Examines the issue of whether children's perceptions of maternal socialization behaviors are characterized by a preference for permissive mothers or for mothers who intervene to stop misbehavior. It is suggested that the majority of children studied (ages 4 to 8.5 years) preferred the interventionist mother. (MP)

Three studies investigated the understanding of maternal anger of 406 children aged 4 to 14 years. Children identified and explained the source of a story mother's anger. Age differences were found when stories involved more than one dimension or required displacement. (SKC)

Examined interactional and attentional relationships in 65 mother-infant dyads (infants at ages 6 and 8 months), focusing on attention following (AF), attention switching (AS), and joint attention. Found that AF and AS were unrelated at 6 months but inversely related at 8 months. AF and AS were unrelated to joint attention. (MDM)

Explored patterns of emotional communication in 70 mother-infant dyads, emphasizing both mother and child roles in affect regulation. Display of maternal positive and negative affects decreased with age; child affects were unchanged. Maternal sensitivity was associated with maternal matching of son's affects and daughter's creation of shared…

Examined age differences in self-esteem concepts. Found that with increasing age, children's concepts increasingly resembled those of some theorists. Subjects believed that liking oneself influences internal reactions to events. From nine years, children used self-esteem to explain others' thoughts and feelings, and expected self-esteem to resist…

Compared conversational styles mothers used with preadolescent and middle adolescent daughters with styles used with friends. Found that with friends, mothers used a high involvement style with high rates of overlaps and simultaneous speech, whereas with daughters, they used a high considerateness style with low rates of overlaps and simultaneous…

Mothers of 6 cohorts of infants at ages 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 months were interviewed to determine their children's responses to potentially stressful daily events. Found older infants and temperamentally more difficult infants experienced more events and reacted with distress to a greater proportion of the events than did younger infants and…

Reports results of questionnaires and interviews conducted with 123 parents (mostly mothers) of preschool, first-grade, and sixth-grade children. Finds that parental limitations on children's altruism are based on cogent rationales and are a direct function of the situational cost involved and the age and familiarity of the recipient. (CB)

Discusses a study of conversational dyadic interaction between children aged 1.5 to 3 years; their 4-, 5-, 7-, or 8-year-old siblings; and their mothers. Mothers were more supportive conversational partners and adapted their level of speech more than siblings. (GH)

Longitudinally examines interrelations between mother-child interactions and children's developing speech progress at six, 13, and 24 months of age. Children with large differentiated vocabularies showed superior in developmental progress relative to peers. Vocabulary progress was most closely linked to frequent responsive mother-child language…

Piaget's hypothesis that children's interactions with peers during middle childhood are essential to their moral reasoning development was tested with 48 female preadolescents who were paired with a female agemate or their mother. Subjects paired with peers showed more sophisticated moral reasoning and used more active transacts in their…

Examined effects of the age of adult female strangers on the affective behavior of 60 Japanese toddlers. The first study investigated the importance of the age discrepancy between mothers and female strangers aged 23 and over 65. The second study compared toddlers' reactions to mothers, men and women strangers the mother's age, and men and women…

A longitudinal study examined the developmental progression of mother/child conflict and conflict resolution strategies spanning the toddler to preschool years. Emphasizing verbal negotiations, the study showed that mother/child conflicts peak at 30 months, and, although toddlers tend to rely on refusing, preschoolers rely increasingly on…

Studied the extent to which teenagers' expectations about gender role in career and family contexts are altered when traditional parental sex roles were partially reversed. Used follow-up data on the consequences of fathers of intact, white, middle-class families taking responsibility for their preschoolers' care. (BB)

A total of 86 girls of 2 to 6 years completed Level 1 spatial and affective perspective-taking tasks. Results showed increasingly accurate performance with age. Task intercorrelations and factor analyses provided support for the coherence of the Level 1 perspective-taking construct. (Author/BB)