One hundred forty-seven elementary school students participated in this study to examine whether hypotheses based on Veroff's stage-developmental interpretation of achievement motivation are supported. (MP)

Counters Lane and Pearson's assertion ("Merrill-Palmer Quarterly," v28, n3, p317-37, 1982) that younger children are less selective than older children because they are less able to inhibit responses to irrelevant stimuli. Suggests that increased efficiency in stimulus selection is associated with increased stimulus differentiation and…

Middle class children and adults (n=632) from eight age levels (mean ages 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 17, 19 and 33 years) were tested with the Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity (the PONS test) to measure accuracy in decoding nonverbal cues. The prediction that nonverbal skills would increasingly differentiate over ages was confirmed. (RH)

Two experiments examined 6- to 11-year-olds' cognition about self- presentational behavior. Findings indicated that youngest children had difficulty in identifying self-presentational motives by story characters. Even with children who had mental-state reasoning skills required for understanding others' beliefs about the self, there remained…

Three studies examined 4- to- 7-year-olds' reasoning about consequences of physiological responses with origins in the mind. Results revealed that adults believed only psychological treatments are effective cures for psychogenic reactions. Young children reported that only physical treatments are effective cures for psychogenic reactions,…

Four studies involving 160 children of 4-11 years and 14 adults focused on the development of beliefs about selective attention. Children's beliefs about attention appeared to change greatly during the age range studied. Predictions of successful comprehension of unattended stories declined sharply between ages 4 and 6. (RJC)

Discusses five- and six-year-old children's conceptions of life and death. Children were questioned about animals, plants, and inanimate objects. The most errors occurred when children judged inanimate objects; the fewest when they judged animals. The order of questions about either life or death significantly influenced children's responses. (NH)

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)

Investigated relationship between young children's ability to predict another observer's interpretation of an ambiguous picture and to identify the source of a misinterpretation after it had occurred. Found that six-year-olds were more likely than four- and five-year-olds to predict that a puppet would misinterpret the target-restricted view and…

An investigation of the phenomenon of "word-realism" through an analysis of first-, third- and fifth-grade children's modes of reconstructing a story. The hypothesis is that a child would become more ego involved in a story which used his name rather than other familiar or unfamiliar names was supported. (ED)

Supports the hypothesis that temperamentally fussier 5- to 9-month-old infants are more fearful and less friendly toward strangers than are more easygoing infants of the same age. (MP)

Argues that although Feitelson, Tehori, and Levinberg-Green raise important questions about early education in general and early reading instruction in particular, one major question remains to be answered: What sort of programs should group settings for young children provide? (MP)

Argues that although Lane and Pearson ("Merrill-Palmer Quarterly," v28, n3, p317-37, 1982) provide an important review, critique, and attempt at integration across paradigms used to study the development of attention, a number of genuine problems still remain to be addressed in this area. (MP)

A total of 42 middle-income kindergarten and sixth-grade children were exposed to a person modeling generosity, selfishness, or neither characteristic. As expected, younger children patterned their behaviors more on the model's example than did older children. (MP)