Given established associations between children's sleep and many outcomes, and the theorized relations between sleep and school functioning, the goal of this study was to examine the relations between children's actigraphy-assessed sleep and school engagement. We used data from a diverse sample of twins ( = 710; Analytic = 599; = 8.52; 51% female; 57% Non-Hispanic White/European American; 25% Hispanic/Latino; 32% at or near the poverty line) to test our predictions. Measures of sleep included actigraphy-based sleep efficiency, sleep duration hours, and sleep duration variability. Teachers reported on children's participation, school liking, and school avoidance, and parents reported on SES. Moderation analyses revealed negative relations between sleep efficiency (and duration hours) and school avoidance for low, but not high SES families, and the positive relation between sleep efficiency and participation was strongest for children from low SES families. For girls, but not boys, sleep efficiency and sleep duration hours were negatively related to school avoidance, whereas sleep variability was positively related to school avoidance. Sleep efficiency and duration hours were positively related to school liking whereas duration variability was negatively related to school liking. These findings provide novel insight into children's sleep and their classroom engagement and highlight the particular importance of sleep for low SES families and girls.

Adolescent self-control is predictive of many outcomes (e.g., educational, financial, and interpersonal) during adolescence and into adulthood. Despite its importance, few studies report on associations between parental self-control and adolescent self-control, and no studies have considered how these associations may be domain-specific (e.g., teens and parents' self-control are correlated for health behaviors but not for leisure activities). The current study examined how parents' general and domain-specific self-control were related to their adolescent children's self-control. The study included 213 adolescents ( = 15.65, = 0.49; 53.5% girls) and at least one of their parents (184 = mother-figures; 67 = father-figures) from the Appalachian region of the United States who each reported on general and domain-specific self-control. Results indicated that mothers' general self-control was related to teens reporting higher concurrent general self-control, but fathers' health self-control was related to teens' reports of lower general self-control. Mothers' and fathers' health-related self-control were also related to their teens' concurrent health self-control. When examining teen self-control six months later, mothers' work self-control predicted higher teen academic self-control, mothers' general self-control predicted higher teen health self-control, and fathers' general self-control predicted higher teen money self-control. This study provides novel evidence to support both general and domain-specific models of self-control and suggests domain specificity may be essential to better understand how youth self-control develops.

The importance of the parent-child relationship during early childhood (i.e., 0-5 years) on children's socioemotional functioning has been extensively documented in the literature. However, limited work has examined the degree to which dyadic features of the parent-child relationship changes over the course of early childhood and whether growth in these features relate to children's functioning. The present study aimed to address this limitation by examining change trajectories of dyadic affective mutuality and mutual enjoyment during the first 2 years of life and whether these trajectories were associated with child problem behavior at age four. The sample was comprised of 374 low-income, infant-mother dyads recruited for an efficacy trial of a tiered parenting program designed to promote school readiness. Affective mutuality and mutual enjoyment were assessed via coded interaction tasks between mothers and their infants at 6, 18, and 24 months. Mothers reported on children's internalizing and externalizing problem behavior at 48 months. Results from latent growth curve analysis revealed dyads' affective mutuality significantly increased, and mutual enjoyment significantly decreased, from 6 to 24 months. Initial levels and positive change in affective mutuality from 6 to 24 months were both negatively associated with child internalizing problems, but not externalizing problems, at 48 months. These findings emphasize the importance of conducting work that conceptualizes the dyad as the unit of study and explores how changes in the parent-child relationship may themselves be important indicators for children's future functioning.

High-quality forms of contact, such as cross-group play and friendships, have been identified as particularly effective for promoting positive beliefs toward outgroup peers. Relations between children's cross-group play experiences and their beliefs about peers' math and science competencies and high-status occupational prospects have not yet been examined. Understanding these relations is important given that children from minoritized groups continue to face exclusion and bias in these domains. The present study examined the associations between children's ( = 983, = 9.64, = .89) reported cross-group play experiences and their math and science competency beliefs and high-status occupation expectations about girls and Black peers. Results revealed that, for majority group participants (i.e., boys and White children), higher levels of cross-group play were associated with significantly higher beliefs and expectations for girls and Black peers. Further, results demonstrated contexts in which higher levels of cross-group play were positively associated with girls' and Black children's beliefs and expectations for their own groups. Together, these findings advance theory and research on the benefits of cross-group contact in childhood by highlighting novel outcomes to which cross-group contact is positively related, as well as by showing that children from both minoritized and majority status groups stand to benefit from cross-group contact.

