Previous literature based on self-report measures has not found a clear relationship between the ethnic attitudes of White parents and those of their children. In particular, no study has evidenced such a relationship in the case of preschool children. In the present study, the authors measured parents' implicit and explicit racial attitudes as…

Examined family influences on vocational interest development. Hypothesized that parents with similar interests were more likely to have adolescents who also developed those interests than were parents whose interests were very divergent. To "unconfound" genetic and environmental influences, parent-child interest difference scores were compared…

Twin children were videotaped hitting an inflated clown figure. Three behaviors (number of hits, intensity of hits, and number of quadrants hit) showed adequate response characteristics, rater reliability, and test-retest reliability. Twin analyses of the three behavioral ratings yielded no evidence of hereditary influence. (Author)

Measures of general cognitive ability in one- and two-year-old adopted and nonadopted infants and their parents were subjected to path analysis to estimate the contribution of genetic and environmental factors to short-term stability of mental ability. (Author/RH)

Pairs of genetically unrelated children reared as same-age siblings offer a design for investigating genetic and environmental influences on behavior. Results with 21 pairs support an explanatory model of intelligence that includes genetic factors. Shared environment appeared to have a very small effect on intellectual development. (SLD)

Provides an overview of a longitudinal, prospective, multivariate adoption study of behavioral development and discusses the results of analyses of cognitive measures and environmental assessments as examples of the types of information that can emerge from a design of this sort. (Author/RH)

Sibling data may be used as a covariant statistically controlling family background for testing the adequacy of age-standardized scores; for testing the interval scale of mental measurements; for analyzing correlations into between- and within-family components; and for detecting cultural sources of variance. (Author/GDC)

This study was designed to assess genetic influence on behavioral inhibition and its varying expression in 92 monozygotic and 86 dizygotic twin pairs. Infant behavior and mother-child interaction were observed and videotaped during structured play sessions at age 14, 20, 24, and 36 months. Analysis of the results suggests that most of the overlap…

Parents who were identical twins, fraternal twins, or adopted siblings completed questionnaires assessing attitudes toward parenting and specific parenting practices, the emotional atmosphere of the home, and parental personality. Model-fitting results implicated modest genetic effects on affect-related aspects of parenting, such as parental…

Used the Sibling Inventory of Differential Experience with 396 adolescent and young adult children to determine the extent to which genetic differences between siblings or sibling differences in family constellation variables were responsible for differential experiences. (HOD)

Wolff has recently reinterpreted the data of Lee to indicate that Black migration from the south to Philadelphia had been selective in an IQ-relevant manner. However, Wolff's deduction from Lee's data is shown to depend entirely upon an assumption about cumulative IQ deficit in southern Black children. (Author/CTM)

Kamin has contended that arguments presented in Wolff are too weak to justify selective migration. Although Kamin's critique points up the need for closer scrutiny of the cumulative-deficit phenomenon, it fails to refute Wolff's conclusion that selective migration is partly responsible for the North-South Black IQ differential. (Author/CTM)

A survey of 125 musically gifted adolescents, 123 parents, and 88 teachers found students believed their success was due to inborn ability and hard work, parents attributed their children's musical accomplishments to encouragement provided by family and friends, and teachers attributed students' musical development to innate talent, hard work, and…

Discusses the influence of external environments on the functioning of families as contexts for child development. Describes studies on the interaction of genetics and environment, on relationships between the family and hospital care, day care, peers, schools, parental employment and support networks, the community, and major transition life…

Reading ability, symbol-processing speed, and spatial reasoning ability were examined in families with reading disabled children and in control families. For both types of families, comparable moderate familial influences were found, which also accounted for phenotypic correlations between traits. Multivariate path analysis and other statistical…