To validate a new approach to research on the attachment behavior of children beyond toddler age, this study investigated relations between Q-sort outcomes and preschool children's affective perspective-taking; prosocial responsiveness to emotion; social competence, as rated by their teachers; and their mothers' expression and handling of…

This study examined the interactive role of empathic disposition and affective perspective-taking ability (APT) in children's machiavellianism, prosocial behavior, and motive for helping. Children demonstrating low empathy and high APT were expected to be highly machiavellian and to cite self-oriented reasons for helping more frequently than would…

The psychology of emotion has been studied primarily from an intrapsychic perspective. A social psychological perspective of emotion can supplement this intrapsychic approach by examining three areas: (1) controlling the emotions of others; (2) controlling the thoughts of others through emotional expression; and (3) emotional congruence, or the…

This study attempted to determine whether simple, naturalistic procedures could be used to increase the rate of physically affectionate behaviors directed at stuffed toy animals and at peers in the play of 4- and 5-year-old children. Procedures were developed for scoring affection and aggression during group play. The context of reading a story…

Observers viewed silent videotapes of elementary school children listening to a lesson. Some of the stimulus children were listening to either a very easy or a very difficult lesson; consequently, their nonverbal behavior occurred naturally and spontaneously. Other stimulus children were instructed to pretend (role play) that they understood or…

This research deals with the development and relative importance of both the conceptual-cognitive and the aesthetic-affective aspect of the perceptual process at various age levels of children. Three tasks were chosen: (1) sorting drawings of human figures--a task that represents a more conceptual function; (2) expressing preferences for those…

This paper explores three research issues on adolescent development using an elaborated effects model: (1) Are there consistent sex main effects on a variety of student outcomes? (2) What are the relative influences of family status, family processes, school processes, and individual ability on academic and nonacademic behavior of males and…

The relationship between the encoder and the decoder in the communication of nonverbal behavior provides the basis for the two studies described in this report. The first study investigated the ability of parents to decode the nonverbal behavior of their own and other children. Parents were asked to identify children's mode of encoding (natural or…

Thirteen doctoral dissertations and five masters theses are summarized in this report of research on the disadvantaged child. Contained in each individual summary are the detailed descriptions of the experimental task, the results obtained and the analysis of these results. The eighteen individual theses are concerned with topics such as:…

It has been suggested that egotistical attributions for success and failure are mediated by the affective reactions resulting from achievement outcomes. To establish the motivational impact of failure-related affect on subsequent ego-defensive attributions, an excitation transfer paradigm was used to manipulate the negative feelings elicited by…

The ability to empathize with clients or students is a prime factor in the counselor's or teacher's success. Affective sensitivity, or acuteness in detecting and describing the emotions of others, is a critical component of empathy. It has generally been assumed that the masculine orientation toward instrumental or cognitive focus on problem…

An investigation of worry and emotionality as different components of test anxiety is presented through a longitudinal study of subjects in grades 6 and 9. The study aimed at describing and explaining the development of school-related anxiety, dissatisfaction and the perceived learning environment. By confirmatory factor analysis with boys and…

Judgments that favorably set an individual apart from others tend to be made more rapidly, suggesting that the self-concept is both an effective and a cognitive entity. Subjects rated the self-applicability of traits on a 100-point scale. As in other studies using dichotomous judgements, judgement speed increased with increasing self-applicability…

Reported are the experiences of participants in three different teacher training programs in the Teacher Education Laboratory at the University of California at Los Angeles. One program was behavioristic, another humanistic, and the third eclectic. Findings indicate that beginning teacher trainees perceive the teacher role in terms of three…

A group of 3,000 7th through 12th graders were surveyed to investigate their perceptions of how much teachers cared about them and the degree to which they felt teachers urged them to achieve. Of the adolescents surveyed, 39% felt that teachers never or rarely seem to care about them. This is a crucial dimension, since teacher warmth has been…