Considering the health outcomes of loneliness, it is important to understand the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic for older adults to facilitate detection and intervention. The aim of this study was to examine loneliness among Spanish older adults during the first wave lockdown and associated factors, in comparison to younger adults. An online survey was completed by 3508 adults (401 aged 60 or above). Older adults felt higher social loneliness than younger adults, but lower emotional loneliness. Living alone, poor mental health, and poor healthy habits were related to higher loneliness for both age groups. The results suggest that loneliness should be an important factor in primary care, and prevention efforts should be taken, e.g., by generating open and safe community spaces and contexts for social interaction and promoting the access and ability to use technologies that maintain social connections.

We investigated associations between family income-to-needs, nighttime bedroom temperature (NBT), and children's sleep. Using a sample of 46 children ( = 11.5), we recorded NBT and objective sleep parameters via actigraphy nightly for one week to evaluate within- (night-to-night) and between-person associations. We found consistent evidence for a curvilinear association between NBT and sleep variables at the between-person level, indicating that children who slept in rooms that were "too hot" or "too cold" experienced poorer sleep. Moreover, children in lower income-to-needs families had more extreme NBTs. There was some evidence that family income-to-needs is indirectly related to sleep via NBT, but with interpretational caveats. These findings point to NBT as a potentially modifiable variable, which has implications for practical applications to mitigate effects of socioeconomic disparities on children's sleep.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has impaired young children's mental health, underscoring the need for research on protective factors. Using a cross-sectional design, we examined whether parental working memory (WM) buffered relations between COVID-19 hardships (home-life, economic, and quarantine) and child internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Female parents ( = 339; 83.19% White/Caucasian, 8.85% Black/African American, 3.54% Asian, 1.47% Native American, and 2.36% mixed race; 7.67% Hispanic/Latinx ethnicity) of children 2-5-years-old reported COVID-19 hardships and child internalizing and externalizing symptoms and completed a backward digit span task to measure WM. All types of COVID-19 hardships were positively related to child internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Higher parental WM weakened positive relations between all types of hardships and child internalizing symptoms, and between home-life and economic hardships and externalizing symptoms. Results suggest that parental WM, a malleable target for intervention, may buffer associations between the detrimental effects of COVID-19 and young children's mental health.

Boys are more sensitive to environmental factors like parental behavior, an important predictor of executive function. This study examined whether the interaction between child sex and maternal behavior was associated with children's executive function in a manner consistent with the vulnerability or differential susceptibility model. Participants were 146 36-month-old children and their mothers. Maternal responsiveness and negative reactivity were coded during structured mother-child interactions. Executive function was operationalized as latent self-control and working memory/inhibitory control (WMIC). Structural equation modelling supported a sex by responsiveness interaction for self-control but not WMIC. Consistent with a vulnerability model, less responsiveness was associated with poorer self-control for boys relative to girls. Boys' self-control may be more vulnerable to the negative effect of unresponsive maternal behavior helping explain boys increased risk for externalizing behavior problems.

Children's play time has declined in recent decades, which could negatively impact early self-regulation-a vital component of school readiness. To date, studies have not fully explored how the time spent playing relates to children's self-regulatory skills, and in turn, their early reading and math competencies. Using data from time diaries and direct assessments of self-regulation, prereading, and math skills, this study examined how minutes spent playing at home predict these skills in a sample of 128 children followed from age four to five. Additionally, it considered whether self-regulation explained links between play time and prereading and math. Results showed that the time spent playing positively related to children's self-regulation. Moreover, through its association with self-regulation, play time had indirect effects on prereading and math skills measured one year later. Results suggest that fostering opportunities for play time during the preschool years may help to boost school readiness skills.

