Research Findings: In this study, a combination of variable-oriented and person-oriented statistical analyses was used to examine the links between three temperament factors (negative affectivity, surgency/extraversion, effortful control) evaluated before entry into kindergarten and the cognitive and socioemotional dimensions of school readiness…

This study examined the direct and indirect associations among imaginational over-excitability, cognitive play processes, affective play processes, and parent-reported creative potential of Hong Kong Chinese kindergarten children. Participants were 106 parents of local kindergarten children (43.4% girls, mean age = 60.1 months). Parents reported…

Research Findings: Immigrant families who represent a growing share of the early schooling population face unique challenges related to involvement in their children's education. This study examined whether and to what extent home-based parent involvement and parental warmth are associated with the socio-emotional and academic outcomes of children…

A close student-teacher relationship is a protective factor for students' psychological well-being, and it is associated with students' internalizing and externalizing symptoms, but the mechanism underlying this association is unclear. To address this issue, this study investigated the role of children's hope in the relationship between teachers'…

Parental response, physical coercion and warmth and their relationships with childhood aggression were assessed with 277 children (142 boys; M age = 56.5 months, SD = 10.93 months) in Hong Kong. Results indicated that both fathers and mothers reported significantly more intervention strategies in response to hypothetical vignettes of physical…

When identifying parental socialization processes influencing children's reading achievement, building self-regulation is a potential underlying mechanism. Yet socialization (i.e., warmth, stress) of self-regulation may vary based on the sociocultural context of ethnic minority families. Using the ECLS-K: 2011 (N = 17,020; M[subscript Age] = 73.43…

The Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (STRS) is one of the most extensively used instruments that evaluate the quality of teacher-child relationships. The STRS has a strong theoretical background based on attachment theory and research on parent-child and teacher-child relationships. The purpose of this study was to examine the dimensional…

The purpose of this study was to examine young children's perceptions about the quality of their interactions with their teachers and the possible association of teacher-child relationships with children's school engagement. Additionally, gender and ethnicity differences were investigated regarding both teachers' and children's perceptions. Young…

The current study aimed to substantiate and extend our understanding regarding the existence and developmental pathways of 3 distinct temperament profiles--exuberant, inhibited, and average approach--in a sample of 3.5-year-old children (n = 121). The interactions between temperamental styles and specific types of effortful control, inhibitory…

The primary aim of the present study was to examine the way in which instructional and emotional aspects of teacher support combined to predict children's engagement in learning-related activities in kindergarten classrooms that served a socio-economically diverse population of children. Observations were conducted on teachers and children in 45…

Examined how aspects of social-emotional learning (SEL)--specifically, emotion knowledge, emotional and social behaviors, social problem-solving, and self-regulation--clustered to typify groups of children who differ in terms of their motivation to learn, participation in the classroom, and other indices of early school adjustment and academic…

The goal of the present study was to obtain evidence for the validity of the Teacher Relationship Interview by exploring associations with a well-validated measure of teacher-child relationship quality, the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (Closeness, Conflict, and Dependency), and examining differences between teachers' narratives about the…

Toward advancing conceptualizations of the spillover hypothesis, this study examined the conditions and mechanisms underlying the transmission of distress from the interparental relationship to parenting difficulties over a 2-year period in a sample of 233 mothers (M = 35.0 years) and fathers (M = 36.8 years) of kindergarten children. Findings…

This study examines how teachers' use of affective strategies (voice intonation, dramatization, personal involvement comments) during the reading and discussion of books influence young children's affective reactions (dramatization, personal engagement, language play comments). Twenty kindergarten teachers read four books, two fiction and two…

The goal was to study the impact of a teacher-directed and a child-directed pretend play on cognitive performance in a mixed-age environment. Twenty-six observations were performed on fifty-one kindergarten children with a mean age of 4.6 years (age span from three to six years) in two mixed-aged classrooms. Data were collected regarding…