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.

The role of family experiences for adolescents readiness to use and participate in illegal political activity
This study used reactance theory as a starting point to explain what role a perceived undemocratic and controlling family has for adolescents’ readiness to use illegal political activity. Additionally, we examined whether adolescents’ readiness to use illegal political means was related to actual political behaviour, which has been lacking in research. Data came from a longitudinal sample of 424 younger (M age = 13.44) and 296 older (M age = 16.62) adolescents collected in a mid-sized city in Sweden. Results showed that adolescents who perceived their families as undemocratic and controlling increased in read...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - December 9, 2015 Category: Child Development Authors: Glatz, T., Dahl, V. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Emotion understanding in preschool children: The role of executive functions
This investigation was aimed at studying the relations between executive functions (EFs) and categorical emotion understanding while controlling for preschoolers’ IQ, language ability and theory of mind (ToM). Specifically, we wanted to analyse the association between emotion understanding and set shifting, due to the lack of studies with this EF. Data of 75 children aged 41/2 years (52% boys) was collected in two laboratory visits. Emotion understanding was assessed using the Emotion Recognition Questionnaire, inhibitory control using the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders task and set shifting using a version of the Dimensi...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - December 9, 2015 Category: Child Development Authors: Martins, E. C., Osorio, A., Verissimo, M., Martins, C. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Direction-dependence analysis: A confirmatory approach for testing directional theories
The concept of direction dependence has attracted growing attention due to its potential to help decide which of two competing linear regression models (X -> Y or Y -> X) is more likely to reflect the correct causal flow. Several tests have been proposed to evaluate hypotheses compatible with direction dependence. In this issue, Thoemmes (2015) reports results of an empirical evaluation of direction-dependence tests using real-world data sets with known causal ordering and concludes that the tests (known to perform excellent in simulation studies) perform poorly in the real-world setting. The present article aims at ...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - November 4, 2015 Category: Child Development Authors: Wiedermann, W., von Eye, A. Tags: Methods and Measures Source Type: research

Empirical evaluation of directional-dependence tests
Testing of directional dependence is a method to infer causal direction that recently has attracted some attention. Previous examples by e.g. von Eye and DeShon (2012a) and extensive simulation studies by Pornprasertmanit and Little (2012) have demonstrated that under specific assumptions, directional-dependence tests can recover the true causal direction between two variables. Simulation results are important in the evaluation of any statistical method, but they are necessarily less complex than real data that come with potential irregularities (e.g. departures from linearity, presence of confounders, etc.). In this artic...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - November 4, 2015 Category: Child Development Authors: Thoemmes, F. Tags: Methods and Measures Source Type: research

Can you read my mind? Age as a moderator in the relationship between theory of mind and relational aggression
The present study examined whether age moderates the relationship between cognitive factors (theory of mind and attribution of intentions) and relational aggression. Participants (N = 426; 216 boys) between 6 and 9 years of age were asked to complete theory of mind tasks and answer an attribution of intentions questionnaire. Teachers evaluated their students’ social behaviors including relational aggressive acts. Results suggest that theory of mind did affect relational aggression, when this association was moderated by chronological age. Specifically, it was found that the association between theory of mind and rela...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - November 4, 2015 Category: Child Development Authors: Gomez-Garibello, C., Talwar, V. Tags: Empirical Paper Source Type: research

Maternal parenting and social, school, and psychological adjustment of migrant children in urban China
This study examined the relations of maternal warmth, behavioral control, and encouragement of sociability to social, school, and psychological adjustment in migrant children in China. The participants were 284 rural-to-urban migrant children (M age = 11 years, 149 boys) in migrant children’s schools and their mothers. Data on parenting were collected from mothers’ reports. Data on children’s adjustment were collected from multiple sources including peer assessments, teacher ratings, self-reports, and school records. It was found that maternal warmth was associated with children’s social and school ...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - November 4, 2015 Category: Child Development Authors: Zhao, S., Chen, X., Wang, L. Tags: Empirical Paper Source Type: research

