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.

School engagement trajectories of immigrant youth: Risks and longitudinal interplay with academic success
We examined behavioral school engagement trajectories of immigrant and non-immigrant early adolescents in relation to their academic achievement. Data were based on teacher judgments and school records. Students from immigrant families living in Greece and their non-immigrant classmates (N = 1057) were assessed over the three years of middle school (ages 13 to 15). Academic achievement influenced later school engagement more strongly than vice versa for both immigrant and non-immigrant students. Low achievement, being an immigrant student and social adversity were found to be risk factors for the initial level of behaviora...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - December 15, 2014 Category: Child Development Authors: Motti-Stefanidi, F., Masten, A., Asendorpf, J. B. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Midlife as a pivotal period in the life course: Balancing growth and decline at the crossroads of youth and old age
We present middle age as a pivotal period in the life course in terms of balancing growth and decline, linking earlier and later periods of life, and bridging younger and older generations. We highlight the role of protective factors and multisystem resilience in mitigating declines. Those in middle age play a central role in the lives of those who are younger and older at home, in the workplace, and in society at large. Thus, a focus on promoting health and well-being in middle age can have a far-reaching impact. (Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development)
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - December 15, 2014 Category: Child Development Authors: Lachman, M. E., Teshale, S., Agrigoroaei, S. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Career pursuit pathways among emerging adult men and women: Psychosocial correlates and precursors
The present study examined career pursuit pathways in 100 Israeli emerging adults (54 men) who were followed from age 22 to 29. Employing a semi-structured interview at the age of 29, participants were asked about current work and educational status, work and educational goals and status changes in recent years, and to reflect on the meaning of the processes they followed. Analyses of interviews yielded four distinctive career pursuit pathways that were associated with different levels of concurrent well-being: Consistent Pursuit, Adapted Pursuit, Survivors, and Confused/Vague. Self-criticism, efficacy, and level of motiva...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - December 15, 2014 Category: Child Development Authors: Shulman, S., Barr, T., Livneh, Y., Nurmi, J.-E., Vasalampi, K., Pratt, M. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Do children understand that people selectively conceal or express emotion?
This study examined whether children understand that people selectively conceal or express emotion depending upon the context. We prepared two contexts for a verbal display task for 70 first-graders, 80 third-graders, 64 fifth-graders, and 71 adults. In both contexts, protagonists had negative feelings because of the behavior of the other character. In the prosocial context, children were instructed that the protagonist wished to spare the other character’s feelings. In contrast, in the real-emotion context, children were told that the protagonist was fed up with the other character’s behavior. Participants wer...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - December 15, 2014 Category: Child Development Authors: Hayashi, H., Shiomi, Y. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Exposure to maternal distress in childhood and cortisol activity in young adulthood
Dysregulated cortisol is a risk factor for poor health outcomes. Children of distressed mothers exhibit dysregulated cortisol, yet it is unclear whether maternal distress predicts cortisol activity in later developmental stages. This longitudinal study examined the prospective relation between maternal distress during late childhood (9–12 years) and adolescence (15–19 years) and cortisol response in offspring in young adulthood (24–28 years). Data were collected from 51 recently divorced mothers and their children across 15 years. Higher maternal distress during late childhood was associated with lower to...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - November 16, 2014 Category: Child Development Authors: Mahrer, N. E., Luecken, L. J., Wolchik, S. A., Tein, J.-Y., Sandler, I. N. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Gender differences in the content of preschool children's recollections: A longitudinal study
Personal recollections constitute autobiographical memory that develops intensively during the preschool years. The two-wave longitudinal study focuses on gender differences in preschool children’s independent recollections. The same children (N = 275; 140 boys, 135 girls) were asked to talk about their previous birthday and the past weekend at the ages of 4 and 6. Interactions were coded for content. Boys talked more about themselves and about different nonsocial aspects of the events. Girls talked more about the other people with whom they had jointly experienced the past event. It seems that gender differences in ...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - November 16, 2014 Category: Child Development Authors: Tougu, P., Tulviste, T., Suits, K. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Are discrepancies in perceptions of psychological control related to maladjustment? A study of adolescents and their parents in Turkey
The current study examined whether adolescent–parent discrepancies in the perception of psychological control are associated with adolescent maladjustment. The sample consisted of 552 Turkish adolescents attending high school and their parents. Half of the adolescents had similar scores to their parents, while the remaining half thought differently. The results of the polynomial regression with response surface analysis showed that the incongruence between reports was positively associated with having deviant friends for males, and feelings of loneliness for females. Results suggested that reports of low levels of ps...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - November 16, 2014 Category: Child Development Authors: Yaban, E. H., Sayıl, M., Tepe, Y. K. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Children's understanding of others' emotional states: Inferences from extralinguistic or paralinguistic cues?
The ability to infer the emotional states of others is central to our everyday interactions. These inferences can be drawn from several different sources of information occurring simultaneously in the communication situation. Based on previous studies revealing that children pay more heed to situational context than to emotional prosody when inferring the emotional states of others, we decided to focus on this issue, broadening the investigation to find out whether the natural combination of emotional prosody and faces (that is, paralinguistic cues) can overcome the dominance of situational context (that is, extralinguisti...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - November 16, 2014 Category: Child Development Authors: Gil, S., Aguert, M., Bigot, L. L., Lacroix, A., Laval, V. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Face preference in infancy and its relation to motor activity
Infants’ preference for faces was investigated in a cross-sectional sample of 75 children, aged 3 to 11 months, and 23 adults. A visual preference paradigm was used where pairs of faces and toys were presented side-by-side while eye gaze was recorded. In addition, motor activity was assessed via parent report and the relation between motor activity and face preference was examined. Face preference scores followed an inverted U-shaped developmental trajectory with no face preference in 3-month-olds, a strong face preference in 5- and 9-month-olds, and a weaker face preference in 11-month-olds. Adults showed no reliabl...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - November 16, 2014 Category: Child Development Authors: Libertus, K., Needham, A. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Canadian portrait of changes in family structure and preschool children's behavioral outcomes
This article begins to fill this gap in the literature by providing a current and detailed portrait of family composition changes from 1996 to 2008 (Study 1). Additionally, we performed an analysis of the role of specific child, parent and family characteristics, in interaction with family composition and family transition, in predicting pre-school children’s behavioral outcomes (Study 2). Using nationally-representative Canadian data collected from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY), we focus our inquiry on a mean sample for 0–5-year-olds of 2,866 children at cycle 8 (2008). Results...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - November 16, 2014 Category: Child Development Authors: Gosselin, J., Romano, E., Bell, T., Babchishin, L., Buhs, I. H.-v. d., Gagne, A., Gosselin, N. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Longitudinal models of socio-economic status: Impact on positive parenting behaviors
In this study, longitudinal observations of positive parenting were conducted across six time points. Participants were 219 mothers of children with and without developmental delays. Mothers’ positive parenting increased during early and middle childhood in children with and without developmental delays. Mothers who reported more education had significantly higher levels of positive parenting when their children were 3 years old. Mothers who reported more family income grew at a significantly faster rate in positive parenting. There was preliminary support that mothers with more income were more likely to be members ...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - November 16, 2014 Category: Child Development Authors: Azad, G., Blacher, J., Marcoulides, G. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

