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ECF 700: Child Development, Birth to Age 8

This guide is meant to help you find background reading on a topic; find scholarly articles on a topic using PsycINFO and ERIC; find citations to an article using Google Scholar; cite your sources in APA style; and ask any follow-up questions.

PsychINFO is a database produced by the American Psychological Association that tells you what articles are in the psychology literature. You can easily convert your question into terms used in the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms, which allows for more precise searching. You can limit your results by gender, age group, and methodology, and to peer-reviewed articles only.

Quick Reference Guide: PsycINFO on EBSCOhost

Sample PsychINFO Search

Search Parameters:

  • DE=teacher student interaction
  • DE=interpersonal interaction
  • age limit
  • peer reviewed
  • pub. year limit

Returns:

Laura E. Berk (2012). Infants, Children, and Adolescents. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. 7th edition, p. 375.

Birch, S.H. & Ladd, G.W. (1998). Children’s interpersonal behaviors and the teacher-child relationship. Developmental Psychology, 34, 934-946.

“Peer Relations and School Readiness: The ease with which kindergartners make new friends and are accepted by their classmates predicts cooperative participation in classroom activities and self-directed completion of learning tasks. These behaviors, in turn, are related to gains in achievement over the kindergarten year (Ladd, Birch,& Buhs, 1999; Ladd, Buhs, & Seid, 2000). Of course, kindergartners with friendly, prosocial behavioral styles make new friends easily, whereas those with weak emotional self-regulation skills and argumentative, assertive, or peer-avoidant styles establish poor-quality relationships and make few friends. These negative social outcomes impair children’s liking for school, classroom participation, and academic learning (Birch & Ladd, 1998).”