Establishing and maintaining social relationships is a critical developmental milestone for adolescents and young adults and can be disrupted by childhood adversities. Adverse and positive childhood experiences (ACEs and PCEs, respectively) represent independent, yet critical, domains that support the exploration of positive and adverse childhood experiences (PACEs) as pathways to social connection. Recent research has examined the impact of COVID-19 on child development. The current study expands on existing research by examining the effects that PACEs clusters and high school enrollment during COVID-19 had on social connectedness. Young adults (N = 211; Mage = 20.97 years, SD = 2.14) completed an online survey examining social functioning and childhood experiences. Two measures comprised PACEs: Benevolent Childhood Experiences (BCEs) scale and Adverse Childhood Experiences questionnaire. An adapted Berkman-Syme Social Network Index measured social connection. High school enrollment during COVID-19 was determined by graduation year. Cluster analyses identified three PACEs profiles: (1) high BCEs/low ACEs (74.9%), (2) moderate BCEs/high ACEs (14.7%), and (3) low BCEs/moderate ACEs (10.4%). Regression analyses showed that High Risk/High Protection (β = -3.326, p = .001) and Moderate Risk/Moderate Protection (β = -4.845, p < .001) profiles had significantly fewer social connections than the Low Risk/High Protection profile. High school enrollment at the COVID-19 onset did not predict social connection (β = 0.067, p = .305). Implications include clinicians considering PACEs when forming a holistic view of clients and integrating positive contexts into adversity research.

We present a scoping review of qualitative scholarly publications on sport and physical activity in secure custody facilities for young people published over a 22-year period, finding the literature remains geographically, substantively, and theoretically scant. We identify and assess predominant themes in the following four areas: (1) sport\'s potential contribution to young persons\' rehabilitation and desistance; (2) the structure and organization of sport programs; (3) sport and coping with the experience of incarceration; and (4) other themes, including health outcomes and gender and race. Our scoping review provides a foundation for researchers and policymakers to advance knowledge about sport-based interventions in the lives of young people who are incarcerated.

Given the complexity of human social life, it is astonishing to observe how quickly children adapt to their social environment. To be accepted by the other members, it is crucial to understand and follow the rules and norms shared by the group. How and from whom do young children learn these social rules? In the experiments, based on the crucial role of affective social learning and dominance hierarchies in simple rule understanding, we showed 15-to-23-month-olds and 3-to-5-year-old children videos where the agents\' body size and affective cues were manipulated. In the dominant rule-maker condition, when a smaller protagonist puts an object in one location, a bigger agent reacts with a positive reaction; on the contrary, when the smaller protagonist puts an object in another location, the bigger agent displays a negative reaction. In the subordinate rule-maker condition, the roles are shifted but the agents differ. Toddlers expect the protagonist to follow the rules (based on anticipatory looks), independent of the dominant status of the rule-making agent. Three-to-five-year-old pre-schoolers overall perform at the chance level but expect the protagonist to disobey a rule in the first trial, and obey the rule in the second trial if the rule-maker is dominant.

When thinking about possibility, one can consider both epistemic and deontic principles (i.e., physical possibility and permissibility). Cultural influences may lead individuals to weigh epistemic and deontic obligations differently; developing possibility conceptions are therefore positioned to be affected by cultural surroundings. Across two studies, 251 U.S. and Chinese 4-, 6-, and 8-year-olds sampled from major metropolitan areas in Texas and the Hubei, Sichuan, Gansu, and Guangdong Provinces judged the possibility of impossible, improbable, and ordinary events. Across cultures and ages, children judged ordinary events as possible and impossible events as impossible; cultural differences emerged in developing conceptions of improbable events. Whereas U.S. children became more likely to judge these events possible with age, Chinese children\'s judgments remained consistent with age: Chinese 4- to 8-year-olds judged these events to be possible ∼25% of the time. In Study 2, to test whether this difference was attributable to differential prioritization of epistemic versus deontic constraints, children also judged whether each event was an epistemic violation (i.e., required magic to happen) and a deontic violation (i.e., would result in someone getting in trouble). With age, epistemic judgments were increasingly predictive of possibility judgments for improbable events for U.S. children, and decreasingly so for Chinese children. Contrary to our predictions, deontic judgments were not predictive. We propose that cultural valuation of norms might shape children\'s developing intuitions about possibility. We discuss our findings in light of three accounts of possibility conceptions, suggesting ways to integrate cultural context into each.

Belief in gendered social power imbalance (i.e. males are more powerful than females) leads to undesirable gender disparities, but little is known about the developmental origins of this belief, especially in Eastern cultures. We investigated the development onset of this belief by focusing on 4-7-year-old Japanese children while considering another belief (females are nicer than males) for comparison. In the dyadic context tasks, children saw pairs of animated characters depicting powerful-powerless or kind-unkind postures and judged the characters\' gender (boy or girl). Results suggested both \'nice = female\' and \'powerful = female\' gender stereotypes in children. In the collective context tasks, children were presented with stories in occupational contexts, including multiple unspecified people and verbal cues, describing more explicitly the powerful and nice traits of the protagonists. The results replicated the \'nice = female\' gender stereotype. Moreover, early \'powerful = male\' gender stereotypes were seen in 6-year-old boys but not among girls in general. These findings demonstrate that Japanese children\'s beliefs regarding gender differences in power vary depending on the context in which male-female interactions are presented. Additionally, the study reveals that signs of the \'powerful = male\' social power gender stereotype emerge around the age of 6.

