of adolescents' socioemotional well-being. One critical view missing in such claims is that individual variabilities interact with environmental influences. We employed the…

We examined the development of sharing behavior of children (aged 6 to 12) within the unique, minority population of Christian Arab children in Israel (N = 319). Children had the opportunity to share candy with a needy or non-needy recipient. Parents' level of religiosity was assessed using the Duke University Religion Index questionnaire (DUREL).…

Parental mentalization refers to parents' capacity to treat their children as having minds of their own and consider the mental states underlying their behaviors. This study examined the roles of mothers' executive functions (EFs), a group of processes supporting self-regulation, in 2 aspects of parental mentalization--spontaneity as measured by…

The current study investigates whether preschoolers are able to successfully identify the most effective among given questions, adapting their reliance on different types of questions ("constraint-seeking" vs. "hypothesis-scanning") based on the quantitative measure of "expected information gain." Children were…

Adolescence is a critical period for social development, which COVID-19 has dramatically altered. Quarantined youths had limited in-person interactions with peers. The present study used an intensive longitudinal design to investigate changes in interpersonal dynamics and mental health during COVID-19. Specifically, we investigated whether the…

Developmental research during COVID-19 suggests that pandemic-related disruptions in family relationships are associated with children's mental health. Most of this research has focused on 1 child per family, thereby obfuscating patterns that are differentially operative at the family-wide (i.e., between-family) versus child-specific (i.e.,…

Although many facets of social status (i.e., socioeconomic status, gender, race) are fairly stable, limited work has assessed how youths' identification with their status changes over time. Subjective social status (SSS) refers to one's perception of standing or rank relative to others, and for youth status is generally in the context of society…