A study involving 56 boys and 64 girls ranging in age from 9 to 11 years, approximately, found that defensiveness was significantly and positively correlated with impulsivity among boys, both directly and indirectly. Defensiveness did not contribute to impulsivity for girls either directly or indirectly, although test anxiety did correlate with…

Examined persuasive appeals and responses to appeals among kindergarten, second-, and fourth-grade friends and acquaintances. Also evaluated social perspective-taking, friendship, and self-interest reasoning as predictors of appeals and responses. Children, paired with a friend or an acquaintance, participated in a task designed to examine sharing…

Investigates assumptions young listeners may make about speaker authoritativeness. First and fourth graders were asked how the protagonist in a story would respond to what could be interpreted as redundant directions. Stories varied in terms of age and certainty of speaker. (Author/RH)

Investigates whether unpopular children exhibit a bossy interpersonal style in a problem-solving situation. A detailed sequential category coding system was constructed and focused on patterns of influence among children. Sociometric measures were used to pair 44 third- and fourth-grade children into 22 dyads containing an average-status child and…

When first, fourth, and fifth grade speakers played a referential communication game with a fictitious listener, they were more likely to give redundant messages to listeners with whom they had no common shared experience or to strangers than to listeners with whom they had shared a previous experience. (RH)

Examines hypotheses and strategies used by children at the kindergarten, second-, fourth- and sixth-grade levels in making proportional judgements. The task involved 36 trials in which the child had to choose between two groups to obtain a target-color "chip." Results generally conformed to the developmental sequence proposed by Piaget…

Investigates whether third- and fourth-grade children respond differently to conflict with friends and acquaintances. Results support the view that conflict between friends promotes more social development than conflict between nonfriends. Discussion among friends disagreeing on answers to social problems resulted in more mature solutions than…

Tested hypothesis that understanding validity of inference is a relatively late development by asking fourth and seventh graders and college students to sort sets of deductive arguments. None of fourth graders, 45 percent of seventh graders, and 85 percent of college students used validity as basis for distinguishing arguments. Experiments…

Reports two experiments showing a possible developmental shift from memory organization based on associative criteria to an organization based on categorical criteria. Children in first, fourth, and seventh grades were given a sort/recall task with items that could be organized into groups of categorical or associative pairs. (Author/CB)

When kindergarten, second grade, fourth grade, and college students listened to stories and were asked to predict and explain the story character's behavioral or emotional reaction to a new event, the use of personality attributions to predict and explain future reactions increased with age. (RH)