International Journal of Behavioral Development This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

Finding the roots of adolescent aggressive behaviour: A test of three developmental pathways
This study tested three longitudinal pathways starting in early childhood, in a sample of 325 Belgian participants (162 girls) assessed every 1 or 2 years from birth through age 14. Structural equation models supported the "mother early dissatisfaction" pathway toward adolescent aggression, but neither the "cognitive functioning" nor the "early aggressive behaviour" pathway gained clear support. Mother’s early dissatisfaction with her child was the starting point of a series of negative perceptions of the child, which predicted physical and social aggression in adolescence. Children’s cognitive functioning and ...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - July 10, 2013 Category: Child Development Authors: Glowacz, F., Veronneau, M.-H., Boet, S., Born, M. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Does parental psychological control relate to internalizing and externalizing problems in early childhood? An examination using the Berkeley puppet interview
Parental psychological control has been linked to symptoms of psychopathology in adolescence, yet less is known about its correlates in childhood. The current study is among the first to address whether psychological control is related to internalizing and externalizing problems in early childhood. A community sample of 298 children aged 7.04 (SD = 1.15) years participated. Along with two other parenting dimensions (i.e., responsiveness and behavioural control), psychological control, internalizing and externalizing problems were assessed by means of the Berkeley Puppet Interview. Psychological control was associated with ...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - July 10, 2013 Category: Child Development Authors: Stone, L. L., Otten, R., Janssens, J. M. A. M., Soenens, B., Kuntsche, E., Engels, R. C. M. E. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Adolescent home-leaving and the transition to adulthood: A psychosocial and behavioural study in the slums of Nairobi
Home-leaving is considered an important marker of the transition to adulthood and is usually framed as an individual decision. We move beyond this limited assumption to examine a broader conceptualization that might better illuminate home-leaving among youth in impoverished circumstances. We adopt the Problem Behavior Theory-framework to investigate the association of home-leaving with behavioral and psychosocial variables and with other transitions. We use data on adolescents aged 14–22 years from a three-wave study conducted between 2007 and 2010. We used variable- and person-centered cross-sectional analyses, as w...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - July 10, 2013 Category: Child Development Authors: Egondi, T., Kabiru, C., Beguy, D., Kanyiva, M., Jessor, R. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

A developmental model of financial capability: A framework for promoting a successful transition to adulthood
This study proposes a developmental model of financial capability to understand the process by which young adults acquire the financial knowledge and behaviors needed to manage full-time adult social roles and responsibilities. The model integrates financial knowledge, financial self-beliefs, financial behavior, and well-being into a single financial decision-making process. With two-time longitudinal survey data from college students (N = 1,511; aged 18–23 years at Wave 1 and 21–26 years at Wave 2), the findings provide support for a pattern of co-occurring change: changing knowledge about personal finances as...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - July 10, 2013 Category: Child Development Authors: Serido, J., Shim, S., Tang, C. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Different types of sensation seeking: A person-oriented approach in sensation-seeking research
Previous research on sensation seeking (SS) was dominated by a variable-oriented approach indicating that SS level has a linear relation with a host of problem behaviors. Our aim was to provide a person-oriented methodology—a probabilistic clustering—that enables examination of both inter- and intra-individual differences in not only the level, but also in the pattern of SS. We have applied model-based clustering to a four-semester long longitudinal high school survey (N = 3334) and to a cross-sectional university survey (N = 438). The results indicated that impulsive patterns are linked to negative outcomes wh...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - May 9, 2013 Category: Child Development Authors: Suranyi, Z., Hitchcock, D. B., Hittner, J. B., Vargha, A., Urban, R. Tags: Methods and Measures Source Type: research

Micro-cultural influences on theory of mind development: A comparative study of middle-class and pemulung children in Jakarta, Indonesia
We investigated cultural influences on young children’s acquisition of social-cognitive concepts. A theory of mind (ToM) scale (Wellman & Liu, 2004) was given to 129 children (71 boys, 58 girls) ranging in age from 3 years 0 months to 7 years 10 months. The children were from three distinct cultural groups: (a) trash pickers (pemulung) living a subsistence lifestyle in Jakarta, Indonesia; (b) middle-class Jakartans living and attending preschools within 5 km of the pemulung group; and (c) middle-class Australians. All children were individually tested in their native language. Cross-group comparisons revealed no ...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - May 9, 2013 Category: Child Development Authors: Kuntoro, I. A., Saraswati, L., Peterson, C., Slaughter, V. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

The role of honesty and benevolence in children's judgments of trustworthiness
The present investigation examined the relation between honesty, benevolence, and trust in children. One hundred and eight 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds were read four story types in which the character’s honesty (honesty or dishonest) was crossed with their intentions (helping or harming). Children rated the story character’s honesty, benevolence, and whether they trusted the character. Results indicated that 7- to 11-year-olds considered both honesty and benevolence when making trust judgments, and older children were more likely than younger children to trust helpful lie-tellers. Further, the relation between dis...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - May 9, 2013 Category: Child Development Authors: Xu, F., Evans, A. D., Li, C., Li, Q., Heyman, G., Lee, & K. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