The current study examines mother and father PPD as a risk factor for child emotion regulation difficulties. A model was tested in which parent depression and parent emotion socialization of children were serial intervening variables. Parent emotion socialization was assessed via parent self-reported supportive and nonsupportive reactions to child negative emotions. Differences in associations based on parent and child sex were also tested. Data were drawn from an online survey of 337 parents (58.2% mothers) reporting on a single child aged 5 to 12 years ( = 7.10 years of age; 45.1% female). The majority of parents identified as White (72.7%); whereas 10.1% identified as Black, 6.4% identified as Hispanic, 8.4% identified as Asian or Pacific Islander, and 2.4% identified as multiracial/biracial or another racial/ethnic identity not listed. PPD was associated with higher parental depression, which in turn was associated with greater nonsupportive and lower supportive parent reactions to child negative emotions; PPD was indirectly associated with poorer child emotion regulation through lower supportive parent reactions. Associations were not moderated by parent or child sex. Findings support parent emotion socialization practices as an important mechanism through which PPD conveys risk for child psychological problems and is a possible target for intervention.

Preadolescent appraisal and coping are significant predictors of youth psychopathology. However, little research examines how parenting behaviors relate to the development of these skills by forming a key context in which children learn to manage stressors. This study examined how observed maternal and paternal behaviors derived from a parent-child interaction task relate to levels of and growth in child appraisal (threat, positive) and coping (active, avoidant) across three years in preadolescence ( = 214, ages 8-12 years old at Time 1). Greater maternal warmth predicted lower threat appraisal and avoidant coping, and greater maternal negativity predicted greater increases in avoidance. Increased paternal warmth predicted lower initial levels of threat appraisal. Boys showed less growth in active coping than girls. These findings suggest parenting behaviors relate to preadolescents' utilization of maladaptive coping strategies such as avoidance and may be important intervention targets for supporting youth managing stressors.

Examining the forms of social and moral reasoning adolescents use is important for understanding youth engagement with public health guidelines. The present work examined adolescents' perceptions of social norms and associated reasoning in the COVID-19 context. Participants ( = 127, age = 17.00,  = 0.71) negatively evaluated other teenagers who broke COVID-19 guidelines and reasoned about harm reduction to justify breaking these rules, but also recognised the importance of protecting mental health as one reason to spend time with friends counter to these rules. Further, adolescents reported that they were more likely to engage in public health behaviors compared to their peers or the average teenager, suggesting a social norm of lower engagement with these guidelines. Together, this evidence documents the importance of considering social norms moral reasoning in framing communication efforts that target adolescents' adherence to public health guidelines.

Self-regulatory skills are increasingly recognized as critical early education goals, but few efforts have been made to identify all the features of the classroom that actually promote such skills. This study experiments with a new observational measure capturing three dimensions of the classroom environment hypothesized to influence self-regulation: classroom management, emotionally supportive interactions, and direct promotion of self-regulatory skills. These classroom dimensions were tested as predictors of change over the kindergarten year in both self-regulatory and academic skills in a sample of racially/ethnically-diverse low-income children in Tulsa, OK. Results showed that classroom management was associated with small gains in one of four measures of self-regulation, and four of six measures of academic skills. The other dimensions of the environment had weak or no associations with outcomes. These results indicate that further work is needed to refine both models and measures of the self-regulatory environment.

This study aimed to examine the association between sleep measures (self-reported sleep duration and weekend catch-up sleep) and grade point average (GPA) and absences among 9 grade students from two racially and economically diverse high schools in a semi-rural county of north-central Georgia. Linear and Poisson regression models estimated the association between sleep measures and GPA and absences (separately), respectively. Analyses adjusted for gender, race/ethnicity, free/reduced-price school lunch status, and parental education. Sleep duration was significantly associated with both GPA and absences, such that for every one additional hour of sleep, GPA increased by 0.8 percentage points (b=0.8, 95% CI:0.1,1.5) while the number of absences was lower by 6% (b=-0.05; OR=0.94, 95% CI:0.91,0.98). Weekend catch-up sleep was also significantly and positively associated with absences (b=0.04; OR=1.04, 95% CI; 1.02, 1.07). Increasing sleep may be a strategy to improve GPA and reduce absences among teenagers. Future research should identify effective measures to lengthen sleep.

Interpersonal stress has been consistently linked with poorer adjustment, and healthy sleep may play a promotive or protective role in this relation. However, little is known regarding such associations among children. The current study examined longitudinal associations between daily interpersonal stress, sleep, and internalizing/externalizing symptoms during middle childhood.

