Conversations between mothers and children from three different cultural groups were analyzed to determine culturally preferred narrative elicitation patterns. The three groups included Japanese-speaking mother-child pairs living in Japan, Japanese-speaking, mother-child pairs living in the United States, and English-speaking Canadian mother-child…

The Joe Camel campaign by RJR Nabisco began in 1990 in an attempt to increase the brand's sagging market share. Studies showed the campaign's appeal to young children and teenagers. In the debate that followed, several children's advocates renewed their appeals for restriction on cigarette ads. A review of the literature shows that children are at…

A Chapter 1 pre-kindergarten intervention summer school program of the Mesa Unified School District in Arizona was selected by the United States Department of Education as being unusually successful in meeting the special educational needs of disadvantaged children. Students determined to be at-risk are enrolled in the program, which takes place…

Young children's nonverbal affective expression and communication reveals an emotional complexity and sensitivity which exceeds their verbal abilities. To investigate the development of nonverbal emotional communication in young children, two studies were undertaken. In the first study, equal numbers of 5- and 11-year-old children from two schools…

Mothers' coping mechanisms and adaptations to having a handicapped child were analyzed through extensive structured interviews with mothers of eight preschool-aged Down syndrome children and a language impaired child. Three illustrative case studies are presented, and general conclusions are drawn. Mothers of Down syndrome children go through the…

This study assessed the extent to which the emergence and maintenance of peer group-status and behavior reflect the operation of group processes and individual processes. Of specific concern was whether support could be found for empirical relations derived from the self-perpetuation hypothesis. The study, which concerned the constructs of…

This paper emphasizes the importance of music as an integral part of the education of the young child, and draws attention to a few ways in which parents and teachers can contribute to children's musical development. Sections of the paper focus on seven questions: (1) Is music really universal? (2) When should musical training begin? (3) When…

This study attempted to systematically explore the range of variation in social response in 17 subjects (ages 5 to 15) with infantile autism. To collect observational data on social initiations, social responses, social monitoring with eye contact, and responses to specific types of social events, subjects were observed during free play in their…

A study investigated the finding that metacognitive ability and reading level are related, and examined the effects of both presentation and response modes on young children's ability to detect ambiguity in messages. An ambiguity detection test was completed by 74 first grade children (who also completed a reading pretest), 26 second graders, and…

The study sought to identify effective procedures for facilitating initial imitative vocal behavior in mentally retarded children, thus accelerating the initial stages of language acquisition. Three groups of Down syndrome children ages 6 months to 4 years (N=15) served as subjects in an examination of the relative effectiveness of three…

A descriptive case study reports and examines a five-year-old Finnish child's attainment of English language and communication skills during his first eight months in the United States, within a pragmatic theoretical framework, focusing on the various functions of utterances. The child's language usage is divided into social and egocentric speech…

A study compared mothers' and fathers' speech patterns when speaking to preschool children, particularly utterance length, sentence types, and word frequencies. All of the children attended a nursery school with a student population of 136 in a large urban area in the Southwest. Volunteer subjects, 28 mothers and 28 fathers of 28 children who…

Intergenerational child care is a general label for the concept of interactions between young children in prekindergarten and child care programs and older adults who are retired or nearing retirement. Discussion of the concept and associated trends in care initially focuses on factors accounting for the recent interest in involving older adults…

This nationwide study examined the following factors in terms of predictive relationships between home environment and child adjustment within mother-employed households: (1) marital status; (2) number of hours worked per week; (3) full- versus part-time employment; (4) mother's occupational classification; (5) family income; (6) child rearing…

A study tested the hypothesis that the production of derivational (as contrasted with grammatical) morphemes is acquired through a systematic development of three distinct psychological processes: comprehension, segmentation, and production, regardless of whether the individual is a first- or second-language learner. The subjects were 32 children,…