Examined gender, friendship, and contrast in choices for potential social partners among 122 children, ages 4 to 8 years. Found that gender and friendship are equal factors for the younger participants, and that friendship status moderates the influence of gender on social reasoning as children age. (LBT)

Discusses studies investigating children's processing of pictorial information focusing on the "conceptual peg" and response availability hypothesis, the covert verbalization hypothesis, production deficiency hypotheses, the "failure to read" hypothesis and explanations derived from frequency theories. (SB)

Explores the relationship between fifth- through eighth-grade children's performance on tasks of social cognition and their social competence assessed 4 years later. Significant relations were obtained between (1) earlier peer descriptions and causal attribution scores and (2) later parent ratings of children's social skill problems. (MP)

Investigates adolescents' perceptions of impressions held about them by important others, focusing on cross-sectional differences from early to late adolescence in the structure of social self-conceptions, on differences between parental and peer social self-conceptions and between individual and social self-conceptions, and on adolescents'…

This study investigated 4- to 9-year-olds' understanding of social rules and authority by asking them about stories in which the status (adult or child) of rule inventors, transgressors, and changers varied. Findings indicated that children considered children's transgressions and alteration less permissible than adults', and adult-invented…

Studied intimacy in best friendships of 217 children of 8-14 years. Results showed that: (1) intimacy between best friends was relatively low at age 8, but increased in late childhood; (2) some components of intimacy developed before others; and (3) females and androgynous males formed a homogeneous high intimacy group. (RJC)

Seventy kindergartners and 26 of their older siblings between ages 6 and 12 participated in this study of kindergartner's relationships with siblings, peers, and friends. Popular kindergartners tended to have positive feelings about and identify with a sibling, whereas kindergartners who highly rated a same-sex friendship tended not to have…

Traced emergence of elaborated framework of belief-desire reasoning. Preschoolers and adults were asked to explain why a story protagonist searched for a desired object in an incorrect location. Results suggest that, during late preschool years, conception of cognitive activities as contributing to knowledge and belief becomes integrated into…

Examined preschoolers' understanding that a statement's surface meaning may differ from actual meaning. Found that even 3-year-olds rejected a lie-teller's statement as reflecting his true beliefs and knowledge, indicating basic expression-representation differentiation. Found that most 4- and 5-year-olds and some 3-year-olds knew that a lie may…

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…

Reports on three studies which investigated the development of the concept of horizontality in subjects from nursey school through college age. Normative data collected allowed for evaluation of Piaget's stages and for differences due to age, sex, and apparatus shape and orientation. (ED)

The main problem of this study was to attempt to determine the source of adults' nonconservation error as well as to explain young children's apparent success. Subjects were 188 children from elementary school, high school, and college. (Author/MP)

Compared children's performance on 2 tasks (a liquid and a non-liquid horizonatality assessment task) designed to measure knowledge of the horizontal axis by means of 2 different physical principles. Subjects were 20 children from each of grades 1, 3, and 5 who worked with 20 college students. (MP)

Summarizes data on developmental patterns in constructive play--play in which children use play materials to make something. Reviews knowledge about developmental correlates and effects of constructive play behavior and examines methodological and theoretical issues. (NH)