Several influential studies reported sex differences in early care and education (ECE) treatment on young adult IQ and academic outcomes. This paper extends that work by asking whether sex differences in impacts of the Carolina Abecedarian Project emerged during the treatment period or subsequently and whether sex differences were maintained into middle adulthood. The randomized clinical trial (98% Black, 51% female) followed 104 infants 5 to 45 years of age. Longitudinal analyses estimated treatment and sex-by-treatment differences at 5 years, from 5 to 21 years, and at 21 and 45 years. Results revealed treated children entered school with higher IQ and reading skills than control children. Treatment impacts on IQ and math increased over time for females and decreased for males yielding sex differences in treatment impacts at 21 and 45 years. These findings suggest that, while the ECE treatment similarly benefited boys and girls in the short term, the long-term impacts likely depended on subsequent experiences.

We evaluated the EmBARK (Empowering Behaviors to Address Race with Kids) program, which we developed to help White parents in the US address race and racial biases with their White 5- to 7-year-old children. Parents ( = 73) completed EmBARK or control condition activities matched for time commitment and engagement with their child. We achieved remarkable compliance with EmBARK, with 95% of parents completing every program component. Parents also liked EmBARK, found EmBARK useful, and successfully implemented EmBARK activities with their children. Parents praised EmBARK's structured guidance for having conversations about race with their children. Parents in the EmBARK condition (vs. control) expressed more concern about, and self-efficacy to address, children's racial biases. This study lays groundwork for assessing the long-term impact of EmBARK on reducing children's racial biases. The findings provide hope that when given resources and guidance, White parents could become active agents in addressing children's racial biases.

Early externalizing and internalizing problems undermine children's school success and long-term well-being. Leveraging a large, U.S.-representative dataset ( ≈ 14,810), we examined how kindergarten teachers' self-efficacy and school climate perceptions were linked to students' behavior problems in kindergarten and first grade. Teachers' self-efficacy and school climate perceptions were uniquely linked to kindergarteners' externalizing and internalizing behaviors, after controlling for demographic covariates and children's executive functions. Kindergarten teachers' higher self-efficacy predicted lower levels of children's externalizing problems in first grade, while teachers' positive school climate perceptions predicted children's lower internalizing problems in first grade. Longitudinal models demonstrated that teachers' perceived school climate and self-efficacy were uniquely associated with decreases in children's externalizing and internalizing behaviors from kindergarten to first grade. Findings highlight the importance of teachers' self-efficacy and school climate for children's socio-emotional development and underscore an urgent need to determine how best to support teacher well-being to optimize children's outcomes.

With adolescence being a period for potential challenges but also positive growth, courage can aid adolescents in rising to some of these challenges. Yet few studies have investigated predictors and mechanisms of courage. The present study examined how three parenting constructs (attachment, autonomy support, and helicopter parenting) predict courage and if self-esteem or emotion regulation serve as mediators. The present study assessed predictors at Time 1 and courage at one-year follow-up. The sample included 203 American adolescents (51.7% girls, 14-15 year olds). Results suggested that relations between several parental variables (anxious attachment to parents, avoidant attachment to fathers, autonomy support of parents) and adolescent courage were mediated by self-esteem. In addition, cognitive reappraisal mediated associations between two mother-related variables (avoidant attachment, helicopter parenting) and courage. Findings contribute to the limited empirical research on adolescents' development of courage.

The COVID-19 pandemic context may predispose mothers to increased maternal psychopathology, which may be associated with offspring socioemotional development. The aim of this study is to analyze the relationships between prenatal anxiety and depression and exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic with offspring socioemotional development, controlling for postnatal anxiety and depression. A total of 105 mother-child dyads were assessed in pre- and postnatal periods. Questionnaires were used to assess the impact of the pandemic, indicators of psychopathology, and the socioemotional development of the offspring. Results suggest that negative pandemic experiences are indirectly associated with offspring socioemotional development via prenatal maternal anxiety symptomatology and after controlling for postnatal anxiety and depression. These indicators predispose to emotional deficits and increase the risks of psychopathological and neurodevelopmental disorders. It is important to adopt health policies that provide timely assessment of development in early childhood to reduce the risks associated with these deficits.

