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Family socio-economic status is a robust predictor of individual differences in early executive function (EF) (e.g., Hughes and Ensor, 2005), but it is not known whether variation in family environment predict developmental trajectories for EF. To address this challenge, we examined data from comprehensive EF assessments and from multiple measures of family life for a socially diverse sample of 125 British children seen at ages 2 and 4. Our longitudinal results supported three distinct models of social influence. Specifically, while unrelated to observational measures of general positive parenting, EF trajectories were positively related to individual differences in: (i) deliberate maternal scaffolding; (ii) children's opportunities for incidental observational learning (assessed via a naturalistic EF task for mothers); and negatively related to (iii) indicators of disorganised and inconsistent parenting. Together, these findings indicate that families can, unintentionally, both help and hinder young children's EF development.

This chapter provides a brief summary of a line of research from the Victoria Longitudinal Study (VLS). From its inception, the VLS was designed to provide insight into a central question in research on aging and cognition. Using new multivariate data from the VLS, the chapter compares theoretically-derived expectations based on cross-sectional comparisons to those actually observed in longitudinal change patterns. Provocative implications for cognitive aging theories — and how they are generated and supported — are highlighted.

This chapter uses the West of Scotland Twenty-07 study, a large, population-based, longitudinal study, to describe the relationships between reaction times, psychometric intelligence, ageing, and mortality. Being a representative sample, the IQ scores cover the full range and give higher estimates of the correlation with reaction times than are typical of samples with restricted ranges: -0.49 for four choice reaction time and -0.31 for simple reaction time. The Pearson correlation assumes linearity and with a large sample it is possible to examine this assumption. For four choice reaction time, the relationship is approximately linear, but for simple reaction time it is complex and nonlinear. A novel finding is that women show greater intraindividual variability in choice reaction time across most of the adult age range. The survival of the cohort who were initially aged 56 to 70 is positively associated with IQ.

The first author, Jane Davidson, worked with Michael Howe in the 1990s, aiming to deepen understanding of the causes and mechanisms that might explain the complexities of musical greatness. It is to this work, and a recent follow-up study of the same cohort, that the current chapter returns. Looking at structures of social worlds and the syzygistic confluences that enable their alignment with individual proclivities and prior experience, the chapter illustrates how such forces drive or even disrupt individual musical development. Through a longitudinal, child to adulthood study of musical development, and the lives of two outstanding musicians born continents and cultures apart, syzygies are seen as providing conditions for exceptional growth of musicality and creativity through a) the freedom to play within the domain to develop creative thought; b) the challenge to develop skills to solve problems; and c) the social contacts to inspire, model, support and celebrate change to the musical Self.

This chapter summarizes what is known about the contribution of parenting to forms of theory of mind that emerge during infancy. The chapter is divided into two general sections. The first section discusses four early theory-of-mind developments: early social interest and responsiveness, joint attention, social referencing, and understanding of intention. The second section discusses the contribution of parenting to each of these developments, focusing on the importance of warm, sensitive, and responsive parenting, as well as parental control and structuring in the context of emotional availability.The chapter also reviews studies that analyze the relation between infant theory of mind and later theory of mind.