To compare disciplinary techniques within families spanning three generations, 24 maternal grandmothers and 24 mothers independently selected rewarding and punishing consequences for their children's correct and incorrect responses on an age-appropriate learning task. The children's behaviors were experimentally controlled so that performances…

A study was conducted to investigate the influence of systematic trends in the successfulness of children's performance upon subsequent parental disciplinary actions. A total of 30 mothers 24 to 45 years of age and their sons, ages 4 to 7.5 years, participated. Mothers were provided with predetermined sequences of trial-by-trial information about…

Left-hemisphere language specialization in right-handed children was tested in children previously classified as consistent or nonconsistent in their hand preference. Results showed that both male hand preference groups demonstrated asymmetric interference in dual task tapping performance. In contrast, only females associated with consistency in…

Investigated the role of memory development, especially the developmental change in reported general and specific memories, in children's and adults' concepts of themselves. The proportion of general responses was found to be high and stable across all ages; the proportion of specific responses increased with age. (PCB)

Based on data collected from official statistics and analyzed with structural equation models, this study indicated that preschool education produced a lasting effect on success in elementary school. In addition, evaluation using routinely collected data in replicable structural models is seen as a valuable strategy for education system control…

Responses of day care and home care children to an adult dropping items, banging her knee, giving the children opportunity to leave the larger of two prizes for a peer, and asking for donation to sick children were compared. Prosocial reasoning in these 47- to 75-month-old children was assessed via their responses to stories in which help was…

Effects of the importance of plot-relevant information on 4- to 6-year-old children's memory for four televised stories was examined in two experiments. Free recall and cued recall of idea units rated for importance by college students were assessed. Recognition following failed cued recall was also assessed. (Author/BN)

Examined relationships between three components of tasks used in developmental studies of attention--visual search, filtering, and priming--as measured in tasks performed by children and adults. (PCB)

The Junior Self-Monitoring Scale, a new measure, was developed and related to individual differences in children's tendencies to engage in social comparison when making decisions. This study demonstrated that children scoring high in self-monitoring were more likely than low self-monitoring children to attend to the decisions of other children.…

Describes an effective program for teaching children about the dangers of sexual abuse and abduction. The program does not introduce negative stories, examples, and other warnings that tend to create anxieties in children. Reports a study evaluating the program's effectiveness. (SKC)

The similarity between rules used by mothers and those used by sons was extensive. Results suggest that research should emphasize the process by which children come to employ multidimensional rules and the role of parental models in this process. Current research in moral judgments largely ignores the rule-governed nature of children's judgments.…

Reports on three experiments involving 300 six-year old children that investigated the conditions under which young children would produce "separates" as opposed to partial occlusion drawings. (HOD)

By varying task requirements within a common procedural framework, four experiments established conditions under which children exhibit different understandings of life. Overall, results suggested that even four- and five-year-olds know that people and other animals are alive and that almost all "inanimate objects" are not. (Author/RH)

Western and Chinese children six years of age judged that an initially intense positive or negative emotional reaction would wane gradually over time. Children four years of age were less consistent, but, when steps were taken to insure their comprehension, they too judged that emotion wanes gradually over time. (Author/RH)

In two experiments 96 children and eight adults were tested for comprehension of the modifier-head relation in compounds such as apple-knife or were asked to label objects with compounds. Results show that by age three children reliably interpret novel compounds and made use of novel compounds to subcategorize. (RH)