Activation parenting (AP) is a parenting construct derived from research and theory on paternal caregiving that includes behaviors that challenge children to approach novel situations, explore their environments, and take physical and socioemotional risks through a balance of encouragement and limit-setting. Although components of AP have been linked to different domains of children's self-regulation skills, comprehensive measures of AP and longitudinal research on families from low socioeconomic backgrounds are lacking. These limitations greatly constrain our understanding of the potential benefits of paternal AP for children's self-regulation development, including the maturation of inhibitory control (IC) in early childhood. Thus, the present study tested associations between paternal AP at age 3 and growth in parent-reported IC across ages 3 to 5 in a sample of low-income, ethnically diverse fathers. Participating fathers ( = 171; 9% Black, 47% white, 8% Latinx, 61% not Latinx; mean household income = $25,145) and their children (51% female) were drawn from the Early Steps Multisite Study. AP during a clean-up task at child age 3 years, but not a teaching task, was associated with greater growth in IC across ages 3 to 5 years. Implications of the current findings are presented for understanding associations between paternal AP and children's IC and broader self-regulation skills with diverse samples of caregivers.

This study examined patterns of father involvement among 2,040 unmarried non-Hispanic Black fathers ( = 25.27 years; SD = 6.51 years) with low income, and their associations with young children's (age 3 years; 50.34% girls) social-emotional functioning. Latent profile analysis revealed four father involvement profiles: (50.60%); (18.09%); (25.49%); and (3.82%). Children of highly involved Black fathers exhibited optimal social-emotional functioning compared to children of fathers in the other profiles. Children of fathers in the profile showed poorer social-emotional functioning. Our findings showed that Black fathering is a diverse experience with much heterogeneity, suggesting the need for fatherhood programs responsive to different fathering profiles.

This study examined the relation between interparental conflict and cortisol recovery, with child temperamental negative affectivity as the moderator. Children ( = 118) ages 9 to 11 years observed an argument between their parents in the lab and provided saliva samples for cortisol assays. Children also reported levels of interparental conflict, and mothers reported their child's negative affectivity. Results showed that youths with high levels of negative affectivity experienced less cortisol recovery as interparental conflict levels increased. Further, demonstrating some support for differential susceptibility, youths with higher levels of negative affectivity exhibited less recovery at high levels of parental conflict but greater recovery at low levels of parental conflict, compared to peers with lower scores on negative affectivity. We also found that children with low levels of negative affectivity exhibited greater recovery as rates of interparental conflict increased. In summary, this study sheds light on sources of variability in cortisol recovery as it relates to interparental disharmony.

Children's temperamental surgency is associated with later child behavioral problems. However, the underlying mechanisms linking child surgency and child aggression, such as negative parental control, are relatively understudied. Moreover, the potential protective effect of a close parent-child relationship on these associations remains untested, particularly among non-White families. Participants included 259 Chinese American preschoolers ( = 4.5 years, = 0.9 years, 50% girls) and their mothers ( = 37.9 years, = 4.7 years), the present study examined the moderating effects of parent-child relationship quality on the association between mother-rated child surgency and teacher-rated child aggression as mediated by maternal psychological control. Overall, results showed that child surgency was linked positively to maternal psychological control, which, in turn led to higher levels of child aggression six months later, but only when the parent-child relationship quality was less optimal. These findings indicate that psychological control is one underlying mechanism linking child temperament and child maladjustment, and that parent-child relationship quality is an important protective factor. Findings also expand an existing theoretical framework by explicating how these variables are applicable to an Asian American population, suggesting the critical buffering role that parent-child relationship quality plays. The study findings inform efforts to mitigate the potential negative effect of psychological control in reducing childhood aggression.

