Children are capable of handling the subject of death but the preschooler has more difficulty than others, and requires more time to resolve a loss. A teacher can help by responding in a supportive way. The teacher's difficulty is that a death almost always comes as a surprise which means that the teacher must work through the crisis for herself…

The paper discusses counseling approaches with parents of young deaf children with particular emphasis on issues of the deaf community and deaf identity. The cultural implications of deafness are examined, and the effects of their child's deafness on parents' security, status, and aspirations are noted. Examples from counseling groups in urban…

Issues of meaning have become central concerns of research on language development. There are at least four reasons for the neglect of meaning by earlier researchers. First, Chomsky's original theory assumed that syntax could be described and explained independently of meaning. Second, linguists had long assumed that semantics was too messy and…

This study examined ways in which contact with family members, in particular the teenage mother's own mother and partner, would be related to developmental outcomes in middle childhood in both black and white families. Also investigated were factors (mother's income, age, level of education, and home environment) that could affect these…

Tested were two elaborations of research design which were implemented to explain inconsistent findings concerning levels of father involvement in child rearing when the mother is employed. The first elaboration was to study separate dimensions of fathering participation, rather than treating it as a unitary factor. The second elaboration was to…

The Technical Assistance Program of the Society for Crippled Children of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, assists parents in finding child care in community day care programs and day care homes for their children with disabilities. The program provides staff training, on-site consultation and support, liaison with professionals that are involved with the…

This slide talk offers advice to adults to help children cope with nightmares. Children are encouraged (1) to assume power over the dream by drawing it; (2) separate the frightened part of the self from the problem-solving self; (3) let the picture describe the problem; (4) ask the picture to speak; (5) see how the dreamer's power matches the…

This paper examines the category-theoretic formulation of cognitive development introduced by Piaget in the late 1960's and elaborated during the 1970's. The new theory is interpreted as the focal point of Piaget's investigations into topics such as function, correspondences, and commutability. Hypotheses arising from Piaget's new model were…

In response to empirical evidence that suggests that children use more than one strategy in transitive inference tasks, an effort was made to model strategy development as it occurs under the dual constraints of a concept of order and task demands. In the model, when a task is presented, procedural memory is searched for a strategy that is…

Consistency in characteristics of maternal behavior with different siblings was investigated among 65 economically disadvantaged families, each having two children. Quality of infant/mother attachment was assessed when firstborn children were 12 and 18 months old, respectively, and when secondborn children were 12 months old. When children were 24…

A screening program at rural and urban Mississippi sites to determine developmental disabilities in young children (birth to 3 years) was carried out by community volunteers who had been trained to administer the Steps-Up screening instrument. Of 244 infants and young children who were screened within a 9 month interval, 76 children were…

The first part of this paper discusses presentations by other symposium participants which addressed different facets of the developmental paths involved in understanding one's own emotional states, the emotional states of others, why one feels what one does, and whether or not one shows these feelings expressively to others. It is the premise of…

The Piagetian finding that young children believe objects to be closer together when part of the distance between the objects is covered was explored among subjects of 3, 4, 5, and 6 years of age. In a standard Piagetian task, children were presented with two blocks of wood and asked whether they were "near together" or "far…

This study analyzed the acquisition of the interactional competence in an environment where children used two or three languages every day. Two aspects were examined: the acquisition of culturemes such as thanking and greeting, and the comprehension of indirect requests. The bilingual children observed were eight Swedish-Estonian children, six…

The paper examines a developmental approach to language acquisition in young disabled children. Issues of form, content, and function are explored, with function of communication seen as central for disabled children. The role of teachers and parents in requiring more sophisiticated language is considered. Questions of competence on either the…