In this study, preschoolers were observed in the naturalistic preschool context to determine the development of private speech over the preschool years and contextual influences on its occurrence among 3- to 5-year-olds. Thirty-nine preschoolers were observed in their preschool classroom 4 times in 10-minute segments during free choice play…

Problem behavior may be defined as behavior that is socially defined as a problem, a source of concern, or as undesirable by the norms of conventional society and the institutions of adult authority, and its occurrence usually elicits some kind of social control response. Key elements of problem behavior are: (1) problem behaviors are rare until…

This study examined the effects of misleading information on children's memory for a real-life event. In play sessions involving an experimenter, 36 6-year-olds and 36 9-year-olds individually participated by playing games with a research assistant. In the sessions, six critical items were present: two items identified the room; two identified the…

Although the majority of researchers are probably in agreement regarding the existence of childhood depression, there is less than consensus regarding its structure. In this study age-related differences in child and adolescent self-reports of depression were assessed using two different analytic strategies. Subjects were children (N=515) and…

The research study investigated the memory and metamemory abilities of four severely to profoundly deaf students with bilateral sensory-neural loss, between the ages of 9 and 20 years. Metamemory was investigated with four modified subtests identified as "story list,""study plan,""retrieval event," and "opposites-arbitrary." Encoding was…

The quality of representations of nine spatial arrays varying in transparency and occlusion was observed in order to test the generalization that younger children are concerned about the ambiguity of their representations and to observe the influence of a change in the medium used to create the representations. Children 5, 7, and 9 years old…

There is a vast body of literature devoted to an examination of life-span development. Several authors have described the characteristics of the life-span approach and have distinguished it from more traditional forms of psychology. Emphasis has been placed on the multidirectional and multidimensional nature of development and change, as well as…

A series of studies investigated the development of infants' understanding of the containment function of certain objects. In Experiment 1, infants' absolute preference for looking at either a can or a tube was tested. No preference was found. Two measures were used in Experiments 2 and 3. One assessed infants' looking response or gaze behavior…

Reported are two experiments investigating children's comprehension and production of the causal connectives "because" and "so" in empirical and intentional modes of explanation. In the empirical mode, "because" introduces a description of a cause, whereas "so" introduces a description of an effect. In the…

The purpose of this study was to provide a description of the kinds of prosocial behavior that 2- and 5-year-old children naturally exhibit. Caretakers were asked for their observations of children's prosocial behavior in natural settings. Specifically, 40 parents and teachers who had daily interactions with 2-year-olds were asked to name the most…

Subjects from three generations of Chinese-Canadian families completed questionnaires to assess their concept of family. A total of 12 males and 12 females from the three age groups participated. Age groups were composed of 9- through 13-year-olds, 30- through 50-year-olds, and 65-year-olds and older. Tasks included listing family members, drawing…

Few studies of person perception have examined the development of human nature concepts, i.e., the understanding of what it means to be human. In an attempt to explore the development of what being human means within the framework of cognitive development theory, 55 boys and 60 girls in kindergarten, fourth, eighth, and twelfth grade were given a…

This study examines the expectations held by three generations of men and women toward women mixing careers with marriage and family. A questionnaire of 9 items was distributed to 46 women and 46 men from 19 years old to 72 years old who were undergraduate students or staff at the College of Saint Thomas (St. Paul, Minnesota) or the University of…

Young infants discriminate both native and nonnative phonetic contrasts, but 10- to 12-month-olds and adults fail to discriminate some nonnative contrasts. To explain this, Best, McRoberts, and Sithole (1988) hypothesized that at the age of 10-12 months, a phonological influence begins by means of which nonnative sounds are assimilated to native…

The Snijders-Oomen Nonverbal Intelligence Test (SON) was administered to 251 deaf children (6-15 years old) and 101 hearing children (10-12 years old) in Israel. The SON was judged appropriate for measuring cognitive functioning in the deaf because it requires no verbal instructions or responses and includes a measure of abstract thinking ability.…