How does community service promote prosocial behavior? Examining the role of agency and ideology experience
This study examines community service effects on adolescents’ prosocial behaviors as mediated through experiences made during service. Based on theoretical assumptions by Youniss and Yates, we suggest that personal agency experiences and being confronted with situations that can challenge the own world views (ideology experiences) serve as mediators. The data were collected in a two-wave longitudinal study surveying 2,408 German adolescents aged between 14 and 15 years. Based on true intraindividual change models, the results support the expected mediation of service effects on prosocial behaviors through agency, but...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - November 16, 2014 Category: Child Development Authors: Christoph, G., Gniewosz, B., Reinders, H. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Free-labeling facial expressions and emotional situations in children aged 3-7 years: Developmental trajectory and a face inferiority effect
Chinese children (N = 185, aged 3–7 years) were assessed on their abilities to freely label facial expressions and emotional situations. Results indicated that the overall accuracy of free-labeling facial expressions increased relatively quickly in children aged 3–5 years, but slowed down in children aged 5–7 years. In contrast, the overall accuracy of free-labeling emotional situations increased continuously in children aged 3–7 years. In the free-labeling facial expression tasks, children produced labels for happiness, anger, and sadness more easily than fear, surprise, and disgust; in the free-la...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - November 16, 2014 Category: Child Development Authors: Wang, Z., Lu, W., Zhang, H., Surina, A. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Universal ontology: Attentive tracking of objects and substances across languages and over development
Previous research has demonstrated that adults are successful at visually tracking rigidly moving items, but experience great difficulties when tracking substance-like "pouring" items. Using a comparative approach, we investigated whether the presence/absence of the grammatical count–mass distinction influences adults and children’s ability to attentively track objects versus substances. More specifically, we aimed to explore whether the higher success at tracking rigid over substance-like items appears universally or whether speakers of classifier languages (like Japanese, not marking the object–substanc...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - November 16, 2014 Category: Child Development Authors: Cacchione, T., Indino, M., Fujita, K., Itakura, S., Matsuno, T., Schaub, S., Amici, F. Tags: Articles Source Type: research

Using Monte Carlo simulations to determine power and sample size for planned missing designs
Planned missing data designs allow researchers to increase the amount and quality of data collected in a single study. Unfortunately, the effect of planned missing data designs on power is not straightforward. Under certain conditions using a planned missing design will increase power, whereas in other situations using a planned missing design will decrease power. Thus, when designing a study utilizing planned missing data researchers need to perform a power analysis. In this article, we describe methods for power analysis and sample size determination for planned missing data designs using Monte Carlo simulations. We also...
Source: International Journal of Behavioral Development - July 31, 2014 Category: Child Development Authors: Schoemann, A. M., Miller, P., Pornprasertmanit, S., Wu, W. Tags: Special issue: Planned missingness Source Type: research