Investigated relations among maternal cognitive coping style (approach-avoidance), affective state, and sensitivity among 56 mothers and their young children with Down syndrome over a 2-year period. Found that mothers with a strong tendency to monitor stressors reported greater affective distress than did mothers who adopted a less vigilant coping…

Children between three and five years of age engaged in a procedure in which a puppet competitor chose an object which the children preferred. Fewer than 30 percent of three year olds but more than 80 percent of five year olds knew how to conceal their preference from the competitor. (BC)

In three experiments, adults and 30-month-old children (1) selected a novel object as the referent for a novel term; (2) extended the new word to another exemplar; and (3) allowed the new word to preempt another novel label from applying to the just-named object. (BC)

Dimensions of two-year-old children's temperament were rated, and elements of children's language development were measured when children were two, three, and seven years old. Extraversion at age two contributed to individual differences in children's receptive language skills at ages three and seven and expressive language skills at age three.…

Explored the stability of temperament of 450 Australian children. One of the child's parents completed a measure of the child's temperament at 5 instances between 18 months and 8 years. Approach, irritability, cooperation-manageability, inflexibility, rhythmicity, and persistence factors showed substantial continuity from infancy to eight years.…

Two studies examined efficacy of context reinstatement in enhancing 5- to 7-year olds' recall. Results showed that children exposed to a context reminder 24 hours before the six-month interview and children interviewed in the event context did not differ but reported significantly more information than children in standard interview. (Author/KB)

Examined sources of parents' and 2- to 6-year olds' discordant recall of events evoking various children's emotions. Found that children agreed with parents' emotion attributions most often for events parents recalled as evoking happiness and sadness, less for fear, and least for anger. Discord related to differences in attribution of children's…

Investigated how 50 preschoolers evaluated the appropriateness of excluding boys and girls from two types of activities and two types of future roles across different exclusion contexts. Found that straightforward gender-based exclusion was judged wrong. Decisions were justified on the basis of moral reasons. However, children used both moral and…

Three experiments examined whether preschoolers viewed outcomes of familiar causes of illness as definite or probabilistic. Findings indicated that children judged that a common cause would affect all group members the same, and believed they could definitely predict illness outcomes in a single case, contrasting with adults' variable and…

Using reports by mothers about their 1- to 10-year-old children's behavior and, years later, by these same children, now parents themselves, of their 2-year-old children's behavior, assessed six behavior variables that reflected two higher-order behavioral patterns. Found stability across generations in the "inhibited" but not the…

Investigated toddlers' acquisition and use of nonsense verbs in passive and active voice. Children used various strategies to answer questions designed to elicit voice changes but did not usually change verb construction. When passive and active constructions were primed, older children were able to use an active-introduced verb in passive…

Sex differences in play are apparent in a number of mammalian species, including humans. Prenatal testosterone may contribute to these differences. The authors report the first attempt to correlate gender-typed play in a normative sample of humans with measurements of amniotic testosterone (aT). Testosterone was measured in the amniotic fluid of…

Unobtrusive observations were made of 50 mother-child, 50 father-child, and 50 mother-father-child groups in an urban park playground in South Africa. The children ranged in age from one to five years. Each unit was observed for one four-minute sample. Results show similarity between father-child dyads and mother-father-child triads. (Author/BN)

Used a set of six measures to analyze both the products and process of spatial grouping in 40 children between the ages of 18 and 42 months. Results confirmed and elaborated on previously established developmental findings for each measure. (SKC)

Investigated preschoolers' understanding of two distance principles: the direct-indirect and the same-plus principle. Children did better on tasks relevant to the principles than on principle-irrelevant tasks. Concluded that even young children conceive of distance as fixed intervals. (SKC)