Vagal tone is widely believed to be an important physiological aspect of emotion regulation and associated positive behaviors. However, there is inconsistent evidence for relations between children's baseline vagal tone and their helpful or prosocial responses to others (Hastings & Miller, 2014). Recent work in adults suggests a quadratic…

Parents of children with disabilities vary in their reaction to their children's diagnosis. The current study focused on fathers in addition to mothers and examined their resolution and coping styles when having children diagnosed with developmental delay (DD). Sixty-five fathers and 71 mothers were interviewed using the reaction to the diagnosis…

Children may be capable of understanding the value of emotion regulation strategies before they can enlist these strategies in emotion-evoking situations. This study was designed to extend understanding of children's judgment of the efficacy of alternative emotion regulation strategies. Children aged six and nine ("N" = 97) were…

Different social experiences help children develop distinctions between domains of norms. This study investigated whether mothers respond differently to moral, prudential, and pragmatic norms during the 2nd year, a period that precedes the time when children are able to make explicit distinctions between these norms. Sixty mothers of infants…

Although anxiety is a significant emotional element of formal school science, little is known about how anxiety is originated and managed in the context of science fairs. The purpose of the present study was to investigate how a group of students in Grades 7 to 12 discursively (re)produce anxiety and its management from the perspective of their…

Moral socialization and moral learning are antecedents of moral motivation. As many as 4 generations interact in workplace and education settings; hence, a deeper understanding of the moral motivation of members of those generations is needed. The purpose of this convergent mixed methods case study was to understand the moral motivation of 5…

Emerging evidence suggests that fathers, more so than mothers, socialize emotions in a gender-stereotyped manner. Gender-stereotyped emotion socialization may be particularly pronounced in men perpetrating intimate partner violence (IPV), and may be detrimental to child adjustment, particularly for boys. This study explored the relation between…

The current study explored the expected consequences of disclosure discussed by 204 5- to 13-year-old suspected victims of child sexual abuse during the course of investigative interviews conducted using the NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol. Expected consequences were mentioned in nearly half of all interviews, with older children and those…

This article uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to examine the relationship between running away from home between the ages of 12 and 14 and dropping from high school among youth. Propensity score matching was conducted in estimating the effect of running away on high school dropout while controlling for confounding…

This study examined associations between children's descriptions of sibling conflicts and their resolutions during a structured negotiation task. A sample of 58 sibling dyads (older sibling M age = 8.39 years, younger sibling M = 6.06 years) were privately interviewed about an actual conflict. Each child provided a narrative that was coded for…

Objective: Dysfunctions in both emotion regulation and social cognition (understanding behavior in mental state terms, theory of mind or mentalizing) have been proposed as explanations for disturbances of interpersonal behavior in borderline personality disorder (BPD). This study aimed to examine mentalizing in adolescents with emerging BPD from a…

This study explored the relationship between trajectories of affective self-regulation skills during secondary school and young adult substance use in a large multiethnic, urban sample (N = 995). During secondary school, participants completed a measure of cognitive and behavioral skills used to control negative, unpleasant emotions or perceived…

This study examined developmental differences in, and cognitive bases of, coping flexibility in children with and without ADHD. Younger (age 7 to 8) and older (age 10 to 11) children with and without ADHD (N = 80) responded to hypothetical vignettes about problematic interactions with peers that shifted from controllable to uncontrollable over…

How do children understand situations in which the targets of moral transgressions do not complain about the way they are treated? One-hundred and twenty participants aged 5, 7, 10, 13, and 16 years were interviewed about hypothetical situations in which one child ("transgressor") made an apparently unfair demand of another child ("victim"), who…

Reports the results of structured interviews with mothers of 29 children three and one-half to 12 years of age, documenting the development of four categories of food rejection based on distaste, danger, disgust, and inappropriateness. Suggests that lack of contamination sensitivity in younger children is due to their belief that chemical…