Three studies examined observers' attributions and reactions to negative emotional displays, as well as expressers' expectations about others' reactions. Analysis revealed that people attribute others' negative emotions equally to situational factors and dispositions, whereas their own emotions are attributed to the situation more than to…

Developed by the Illinois Governor's Planning Council on Developmental Disabilities, this guide is intended to help parents and other laypersons communicate more knowledgeably and effectively with professionals who work with handicapped persons, as well as with handicapped individuals themselves. Section I offers suggestions for interpersonal…

Social cognition of adults, unlike children's social understanding, has rarely been addressed from a developmental viewpoint. To extend the developmental perspective to the study of adults' social cognitive skills in relation to other mental and social skills, 52 college students were compared in role taking performance and nonsocial cognitive…

The article describes "Teaching, Learning, and Caring" (TLC), a program designed for partially mainstreamed behavior disordered adolescents (ages 14-18). Eight TLC skill areas are the focus of interpersonal skills training: communication mode, empathy, goal identification, cue sensitivity, alternative thinking, skills implementation, consequential…

Two-year-old children's participation in family interaction was examined in two longitudinal observational studies of family conflict that focused on three developmental issues: children's understanding of the feelings and intentions of other family members, their understanding of social rules within the family, and the relation of emotional…

Investigated the relationship between psychological understanding and positive social behavior in preschool children. Found that both mental state understanding and emotion understanding were positively related to teacher ratings of social skills, behavioral observers' global ratings of social skills, and peer popularity. When language ability was…

Three theoretical perspectives on moral development and education are analyzed: individual (Kohlberg's theory of justice reasoning), interactional, and sociocultural. A continuum of six options for educational intervention is outlined, including the teacher as socialization agent, negotiation strategies, structured interventions, and an explicit…

A total of 50 children were observed at home at 33 months of age and then tested at 40 months on affective labeling, perspective taking, and false belief tasks. Individual differences at 40 months were associated with family discourse about feelings and causality at 33 months, verbal fluency of mother and child, and sibling cooperation. (BC)

To examine the relationship between children's social-cognitive status and the production of persuasive arguments and to determine the effects of age and the channel of communication on these arguments, 16 first grade, 17 third grade, and 16 fifth grade students were asked to produce both oral and written persuasive messages and were administered…

Efforts to enhance the effectiveness of cross-cultural interventions have emphasized the need for counselors to assess their own as well as their client's cultural value systems. To assess cultural world views, the Cultural Attitudes Repertory Technique (CART), which examines the content and structure of an individual's personal system of cultural…

Sixty-six Nigerian and 120 U.S. rural children and adolescents (ages 6-18) from three social classes were interviewed about their conceptions of economic inequality. The rich and poor were described referring to central (traits, thoughts) and sociocentric (class consciousness, life chances) characteristics. Age was a factor in change of type of…

This study of students (grades 1-12) concluded that the relationship between social-cognitive ability and the communication skill of comforting is contingent on age. (Comforting strategies are those messages having the intended function of alleviating, moderating, or salving the distressed emotional states of others.) (PD)

Nearly 100 Mexican American children and adolescents in grades 2-12 were interviewed in central Texas to determine their understanding of ethnicity and their attitudes toward their own ethnicity. Their responses were interpreted in relation to a developmental model with five stages or "perspectives" in reasoning about ethnicity. The…

Studied attributional biases in close relationships. Found that partner attributions prevail at the abstract level of adjectives, whereas self-attributions resided at the concrete level of action verbs. Findings underscore language's importance in attributional biases and reveal how people talk in less abstract terms about the self than about…

Discusses the concept of egocentrism and its relation to cognitive development. Describes the major stages of egocentrism: sensori-motor, preoperational, concrete operational, and adolescent egocentrism. Focuses on research support for the theory of adolescent egocentrism. Discusses educational implications. (RC)