This study examined children's responses to targeted and collective punishment. Thirty-six 4-5-year-olds and 36 6-7-year-olds (36 females; 54 White; data collected 2018-2019 in the United States) experienced three classroom punishment situations: Targeted (only transgressing student punished), Collective (one student transgressed, all students punished), and Baseline (all students transgressed, all punished). The older children evaluated collective punishment as less fair than targeted, whereas younger children evaluated both similarly. Across ages, children distributed fewer resources to teachers who administered collective than targeted punishment, and rated transgressors more negatively and distributed fewer resources to transgressors in Collective and Targeted than Baseline. These findings demonstrate children's increasing understanding of punishment and point to the potential impact of different forms of punishment on children's social lives.

Adolescence is a key developmental period for socio-emotional skills, and companion animal relationships may be one potential source of emotional support and resilience during this time. This study used longitudinal data from 940 pet-owning adolescents, collected over four time points, from youth in the Northeastern United States. We assessed whether pet relationship quality (indexed by relationship satisfaction, companionship, and emotional disclosure) predicted trajectories of loneliness, social anxiety, and depression. Results indicated that high satisfaction with a pet relationship was associated with more favorable trajectories, but companionship (i.e., regarding frequency of interacting with the pet) was not related significantly to socio-emotional functioning. High levels of disclosure to a pet were linked with less favorable trajectories for loneliness and depression, but not related to social anxiety. These results suggest that a pet relationship can, in some cases, be associated positively with socio-emotional development, but that there is significant complexity in these associations. Families, educators, and practitioners should take a nuanced approach to understanding individual adolescent-pet relationships as a contextual asset for specific youth.

Close peer relationships are critical to children's and adolescents' healthy development and well-being, yet youth sometimes struggle to make friends. The present work tested whether an online version of the Fast Friends procedure could engender closeness among 9- to 13-year-old youth. Participant dyads ( = 131), matched in age and gender, were randomly assigned to answer personal questions that encourage self-disclosure and play a collaborative game (Fast Friends condition) or to engage in similar activities without self-disclosure or collaboration (control condition). Fast Friends dyads reported feeling closer and expressed more interest in future contact than control dyads. The discussion addresses potential future uses and implications of an online Fast Friends procedure.

The fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are rife with inequalities and under-representation that have their roots in childhood. While researchers have focused on gender and race/ethnicity as two key dimensions of inequality, less attention has been paid to wealth. To this end, and drawing from the Social Reasoning Development approach, we examined children's and adolescents' perceptions of STEM ability and access to opportunities as a function of wealth, as well as their desire to rectify such inequalities. Participants ( = 234: early childhood,  = 70, mean age = 6.33, SD = .79; middle childhood,  = 92, mean age = 8.90, SD = .83 and early adolescence,  = 62, mean age = 12.00; SD = 1.16) in the U.K. (64% White British) and U.S. (40% White/European American) read about two characters, one high-wealth and one low-wealth. In early childhood, participants reported that the high-wealth character would have greater STEM ability and were just as likely to invite either character to take part in a STEM opportunity. By middle childhood, participants were more likely to report equal STEM abilities for both characters and to seek to rectify inequalities by inviting the low-wealth character to take part in a STEM opportunity. However, older participants reported that peers would still prefer to invite the high-wealth character. These findings also varied by ethnic group status, with minority status participants rectifying inequalities at a younger age than majority status participants. Together these findings document that children are aware of STEM inequalities based on wealth and, with age, will increasingly seek to rectify these inequalities.

Gender-nonconforming children face a substantial amount of prejudice, making it important to investigate potential contributing factors. In a correlational study of 253 U.S. Midwestern and Pacific Northwestern 6- to 10-year-old gender-conforming children (Age = 7.95, = 1.43; 54% girl, 46% boy; 77% White), we examined how gender essentialism (beliefs that gender is biological, discrete, informative, and immutable) and gender identity essentialism (beliefs that gender identity is immutable) relate to prejudice against gender-nonconforming children. We also examined whether these associations varied by the child's cultural context (rural, non-diverse, conservative vs. urban, more diverse, liberal). We found a positive correlation between gender essentialism and prejudice, in both cultural contexts. Additionally, children from the more rural context endorsed more essentialism and expressed more prejudice than did their counterparts from the more urban context. However, we found no differences in children's gender identity essentialism by cultural context and no association with prejudice.

