Family Interaction and Children’s Social Development: Behavioral and Neural Correlates
A special issue of Behavioral Sciences (ISSN 2076-328X). This special issue belongs to the section "Social Psychology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 16 September 2026 | Viewed by 87
Special Issue Editors
Interests: parenting and child mental health
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: social behavior; peer relationship; socioemotional adjustment
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Family interaction serves as the central context for children's social development, playing an irreplaceable role in shaping their cognitive, emotional, and behavioral adaptation. This process not only marks the starting point of social development but also constitutes a lifelong psychological background for the child. In current research, the perspective on children’s social development is gradually shifting from a static "problem-oriented" approach to a dynamic "process–analysis" approach, emphasizing the exploration of the intrinsic mechanisms of social development through interactive processes. This includes observable parent–child behavioral coordination, emotional exchange, and joint attention, as well as implicit, multi-level systemic dynamics such as neural synchrony and physiological covariation.
Given this background, this Special Issue calls for an in-depth investigation into the pathways through which family interaction (e.g., parent–child and marital interaction, interaction synchrony, parenting behavior, emotion socialization, etc.) influences children’s social development (e.g., emotion regulation, self-perception, school adaption, interpersonal relationships, and social behavior) and mental health. In this Special Issue, we will focus on both behavioral expressions and cognitive–neural correlates in particular, and we encourage research that adopts a bidirectional interaction perspective to examine direct and indirect parental influences, as well as mutual shaping processes between parents and children. We welcome empirical studies on parent–child interaction patterns, family system processes, and their related cognitive and neural mechanisms in shaping children’s social development. Submissions employing longitudinal designs, multi-level analytical methods, or behavioral and neural experiments are highly encouraged, and high-quality, cross-sectional meta-analyses and systematic reviews will also be accepted. Overall, we aim to collectively promote hierarchical, systematic theoretical, and empirical advancements in this field.
Abstract Deadline: April 2026.
Notification of Abstract Acceptance: May 2026.
Submission Deadline: September 2026.
Dr. Wan Ding
Dr. Xuechen Ding
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- family interaction
- parent–child synchrony
- family relationship
- social development
- mental health
- emotion regulation
- interpersonal relationship
- neuroscience
- interpersonal brain
- synchronization
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