It has traditionally been assumed that children's ability to label individuals as older precedes their tendency to associate particular behavioral competencies with individuals who vary in age. To systematically test this assumption, 64 preschool children were presented with 9 pairs of stimulus faces reflecting different ages. The children were…

Developmental differences in categorization in a communication situation were investigated among 16 adult women and 16 nine-year-old children who instructed 7-year-old children in either the organization of groceries in a mock kitchen (home task) or the sorting of photographs of common objects into compartments (school task). In both tasks, the 18…

Children's ability to understand the implied messages in indirect speech was investigated using a role play elicitation task. Subjects were asked to complete story endings using puppets for several scenerios involving a mother and her four children. In each of the stories the mother gives an indirect directive which is supposed to get the children…

Cohort changes in attitudes about the availability of legal abortions are traced over a 12-year period using data from seven national surveys. Contrary to the aging-conservatism hypothesis, trends in the direction of increasingly favorable attitudes between 1965 and 1973 and general stability thereafter characterize all cohorts. On this issue,…

A survey of 128 hospital patients produced the following findings about hospital-home television viewing differences. Viewing motivations differed between home and hospital contexts. Patients indicated that television was used in the hospital more often to pass the time, but less frequently for information, entertainment, and relaxation, than in…

Children three through six years of age were asked to imitate actions depicted in photographs to determine whether they could interpret information of action in photographs. Twenty children at each of four age levels, 3, 4, 5, and 6 years, were asked to imitate two photos, each showing a young child performing a physical action. Following this…

This study was designed to examine the processes underlying developmental changes in children's (1) use of combinatorial strategy, and (2) comprehension of conjunctive and disjunctive propositional relationships. A total of 108 children from third, sixth and eighth grades participated in this study. Each child was administered three tasks…

Children from 3 to 14 years of age were asked questions pertaining to their understanding of such television-related characteristics as technique (zooms and edits), fantasy and reality, production source, and acting. Using semi-clinical interviews, the study assessed the kinds of thought processes characteristic of children at varying age levels…

A brief summary of research findings which support the hypothesis of scriptal knowledge structures in children and which indicates that children use such structures in ways very similar to those of adults is provided in this paper. Research reveals that when children as young as three are asked to tell what they know about events, they tend to…

Three dimensions of the relationship between children and their communities that have been identified are (1) children's sense of community as it develops from infancy through middle childhood, (2) characteristics of a competent community, and (3) the interaction between children's developmental growth and community resources. Children's sense of…

This study investigates the hypothesis that during adolescence the developmental increase in the tendency to use elaboration as an associative study strategy is explained by increases in metamemorial knowledge. Independent assessments of the metamemorial knowledge and spontaneous strategic behavior of 32 fifth- and 32 twelfth-grade subjects were…

Three studies investigating the emergence and early refinement of intelligent self-correction are described. Forty-one children ranging in age from 18 to 30 months served as subjects. Parents taught their children a hide-and-seek game in which the parent hid a toy in natural locations in the home while the child watched. After a 3- or 5-minute…

The primary purpose of this study was to examine whether a general perceptual model developed by Vitz and Todd (1971), capable of dealing with multiple determinants of attending, is useful for understanding infant attending. The model, previously used in research with adults, assumes that perception can be represented as a stochastic sampling…

Second and fifth graders viewed one of two edited versions of a commercial action-adventure television program portraying an aggressive action associated with antisocial motives and punishing consequences. The versions differed only in the amount of time elapsing between the focal action and the motives for that action. Children's comprehension of…

In this study, developmental changes in duration of the icon (visual sensory store) were investigated with three converging tachistoscopic tasks. (1) Stimulus interuption detection (SID), a variation of the two-flash threshold method, was performed by 29 first- and 32 fifth-graders, and 32 undergraduates. Icon duration was estimated by stimulus…