The ways that parents respond to children's negative emotions shape the development of self-regulation across early childhood. The objective of this study was to examine child self-regulation in the context of intimate partner violence (IPV) exposure in a sample of Black, economically marginalized mothers and their young children (aged 3-5 years, = 99). The study investigates the conditional effects of emotion socialization practices that (1) encourage expression of and problem-solving around negative affect ("supportive"), and (2) encourage suppression of affective displays ("suppressive") on children's self-regulation. We found a significant association between higher child self-regulation and supportive parental reactions in the context of psychological IPV. We also found a significant association between higher child self-regulation and suppressive parental reactions in the context of psychological IPV. Our findings are consistent with prior research suggesting Black parents who teach varied strategies for emotional expression may promote children's adaptation in high-stress family environments. Macrosystem factors such as systemic racism and discrimination as well as the threat of family violence may shape how parents approach emotion socialization and the teaching of affective self-expression and self-regulation.

Although there is interest in the role of peers in children's schooling experiences, few researchers have examined associations and related underlying processes between peers' emotionality, an aspect of temperament, and children's academic achievement. This study evaluated whether target children's ( = 260) own self-regulation, assessed with two behavioral measures, served a moderating function for associations between peers' emotionality and children's own academic achievement in second grade. There was a positive association between peers' positive emotionality and reading scores for children with higher self-regulation. Peers' negative emotionality was negatively related to target children's reading scores, particularly for children with higher self-regulation levels, but was unrelated to math scores. Peers' positive and negative emotionality did not predict math scores, and there was no strong evidence for the moderating role of target children's self-regulation in this association. This study highlights the potential role of children's self-regulation in modulating peer effects on academic achievement, particularly reading.

This two-year longitudinal study examined Mexican-origin adolescents' need to belong and cognitive reappraisal as predictors of multiple forms of prosocial behavior (i.e., general, emotional, and public prosocial behaviors). Prosocial behaviors, which are actions intended to benefit others, are hallmarks of social proficiency in adolescence and are influenced by intrapersonal abilities and motivations that typically develop during adolescence. Yet, few studies of Mexican-origin or other U.S. Latinx youths have examined whether such individual difference characteristics, specifically social motivation and emotion regulation skills, support prosocial behavior. In a sample of 229 Mexican-origin youth (M = 17.18 years, SD = 0.42, 110 girls), need to belong, cognitive reappraisal, and general prosocial behaviors were assessed at ages 17 and 19. Emotional and public forms of prosociality also were assessed at age 19. Cognitive reappraisal was positively associated with concurrent general prosociality at age 17, whereas need to belong was positively associated with concurrent public prosociality at age 19. Moderation analyses revealed that general and emotional types of prosocial behaviors at age 19 were lowest for youth with both lower need to belong and less use of cognitive reappraisal at 19 years. Greater cognitive reappraisal skills and need to belong may reflect distinct motivations for engaging in varying forms of prosocial behavior in late adolescence.

Extant research has produced conflicting findings regarding the link between social fearfulness and prosocial behavior, with some studies reporting negative relations and others reporting null effects. Furthermore, these studies have focused predominantly on toddlerhood, and few have examined prosociality between peers. The present study investigated whether the link between social anxiety and a prosocial behavior (i.e., providing encouragement) varied depending on interpersonal and situational factors (i.e., one's familiarity with a peer, the level of support sought by a peer, respectively). We tested this question using a multimethod approach, which included an ecologically valid stress inducing task and dyadic design with a sample of 9- to 10-year-olds ( = 447). Results revealed that social anxiety was related negatively to providing encouragement among familiar and unfamiliar dyads. In familiar dyads, however, this main effect was qualified by an interaction with the level of support sought by one's peer. Compared to those low in social anxiety, children high in social anxiety provided relatively less encouragement in response to higher levels of support seeking from their peers. The findings are considered in relation to theorizing regarding the effect of overarousal on children's prosocial behavior.

