Children who worry about how their parents get along with each other are more likely than other children to have psychological problems. Now a new study says that children who worry a lot about conflicts between their parents are more likely to have problems in school because they have more difficulty paying attention to the tasks before them.

Planning and anticipating occur so frequently in our everyday lives that it is hard to imagine a time when we didn’t have this capability. But just as many other capacities develop, so does this mental time traveling ability.

Many of the lifestyle habits that children and adolescents develop—eating a diet high in fat and low in fruits and vegetables, being physically inactive or sedentary, and experimenting with tobacco and alcohol use—can have a major impact on their health later in life.

A large part of enjoying a good book is getting immersed in the life of a character, especially a character's thoughts and feelings. A new University of Waterloo psychology study shows that preschoolers can already perform this impressive perspective-taking feat and get into the minds of story characters.

Preschoolers are more introspective than we give them credit for, according to new research by Simona Ghetti, assistant professor of psychology at UC Davis.

In the first study to examine how children talk about the time-related features of their experiences--when, how often, in what order events occur--researchers have found intriguing changes as children grow older. The study’s findings may have implications for understanding these aspects of cognitive development as well as for questioning child witnesses and victims.

Overweight children are stigmatized by their peers as early as age 3 and even face bias from their parents and teachers, giving them a quality of life comparable to people with cancer, a new analysis concludes.

A new study by researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital’s (MGH) Center for Mental Health and Media dispels some myths and uncovers some surprises about young teens and violent video and computer games.

PG-13 films have lots of "happy violence," say UCLA researchers. Borrowing from the late communications theorist George Gerbner, happy violence is that which is "cool, swift and painless." PG-13 films don't consider the consequences of violent acts, such as injury, death and the shattered lives of the people involved.

How do sweet children turn into delinquents seemingly right before our eyes" A unique study appearing in the June issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that, in children, a highly reactive autonomic nervous system, which regulates our cardiovascular, digestive and respiratory functions, paired with a stressful family environment leads to increased instances of maladaptive personality change.

A conference in Darwin has heard that play therapy should be used more widely to help children deal with emotional problems such as bullying. The type of therapy enables young children to act out problems they cannot put into words.