The significance of emotion and social experiences in young children's growing understanding of emotion and mind is discussed here. There is evidence for early mind-reading, and the role of emotional experience in these developments; differentiation of various aspects of social understanding is indicated from studies of discourse, and longitudinal research. The challenges to be addressed in research on links between affect and cognition include a focus on children at risk of relationship problems, on the relations between attachment and mind-reading, and on possible developmental changes in the connections between emotion and social understanding.

Researchers have examined links between maternal differential treatment of siblings and children's adjustment; however, little is known about the longitudinal nature of these associations. The goal of this study was to examine the relationship between maternal differential treatment of the siblings, direct parenting of older siblings, and older siblings' behavior problems across middle childhood. Eighty-two families were interviewed twice in their homes when the siblings averaged 4.7 and 7.7 years of age and, again when they averaged 7.9 and 10.5 years of age. Mothers completed questionnaires about parenting and older siblings' adjustment during the summer after the older siblings' 7th and 11th birthdays. Teachers completed questionnaires about the older siblings' adjustment and returned them through the mail. There was significant stability in the mothers' reports of differential treatment and significant associations between mothers' reports of maternal differential discipline and differential attention and mothers' and teachers' reports of older siblings' externalizing problems across time. Direct parenting measures were not correlated with differential treatment or older siblings' behavior problems across time.

This study compares the prosodie modifications in mothers' and fathers' speech to preverbal infants in French, Italian, German, Japanese, British English, and American English. At every stage of data collection and analysis, standardized procedures were used to enhance the comparability across data sets that is essential for valid cross-language comparison of the prosodie features of parental speech. In each of the six language groups, five mothers and five fathers were recorded in semi-structured home observations while speaking to their infant aged 0; 10–1;2 and to an adult. Speech samples were instrumentally analysed to measure seven prosodic parameters: mean fundamental frequency (f0), f0-minimum, f0-maximum, f0-range, f0-variability, utterance duration, and pause duration. Results showed cross-language consistency in the patterns of prosodic modification used in parental speech to infants. Across languages, both mothers and fathers used higher mean-f0, f0-minimum, and f0-maximum, greater f0-variability, shorter utterances, and longer pauses in infant-directed speech than in adult-directed speech. Mothers, but not fathers, used a wider f0-range in speech to infants. American English parents showed the most extreme prosodic modifications, differing from the other language groups in the extent of intonational exaggeration in Speech to infants. These results reveal common patterns in caretaker's use of intonation across languages, which may function developmentally to regulate infant arousal and attention, to communicate affect, and to facilitate speech perception and language comprehension. In addition to providing evidence for possibly universal prosodic features of speech to infants, these results suggest that language-specific variations are also important, and that the findings of the numerous studies of early language input based on American English are not necessarily generalisable to other cultures.

One of the most dramatic findings from quantitative genetic research is that environmental influences shared by siblings in a family do not make the siblings similar in terms of psychopathology. Sibling resemblance for psychopathology appears to be genetic rather than environmental in origin; environmental influences that affect the development of psychopathology must be nonshared and make children in the same family different rather than similar. This study sets out to identify environmental factors that differ for young siblings and to assess associations between such nonshared factors and differences in the older siblings' outcome in two domains: internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Maternal interview and observations of differential maternal and sibling behavior were compared within 67 sibling dyads (younger and older siblings aged 4 and 7 years, respectively, on average), and differential experiences were related to the adjustment of the older sibling, as assessed by mother and teacher. Differential maternal behavior appeared to be particularly important as a predictor of adjustment problems. Older siblings showed internalizing problems in families in which mothers were less affectionate to the older than to the younger sibling. Greater maternal control toward the older than the younger sibling predicted both internalizing and externalizing problems. Differential maternal behavior explained 34% of the variance of internalizing behavior and 27% of the variance of externalizing behavior problems, independent of variance explained by family structure variables. Although the sample was unselected for psychopathology and was too small to permit analyses of the diagnosable extremes of internalizing and externalizing dimensions, these results are encouraging in relation to the goal of identifying systematic sources of nonshared environment that affect the development of psychopathology.

Adjustments in speech made by 2- and 3-year-old children when talking to their 14-month-old siblings are described and compared with those made by mothers addressing their babies. ‘Clarification’ adjustments were made by all the children, but there were marked individual differences in the frequency of questions and ‘affective-expressive’ features – differences related to the quality of the relationship between the siblings. The pattern of speech adjustments reflected the social contexts in which the children addressed their siblings; within these contexts (prohibitory and playful) children as young as 2 make appropriate use of communicative devices. The individual differences between the children indicate two sources of influence on the adjustments made – pragmatic and emotional.

This study addressed the basis for the intergenerational transmission of psychosocial risk associated with maternal childhood abuse in relation to offspring adjustment. The study tested how far group differences in individual change in adjustment over time were explained by differences in exposure to specific environmental risk experiences. Data are drawn from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Information on mothers' own experience of childhood abuse, offspring adjustment at ages 4 and 7 years, and hypothesized mediators was available for 5,619 families. A residuals scores analysis was used to track children's adjustment over time. Maternal childhood abuse was associated with poorer behavioral trajectories between ages 4 and 7 years. Children of abused mothers were more likely to experience a range of negative life events between ages 4 and 7 years, including changes in family composition, separations from parents, “shocks and frights” and physical assaults. Interim life events, together with antecedent psychosocial risk (maternal antenatal affective symptoms, age 4 parental hostility, age 4 family type) fully mediated the association between maternal childhood abuse and offspring prognosis.The authors express their gratitude to the families who participated in the study. Support for these analyses was provided by a grant from the Medical Research Council. The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) is part of the World Health Organisation initiated European Study of Pregnancy and Childhood, and is supported, among others, by the Wellcome Trust, The Department of Health, The Department of the Environment, and the Medical Research Council. The ALSPAC study team comprises interviewers, computer technicians, laboratory technicians, clerical workers, research scientists, volunteers, and managers who continue to make the study possible.