The age decrement model has traditionally been a fairly popular model of the human life span. This model has the basic premise that with increasing age there is a corresponding decrease in a wide range of abilities. Not all research has agreed with the unqualified age decrement model. This study examined the relationship between an…

Three studies examined the abstractness of children's mental representation of counting, and their understanding of the cardinality principle, namely, that the last number word used in a count tells how many items there are. In the first experiment, 24 toddlers of 2-3 years counted objects, actions, and sounds. Findings revealed that children…

Examined were preschoolers' spontaneous use of correspondence strategies. A total of 40 children 4 and 5 years of age were asked to divide a pile of cookies into two equal groups. The cookies were two sizes, halves and wholes, so even though there were trials with an odd number of cookies, it was possible to divide the cookies evenly. When…

Traditional ideas suggest that emotional weeping is healthy, but empirical support for this position is lacking. This study examined the relationship between crying frequency and reported physical disorders, and changes in crying frequency with age. Subjects were 225 men and 285 women ranging in age from 18-81. Subjects participated in telephone…

Recent work suggests that the apparent shift from thematic to taxonomic concept organization reflects changes in children's preference for these forms of organization, rather than their capacity. A study was made to assess toddlers' knowledge of the different possible relations for the same concept and to extend the triad method to children under…

In order to examine the development of social pretend skills in the toddler period, social pretend play was observed in same and mixed age dyads. More complex social pretend play was expected in the mixed age than in the same age condition. A second purpose of the study was to compare 5-year-old children's attempts to communicate pretend meanings…

An investigation was made of children's factual knowledge of health-related concepts and the cognitive implications of their answers to questionnaire items such as "What makes a person sick?", "What is medicine?", and "Do you know what a germ is?" Participants were 80 healthy children between approximately 3 and 15 years of age. An additional 61…

Since Kohlberg (1958) first extended the cognitive developmental theory of moral judgment to include moral reasoning in adults, it has been found that women tended to score at a lower developmental stage than did men. Gilligan (1982) has conceptualized women's moral reasoning as being different in kind from men's moral reasoning, with women's…

Data on attention span, engaged rates, grade levels, and achievement, obtained from the Follow Through Longitudinal Study, were analyzed to examine relationships among the factors which tend to identify exemplary practices schools can adopt to increase the impact of the available time on student achievement. The sample included low income students…

Two types of elderly alcohol abusers are described. Early onset or long-term alcohol abusers are abusers with long-standing behavioral problems considered well known to the social service delivery system. Late-life onset elderly alcohol abusers are those whose drinking problems began in the later years, after age 50, often in response to stresses…

The relationships between reaction time (RT), movement time (MT), visual hemi-space preferences in RT and MT, and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) were investigated in order to evaluate reaction time as a measurement practice with very young children. The sample was composed of 49 white, middle-class children ranging in age from 24 to 77…

This study was undertaken to determine whether normal children's descriptions, explanations, and ideas about the treatment and prognosis of learning disabilities change with age. Participating were 120 middle-class children of average intelligence, equally representing both sexes, and each age from 7 through 12 years. Subjects, individually…

To examine whether developmental changes occurred and whether motivation to maintain good health was related to sex and socioeconomic status, a longitudinal study of third and seventh graders was conducted at five semiannual intervals. Data were obtained from subjects' responses to the Mouth-Appearance Pictures, a group-administered forced-choice…

A 2-part investigation was conducted to examine the ways children resolve the inherent ambiguity of spatial descriptions in terms of cues indicated by the three constituents of spatial propositions: predicate, referent, and relatum. In the first study, it was hypothesized that certain objects, structural markers, and definite articles accompanying…

Most sociometric research is based on same-age, mixed-gender classroom groups. By contrast, this study examined eight ad hoc play groups of mixed ages (6 and 7 years) and same gender at three levels of social organization: individual status, mutual dyads, and mutual triads. A total of 96 children in groups of 12 nominated three most- and…