The collective behavior of animal groups emerges from the interactions among individuals. These social interactions produce the coordinated movements of bird flocks and fish schools, but little is known about their developmental emergence and neurobiological foundations. By characterizing the visually based schooling behavior of the micro glassfish Danionella cerebrum, we found that social development progresses sequentially, with animals first acquiring the ability to aggregate, followed by postural alignment with social partners. This social maturation was accompanied by the development of neural populations in the midbrain that were preferentially driven by visual stimuli that resemble the shape and movements of schooling fish. Furthermore, social isolation over the course of development impaired both schooling behavior and the neural encoding of social motion in adults. This work demonstrates that neural populations selective for the form and motion of conspecifics emerge with the experience-dependent development of collective movement.

In a prior study we demonstrated that the presence of face masks impairs the human capability of accurately inferring emotions conveyed through facial expressions, at all ages. The degree of impairment posed by face covering was notably more pronounced in children aged between three and five years old. In the current study, we conducted the same test as a follow-up after one year from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the requirement of wearing face masks was holding in almost all circumstances of everyday life when social interactions occur. The results indicate a noteworthy improvement in recognizing facial expressions with face masks among children aged three to five, compared to the pre-pandemic settings. These findings hold a significant importance, suggesting that toddlers effectively mitigated the social challenges associated with masks use: they overcame initial environmental limitations, improving their capability to interpret facial expressions even in the absence of visual cues from the lower part of the face.

OBJECTIVE: We know very little about Hispanic autistic children\'s response to intervention as, historically, Hispanic children are underrepresented in intervention studies. Pathways parent-mediated early autism intervention is one of the few naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions (NDBIs) that is contextually and linguistically responsive to Hispanic families. However, some child-centered NDBI strategies do not align with the Hispanic caregiving value of respeto. A child exhibiting respeto demonstrates affiliative obedience by displaying deference and respect toward adults. Furthermore, theories of the ontogeny of cultural learning suggest that certain levels of social development may be necessary to learn cultural values. The current study investigates (1) the relationship between Hispanic autistic children\'s social skills and affiliative obedience and (2) the efficacy of Pathways in improving affiliative obedience in Hispanic children.
METHODS: This quasi-experimental design study used preexisting standardized test data and video recordings from 26 Hispanic participants who took part in a previous Pathways efficacy study. Recordings were coded for affiliative obedience and social connectedness. Residual change variables were used to measure progress from baseline to post-intervention, and correlation and hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to analyze the data.
RESULTS: We found significant positive correlations between social skills and children\'s affiliative obedience for baseline and change variables. In addition, we found Pathways had a significant medium-large magnitude effect on change in affiliative obedience skills.
CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights the benefits of NDBI interventions that advance social development in autistic children and support Hispanic parents in enculturating their children in the value of respeto.

Social-emotional learning (SEL) is a rapidly growing field of research that has garnered significant attention in recent years. Each facet of SEL research in fields such as education, mental health, and developmental research has used specific methodologies and terms in their narrow research focus. In education specifically, where the most SEL research has been produced, many frameworks have implementation requirements. The lack of a framework focused on overarching themes without implementation requirements prevents the fields from coming together to compile and compare research and progress to create parent-, adult-, or mental health-specific SEL programs. This paper provides a conceptual analysis of SEL, aimed at clarifying the concept and deconstructing its various facets. This framework is needed to acknowledge the many different terms and skills for the same principle while also narrowing down definitions for clarity. The resulting framework can be used as a basis for future research, practice, and policy discussions in the field.

Attachment theory proposes that young children\'s experiences with their caregivers has a tremendous influence on how children navigate their social relationships. By the end of early childhood, intergroup contexts play an important role in their social life and children build strong ties to their ingroups. Although both domains relate to the same psychological processes-children\'s affective ties to others-surprisingly very little research has addressed how children\'s attachment relates to their intergroup attitudes and behavior. In this study, we investigate the link. For that purpose, 5-year-old children (n = 100) first underwent the German Attachment Story Completion Task (GEV-B). Then we allocated children into minimal groups based on T-Shirt color and assessed their intergroup attitudes and intergroup behavior. Results showed that while most children showed a strong and robust ingroup bias in their attitudes and behavior, children with an insecure-ambivalent attachment representation treated in- and outgroup similarly. Overall, this study provides novel perspectives on the relationship between children\'s attachment representation and their interactions in the social world. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: This study provides novel insights into the relationship between children\'s attachment security and the development of intergroup bias in a minimal group context Children with secure, insecure-avoidant and disorganized attachment representation showed a strong intergroup bias in explicit attitudes and behavior Children with insecure-ambivalent attachment representation displayed no intergroup bias Insecure-ambivalent attachment representations might be detrimental to the formation of ingroup attachment.