Emotion talk (ET), an emotion socialization practice theorized to promote children's emotion understanding and emotion regulation, has been linked to better socioemotional adjustment in diverse samples. Immigrant children face developmentally unique challenges and opportunities related to their multi-lingual and multi-cultural experiences. The present study aimed to identify sociocultural correlates of parent ET in two groups of low-income immigrant families with preschool-age children: Mexican American (MA) and Chinese American (CA) families. In 90 parent-child dyads (child age = 38 to 70 months, 59% girls; 46 Mexican American and 44 Chinese American) recruited from Head Start programs, parents' (mostly mothers') ET quality and quantity (i.e., use of emotion words, emotion questions and explanations, and overall elaborateness of ET) were coded from verbal transcripts of a shared picture book reading task. First, we found similarities and differences in ET across the two groups. Both MA and CA parents used emotion words, emotion questions, and emotion reasoning, whereas linking the story to personal emotion experience was infrequent. MA parents used more negative emotion words, emotion reasoning, and engaged in more elaborate ET than CA parents. Second, we examined the unique relations of multiple socio-cultural factors (SES, cultural orientations, parent and child demographics) to parent ET. Parent education and child age were associated positively with emotion questions, income was associated positively with emotion reasoning, and parents' heritage culture orientation was associated positively with the elaborateness of ET. The findings highlight the need to consider socio-cultural variations in emotion socialization practices when adapting and disseminating socioemotional learning interventions.

The social plasticity hypothesis proposes that i.e., the adaptation to and harmonization with one's environment, plays a crucial role in the risk for developing alcohol use disorders (AUDs) during adolescence, whereas in adulthood it paradoxically may make individuals more sensitive to the social pull to reduce drinking. This study aimed to develop a valid measure of social attunement: the social attunement questionnaire (SAQ). A total of 26-items were developed and the questionnaire was completed by 576 Dutch mid to late adolescents and adults over three rounds of online data collection. Using exploratory factor analysis in part of the sample (N = 373), the final questionnaire was reduced to two subscales with a total of 11 items. This structure was confirmed using confirmatory factor analysis in the second part of the sample (N = 203). Results showed that the SAQ has acceptable internal consistency, good measurement invariance to gender, and subscales assessing both cognitive as well as behavioural components of social attunement. In line with expectations on alcohol use settings, SAQ scores were not associated directly with alcohol use, but they were predictive of alcohol use when taking into account the interaction between perceived peer drinking and age. The SAQ appears suitable for the assessment of social attunement in (young) adult men and women, particularly assessing the role of social attunement in alcohol use settings. Further research is needed to confirm the utility of the SAQ in older adults and a broader variety of social settings.

Daily emotion dynamics provide valuable information about individuals' emotion processes as they go about their lives. Emotion dynamics such as (mean), (degree of fluctuation), and (strength of temporal connections among emotions) are associated with risks for various psychopathology in youth and adults. Prior work has shown that caregivers and friends play crucial socializing roles in adolescent emotional well-being, but less is known about their roles in daily emotion dynamics. This study examined whether caregiver emotion coaching, caregiver-adolescent closeness, and friendship quality were associated with adolescents' emotion levels, emotion variability, and emotion network density. Further, we examined whether caregiver-adolescent closeness moderated the associations between coaching and emotion dynamics. Participants were 150 adolescents (61% girls; = 14.75) and one of their caregivers (95% female; = 43.35) who completed a baseline survey and 21 daily surveys. Results showed that caregiver emotion coaching interacted with caregiver-adolescent closeness in predicting emotion levels and variability. Specifically, when closeness was higher, emotion coaching was significantly associated with lower sadness and anger levels, higher happiness levels, and lower happiness variability. Caregiver emotion coaching, independent of closeness, was also associated with lower anxiety levels, lower sadness variability, and lower emotion network density. Friendship quality was significantly associated with lower levels of sadness, anxiety, and anger, higher levels of happiness, and lower variability in anxiety and anger. These findings suggest that caregivers and friends are central to everyday emotion levels and variability and a more flexible emotion system in adolescents.

Studies of gender development typically use binary, discrete measures of identity. However, growing literature indicates that some children might not identify with a binary gender. We tested a continuous measure of felt gender identity with gender-nonconforming children, socially-transitioned transgender children, cisgender siblings, and unrelated cisgender children. In two studies, we found that transgender and cisgender children did not differ in their degree of identifying as their current gender, that they showed more binary identities compared to gender-nonconforming children, and that the continuum was a valid predictor of other measures of gender development. We also found that children's use of the continuous measure was stable over time. Our results demonstrate the test-retest reliability and validity of a new single-item continuous measure of gender.