The role of reinforcement sensitivity in the development of childhood personality
The study examined the contribution of reinforcement sensitivity to childhood personality at three levels of the hierarchical structure, mid-level traits, the Big Five and two higher-order factors, and the moderating role of sex and age in a sample of 3–18-year-olds. The canonical correlation analyses indicated that reinforcement sensitivity and personality have more than 50% of common variance; reward and punishment sensitivities had opposing effects and were linked to both higher-order factors, Extraversion and Agreeableness, and lower-order traits Sociability and Shyness. There were no sex differences in the effec...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - May 9, 2013 Category: Child Development Authors: Slobodskaya, H. R., Kuznetsova, V. B. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

The life story: Its development and relation to narration and personal identity
In this article, we review, on three grounds, the nature of the life story. First, we evaluate the appropriateness of the proposal that the life story emerges in adolescence (the time of the traditional identity crisis). Second, we examine the relation between big stories (of which the life story is one) and small stories. Finally, we consider whether the construction of the life story (and narration more broadly) represents the sole mode of identity formation. It is argued here that (a) the belief that adolescence marks the emergence of the life story is based on an unnecessarily limiting requisite for autobiographical re...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - May 9, 2013 Category: Child Development Authors: Dunlop, W. L., Walker, L. J. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

The impact of audience age and familiarity on children's drawings of themselves in contrasting affective states
The present study was designed to investigate the impact of familiarity and audience age on children’s self-presentation in self-drawings of happy, sad and neutral figures. Two hundred children (100 girls and 100 boys) with the average age of 8 years 2 months, ranging from 6 years 3 months to 10 years 1 month, formed two age groups and five conditions (n = 20). All children completed two counterbalanced sessions. Session 1 consisted of drawing a neutral figure followed by a sad and happy figure in counterbalanced order. The drawing instructions specified the age of the audience (adult vs. child) and familiarity (fami...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - May 9, 2013 Category: Child Development Authors: Burkitt, E., Watling, D. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Status hierarchy, attractiveness hierarchy and sex ratio: Three contextual factors explaining the status-aggression link among adolescents
The moderating effects of three specific conditions (status hierarchy, attractiveness hierarchy and sex ratio) on the link between status (popularity) and physical and relational aggression were examined in a large sample of adolescent boys (N = 1,665) and girls (N = 1,637) (M age = 13.60). In line with the hypotheses, derived from integrating a goal-framing perspective with an evolutionary perspective, it was found for boys that status was more strongly related to both physical and relational aggression in classrooms when differences in status (status hierarchy) and physical attractiveness between same-gender peers (attra...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - May 9, 2013 Category: Child Development Authors: Zwaan,, M., Dijkstra, J. K., Veenstra, R. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Normativity and friendship choices among ethnic majority- and minority-group children
Two-hundred-and-fifty-eight White British (ethnic majority) and British South Asian (minority) children (5, 9 and 13 years old) chose potential friends from descriptions of peers who had traits and preferences that were either consistent (normative) or inconsistent (deviant) with ethnic group membership. White children chose peers from the ethnic ingroup. Younger Asian children (5 years) more often selected an outgroup peer, although ingroup choices increased with age (9 and 13 years). Normativity and strength of ethnic identification did not affect choices. However, children who selected an outgroup child tended to have m...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - May 9, 2013 Category: Child Development Authors: Leman, P. J., Ben-Hmeda, M., Cox, J., Loucas, C., Seltzer-Eade, S., Hine, B. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Moral emotion attributions and personality traits as long-term predictors of antisocial conduct in early adulthood: Findings from a 20-year longitudinal study
The study investigated long-term relations between moral emotion attributions in childhood and adolescence and antisocial conduct in early adulthood while taking into account potentially confounding personality factors. Specifically, onset of prediction, unique and indirect effects of moral emotion attributions were examined. In a longitudinal study of 143 children (67 females), measures of moral emotion attributions, conscientiousness and agreeableness were obtained at the ages of 4–7, 11–12, 18 and 23 years. Antisocial conduct was assessed at the age of 23 years. Moral emotion attributions predicted antisocia...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - May 9, 2013 Category: Child Development Authors: Krettenauer, T., Asendorpf, J. B., Nunner-Winkler, G. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Modifying ethnic attitudes in young children: The impact of communicator race and message strength
Due to their sociocognitive limitations, children between the ages of 4 and 8 years tend to resist antibias messages from others. The purpose of this study was to examine if children would be more responsive to an antibias message as a function of the race of the communicator, the strength of the antibias message, and their ability to reconcile different perspectives. As children’s inferences of communicators’ attitudes constitute an unintended message, we assessed children’s inferences of communicators’ Black and White attitudes before and after the intervention. Children’s own attitudes and ...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - May 9, 2013 Category: Child Development Authors: Johnson, P. J., Aboud, F. E. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Examining the developmental dynamics between achievement strategies and different literacy skills
We examined the developmental dynamics between task-avoidant behavior and different literacy outcomes, and possible precursors of task-avoidant behavior. Seventy Greek children were followed from Grade 4 until Grade 6 and were assessed every year on reading fluency, spelling, and reading comprehension. The teachers assessed the children’s achievement strategies at all testing times. In addition, in Grade 4, the children responded to a task value questionnaire and the parents reported their beliefs and expectations about their children’s academic performance. The results revealed that task avoidance was reciproc...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - May 9, 2013 Category: Child Development Authors: Georgiou, G. K., Manolitsis, G., Zhang, X., Parrila, R., Nurmi, J.-E. Tags: Articles Source Type: research