This study used a short-term longitudinal design to examine the extent to which kindergartners': (a) peer relationships are associated with their school absenteeism; and (b) development of positive peer relationships vary as a function of their time spent in school. To address these aims, data were drawn from 801 kindergartners across 64 classrooms and 15 schools in a Midwest city in the United States. Results from covariate-adjusted regression models revealed that kindergartners' relational bonds were not predictive of their time away from school, and that their relationships with classmates were generally unaffected by absenteeism. There was, however, some indication that children's relationships with their classmates were more strongly predicted by their absenteeism for children from less educated households relative to children from more educated households.

Few studies have examined etiological pathways from prenatal substance exposure to adolescent reactive aggression. We tested a conceptual model that included hypothesized pathways from prenatal substance exposure to adolescent aggression via autonomic reactivity and violence exposure from infancy to early school age and maternal harshness across early childhood. The sample included 216 families (106 boys) who primarily self-identified as Black or Mixed Race. Results supported the hypothesized path from violence exposure across early childhood and early school age to school age autonomic reactivity and early adolescent reactive aggression. There was also a significant interaction effect of sympathetic and parasympathetic reactivity on adolescent reactive aggression, with sympathetic arousal and parasympathetic suppression at early school age associated with higher reactive relational and physical aggression in adolescence. Results emphasize the importance of early experiences and autonomic nervous system changes in contributing to the cascade of risk for reactive aggression in early adolescence.

Social connectedness at school is crucial to children's development, yet very little is known about the way it has been affected by school closures during COVID-19 pandemic. We compared pre-post lockdown levels of social connectedness at a school playground in forty-three primary school-aged children, using wearable sensors, observations, peer nominations and self-reports. Upon school reopening, findings from sensors and peer nominations indicated increases in children's interaction time, network diversity and network centrality. Group observations indicated a decrease in no-play social interactions and an increase in children's involvement in social play. Explorative analyses did not reveal relations between changes in peer connectedness and pre-lockdown levels of peer connectedness or social contact during the lockdown period. Findings pointed at the role of recess in contributing to children's social well-being and the importance of attending to their social needs upon reopening.

Children may be asked questions with subtle and implied meanings. The present study examined whether, and under what conditions, 5- to 10-year-old children affirmed polysemous implicature questions that implied coaching, when in fact no coaching occurred. Participants ( = 161) were presented with vignettes about a transgression where the child disclosed to a supportive or unsupportive parent, and were asked three polysemous implicature coaching questions (e.g., "Did the mom with the boy/girl what to say?"). Overall, children acquiesced to implied coaching questions, when in fact no coaching occurred (39% of the time), though acquiescence rates decreased with age and improved false-belief understanding. Furthermore, children were more likely to acquiesce when the mother was supportive, and when the question more subtly suggested coaching. These findings provide novel evidence of the developmental trajectory of children's understanding of polysemous implicatures and the underlying social-cognitive mechanisms, with implications for questioning children in investigative contexts.

Neighborhood disadvantage has been linked to youths' diminished future orientation, defined as the degree to which one thinks about, anticipates, and plans for the future. Yet, parenting behaviors may moderate this link. Using longitudinal data from parent-child dyads ( = 101, 51.5% females; 75.2% African American) collected across two years, one year apart, this study examined whether parental support, behavioral, and psychological control moderated the links between neighborhood socioeconomic [SES] disadvantage and physical disorder and youths' future orientation. Results showed that 1) both observed and parent-reported support at Year 1 mitigated the negative impact of neighborhood SES disadvantage on future orientation; 2) parent-reported support at Year 1, however, intensified the negative effect of neighborhood physical disorder; 3) parent-reported psychological control at Year 1 protected against the negative impact of neighborhood physical disorder. Our findings highlight the importance of understanding how neighborhood adversity and parenting interact to shape youths' future orientation.