To assess the role of sibling teaching, 56 preschool-age children, their mothers, and their infant siblings were observed as the preschoolers attempted to teach their younger siblings the operation of a toy camera. (BJD)

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…

Interviewed 3-, 5-, and 7-year olds about events in which a character commits potentially harmful or unfair acts based on moral beliefs or informational beliefs not shared by participants, or based on informational beliefs shared by participants. Found that children accounted for informational beliefs in their judgments, but that children…

Examines the issue of developmental consistencies between and within levels of moral reasoning, altruism, and perspective coordination. The relative contributions of perspective coordination and moral reasoning to altruistic behavior were examined in fifth grade. (Author/RH)

The subjects were 25 preschool children ranging in age from 3.2 to 5.3 years. Five perceptual role taking tasks were adapted from Flavell and his colleagues. The Beller rating scales were used to rate dependency. (MS)

Compares gifted preschool boys and girls with both a CA (Chronological Age)-matched group and an MA (Mental Age)-matched group on their performance on a spatial projective task, a cognitive perspective-taking task, and an affective perspective-taking task. The data seem to support the hypothesis that psychometric brightness implies cognitive…

The effects of training on first, third, and fifth graders' spatial perspective taking with multiobject two-dimensional arrays were assessed in two studies. Found that, on an immediate test of retention, performance was significantly better for those subjects trained with feedback present than for nontrained students. (MDM)

Examines a general developmental hypothesis concerned with children's understanding of perceptual experience, memory, intentions, and emotions. It is hypothesized that young children view the mind as passive in relation to the external world and regard external events as determining subjective experience, whereas older children know many ways that…

Assesses children's ability to coordinate information in the context of perspective taking and moral judgment tasks and tests the assumption that both perspective taking and moral judgment involve a common decentering process. Subjects were first and third graders. (MP)

Studied age differences in children's understanding of (1) changes in emotional reactions to situations; and (2) the possibility that emotion might be controlled by situational or cognitive strategies. Children aged 4 to 15 years were more likely to suggest situational strategies than cognitive strategies for controlling emotion. (Author/GH)

Two studies explored preschool, second-, and fifth-grade children's moral and dispositional judgments as influenced by an actor's efforts. Findings indicated that older children's judgments and predictions reflected coordination of the actor's effort with information about the actor's anticipated goal. Preschool children focused more on the…

Used a data analytic strategy that was novel to the M-space literature to examine the mental capacity prerequisites of social-cognitive development of 99 students in grades one, three, and five. Used a structural equations analysis to determine whether M-power was a significant predictor of role-taking development. (RH)

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)