Individual differences in young children's understanding of others' feelings and in their ability to explain human action in terms of beliefs, and the earlier correlates of these differences, were studied with 50 children observed at home with mother and sibling at 33 months, then tested at 40 months on affective-labeling, perspective-taking, and false-belief tasks. Individual differences in social understanding were marked; a third of the children offered explanations of actions in terms of false belief, though few predicted actions on the basis of beliefs. These differences were associated with participation in family discourse about feelings and causality 7 months earlier, verbal fluency of mother and child, and cooperative interaction with the sibling. Differences in understanding feelings were also associated with the discourse measures, the quality of mother-sibling interaction, SES, and gender, with girls more successful than boys. The results support the view that discourse about the social world may in part mediate the key conceptual advances reflected in the social cognition tasks; interaction between child and sibling and the relationships between other family members are also implicated in the growth of social understanding.

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50 33-month-old children were observed at home with their siblings and mothers. Observational measures of pretend play, observer ratings of the child's, mother's, and sibling's behavior, and measures of family discourse about feelings were collected. At 40 months each child was assessed on Bartsch and Wellman's false beliefs task and Denham's affective perspective taking task. Results revealed individual differences in the amount and sophistication of young children's social pretend play and suggested that these individual differences are related to experiences in the relationships that young children have with their mothers and siblings. Results also indicated that early social pretend play was significantly related to the child's developing understanding of other people's feelings and beliefs. The data are interpreted as providing support for the notion that early experience in social pretense is associated with children's mastery of the relation between mental life and real life. The importance of considering the relationship context of social pretense is also discussed.

OBJECTIVE. Emerging evidence about optimal youth development highlights the importance of both reducing negative behavior and promoting positive behavior. In our study we tested a contextual model derived from positive youth-development theory by examining the association of family, school, and community risk and promotive factors, with several outcome indices of both positive and negative adolescent development. METHODS.A sample of 42 305 adolescents aged 11 to 17 (51% girls) was drawn from the 2003 National Survey of Children's Health. Survey item composites were formed representing promotive and risk factors in the family (eg, closeness, aggression) and school and community (eg, community connectedness, school violence). Outcome composites reflected positive (social competence, health-promoting behavior, self-esteem) and negative (externalizing, internalizing, academic problems) developmental outcomes. Ordinary least squares regression was used to test the overall model. RESULTS. Between 0.10 and 0.50 of the variance in each outcome was explained by the contextual model. Multiple positive family characteristics were related to adolescent social competence and self-esteem, as well as lowered levels of internalizing and externalizing behavior and academic problems. Family communication, rules about television, and parents' own healthy behavior were related to adolescent health-promoting behavior. School and community safety were associated with increased social competence and decreased externalizing behavior. School violence was related to adolescent internalizing and externalizing behavior, as well as academic problems and lower self-esteem.CONCLUSIONS. Our results support the proposition that healthy adolescent development has roots in multiple contexts. Youth who were involved in contexts that provided positive resources from important others (ie, parents, schools, and comwww.pediatrics.org/cgi

This study investigated agency and communion attributes in adults' spontaneous self-representations. The study sample consisted of 158 adults (80 men, 78 women) ranging in age from 20 to 88 years. Consistent with theorising, significant age and sex differences were found in terms of the number of agency and communion attributes. Young and middle-aged adults included significantly more agency attributes in their self-representations than older adults; men listed significantly more agency attributes than women. In contrast, older adults included significantly more communion attributes in their self-representations than young adults, and women listed significantly more communion attributes than men. Significant Age Group × Self-Portrait Display and Sex × Self-Portrait Display interactions were found for communion attributes, indicating that the importance of communion attributes differed across age groups and by sex. Correlational analyses showed significant associations of agency and communion attributes with personality traits and defence mechanisms. Communion attributes also showed significant correlations with four dimensions of psychological well-being.The concepts of agency and communion are frequently used to describe two basic styles of how individuals relate to their social world (Bakan, 1966;Guisinger & Blatt, 1994;McAdams, 1993). This study examined the implicit expression of agency and communion orientations in adults' spontaneous self-representations. Specifically, this study had four objectives. First, we examined to what extent adults' spontaneous self-representations could be categorised in terms of agency-and communion-related attributes. The second objective focused on the examination of age and sex differences in adults' agency and communion orientations. Third, we examined the associations between adults' agency-and communion-related attributes and other measures of personality and several dimensions of psychological well-being. Finally, the fourth objective examined the hypothesis that the expression of agency and communion attributes differs across age groups and by sex. Specifically, we examined whether age differences in the ratio between agency and communion attributes are different for women than for men. Bakan (1966) proposed agency and communion as two fundamental modalities of human existence. Agency refers to an individual's striving to master the environment, to assert the self, to experience competence, achievement, and power. In contrast, communion refers to a Correspondence should be addressed to Manfred Diehl, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Florida, PO Box 115911, Gainesville, FL 32611-5911, USA; e-mail: mdiehl@ufl.edu. Agency and communion as basic behavioural orientations NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptInt J Behav Dev. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2008 June 30. Published in final edited form as:Int J Behav Dev. 2004 ; 28: 1-15. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscriptperson's desire to closely relate to and cooper...