Peer acceptance and the development of emotional and behavioural problems: Results from a preventive intervention study
This study used a randomized controlled intervention design to test whether improvements in peer acceptance mediated reduced rates of emotional and behavioural problems in intervention compared to control-group children. A total of 615 elementary school children in the Netherlands were followed annually from kindergarten through second grade. Intervention children showed reductions in emotional and behavioural problems, and improved peer acceptance compared to controls. Improved peer acceptance mediated reductions in emotional and behavioural problem development. However, this mediation pathway held only for boys with low ...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - November 4, 2015 Category: Child Development Authors: Menting, B., Koot, H., van Lier, P. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Social competence, theory of mind, and executive function in institution-reared Turkish children
This study had two aims. The first aim was to measure mental state understanding in institution-reared children by using a theory of mind (ToM) scale, and to examine the role of cultural context in sequencing of ToM acquisition. The other aim was to investigate ToM in relation to social competence and executive function (EF). Due to its pronounced role in mental state understanding and social interactions, we assessed receptive language as well. The participants were 107 institution-reared children aged 3 to 5 years in Turkey. Two visits were held within 2 days for behavioral assessments. In the first visit, the ToM scale ...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - November 4, 2015 Category: Child Development Authors: Etel, E., Yagmurlu, B. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Associations between private speech, behavioral self-regulation, and cognitive abilities
We examined the associations between 5-year-old children’s private speech, behavioural self-regulation, and cognitive abilities. Behavioural self-regulation was assessed using parental and preschool teacher questionnaires. Cognitive abilities (i.e., language, inhibition, planning and fluency, and memory) were assessed with neurocognitive tests, and the effectiveness of private speech (i.e., whether the child performs better when using speech than when not using speech) with the Hammer Task. About 43% of the children used private speech spontaneously, and about 76% performed better on the Hammer Task when they used sp...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - November 4, 2015 Category: Child Development Authors: Aro, T., Poikkeus, A.-M., Laakso, M.-L., Tolvanen, A., Ahonen, T. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Children's emotional expressivity and teacher perceptions of social competence: A cross-cultural comparison
Previous research suggests that adult perceptions of children’s social competence may vary depending on the socialization goals in a given cultural context. There is also ample evidence of cultural differences in values concerning emotional display, with East Asian collectivistic contexts favoring restraint and Western individualistic contexts favoring open expression of internal states. The present study examined an individualistic versus collectivistic comparison in the links between children’s emotional expressivity and teacher evaluations of their social competence. A sample of 127 Korean, Asian American (A...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - November 4, 2015 Category: Child Development Authors: Louie, J. Y., Wang, S.-w., Fung, J., Lau, A. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Infant frontal asymmetry predicts child emotional availability
While factors influencing maternal emotional availability (EA) have been well investigated, little is known about the development of child EA. The present longitudinal study investigated the role of frontal brain asymmetry in young children with regard to child EA (child responsiveness and involvement) in mother–child interaction in a sample of 28 children at 7, 14, and 50 months of age. When infants were 7 months of age, mother–child interaction quality was assessed using the EA-Scales. At 14 months, infants’ resting asymmetric frontal activity was assessed by means of the electroencephalogram (EEG). Whe...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - November 4, 2015 Category: Child Development Authors: Licata, M., Paulus, M., Kühn-Popp, N., Meinhardt, J., Sodian, B. Tags: Reports Source Type: research

Attachment between infants and mothers in China: Strange situation procedure findings to date and a new sample
The first distribution of Chinese infant–mother (n = 61) attachment classifications categorised by trained and reliability-tested coders is reported with statistical comparisons to US norms and previous Chinese distributions. Three-way distribution was 15% insecure-avoidant, 62% secure, 13% insecure-resistant, and 4-way distribution was 13% insecure-avoidant, 58% secure, 16% insecure-resistant,13% disorganised. These findings support the hypotheses that: (1) consistent with global norms the majority of infants will show secure attachments to mother; (2) insecure-resistant attachments will be greater than insecure-avo...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - November 4, 2015 Category: Child Development Authors: Archer, M., Steele, M., Lan, J., Jin, X., Herreros, F., Steele, H. Tags: Reports Source Type: research

Social and non-social fear in preschoolers and prospective associations with lying about cheating
Little is known about the development of children’s lying. The present study examined whether observed social and non-social fear in preschoolers predicts children’s consistent cheating (N = 460; M = 4.3 years of age) and consistent lying about cheating. When left alone, 155 (34%) children cheated in both games conducted. Of these consistently cheating children, 54 (35%) children lied about their cheating after both games, whereas the remaining 101 children confessed to cheating after at least one game. Children’s temperamental fear did not predict consistent cheating. However, non-social (but not social)...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - August 16, 2015 Category: Child Development Authors: Zwirs, B. W. C., Szekely, E., Herba, C. M., Verhulst, F. C., Jaddoe, V. W. V., Hofman, A., van IJzendoorn, M. H., Tiemeier, H. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

The impact of accommodative coping on well-being in childhood and adolescence: Longitudinal findings
Coping research has consistently shown that accommodative coping is positively correlated with individuals’ health. Until now, however, there have been little to no studies on the prognostic impact of accommodative coping on health, and only a few studies investigating its buffering effect on the relation between stress and health in childhood and adolescence. Thus, two main research questions were tracked in two longitudinal studies: Study 1 investigated if accommodative coping is indeed a functional resource that longitudinally predicts well-being in a sample of N = 403 adolescents (aged 12–15 years at Wave 1...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - August 16, 2015 Category: Child Development Authors: Thomsen, T., Fritz, V., Mossle, R., Greve, W. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Parenting dimensions in relation to pre-schoolers' behaviour problems in Latvia and Lithuania
The aim of the present study was to examine associations between parenting and child behaviour problems in two neighbouring countries with subtle, yet apparent cultural differences. Participants were mothers and fathers of preschool-age children from Latvia and Lithuania. Parents completed a measure of child-rearing attitudes and reported on their child’s internalizing and externalizing behaviours. In both countries, parental warmth was negatively associated with child behaviour problems, and punishment orientation was positively associated. There were differences by country in the association of paternal psychologic...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - August 16, 2015 Category: Child Development Authors: Sebre, S. B., Jusiene, R., Dapkevice, E., Skreitule-Pikse, I., Bieliauskaite, R. Tags: Articles Source Type: research