Capacity to react to the cost of a request in relation to interlocutor's behavior is acquired early; ability to maintain good interactions by increasing the politeness of a request occurs later. Only from 9 years on do children use linguistic politeness as a criterion in judging a request's appropriateness according to addressee's status. (RH)

Despite assertions to the contrary, preschool children are capable of understanding cinematic events conveyed through camera techniques and film editing. This ability nevertheless substantially increases with age among children from four- to seven-years-old. (Author/RH)

Findings of the study involving 15 families with handicapped children (three to six years old) and 15 without indicate significantly greater stress in families with handicapped children. Four factors are identified as significantly related to stress: (1) child characteristics, (2) physical incapacity, (3) parental pessimism regarding the child,…

A retrospective examination of 56 young children with severe handicaps in community residential facilities revealed that risk status, facility, and reason were significantly related to early community placement, and children with greater caretaking/medical involvement did not appear to be placed in the community earlier than other severely…

Spontaneously generated oral stories were analyzed from 93 learning-disabled (LD) and normally achieving (NA) students (8-13 years old). Results showed significant group and age differences. The stories told by the LD Ss contained fewer propositions and complete episodes and contained significantly fewer minor setting statements than those of…

An investigation of reading attitudes and self-reported reading behaviors of 276 gifted students (grades 1-12) showed that females had more positive attitudes toward reading and reported reading as a hobby more frequently than males. Primary students had more positive reading attitudes than senior high Ss and reported reading the most books per…

Age differences in the occurrence of specific negative life events and in sources of information about, barriers to, and usage of student services among undergraduates at a large public university, were found. (Author)

Investigates how socioeconomic status, sex, and age of admission to a child psychiatry ward influenced the clinical picture of aggressive conduct disorder among 58 affected children. As little evidence of variation in any of the three variables was found, results reinforced the idea that the disorder is a valid psychiatric syndrome. (RH)

Principal findings were that pictures of objects with more frequently occurring names were named more rapidly than those with less frequently occurring names; that language-impaired children named pictures less rapidly than chronological-age peers but more rapidly than language-age peers; and effects of frequency of occurrence were comparable for…

Investigates the effects of schematic and categorical organization on young children's recall of a taxonomic list or a story in an alternate or a successive condition. Preschool children's story recall was well organized, but their list recall was poorly organized. Kindergarten children's recall of both the story and the list was well organized.…

Investigates the hypothesis that older adults remember prose less well than young adults because they are less sensitive to the structure of prose passages. Results of studies using stories, essays, and essay summaries suggest that the old are as sensitive to passage structure as the young but recall less information. (Author/CB)

Examines age-related predictive relationships among an array of psychometric intellectual ability markers and text recall performance. Women from three age groups (ranging from 21 to 78 years) read and recalled four narratives at three delay intervals and completed a battery of intellectual ability tests. (Author/CB)

Investigates the evolution of specific lexical and syntactical clues and the recurrence of various semantic fields in mothers' spontaneous speech to their infants. Content of mothers' speech was related to age in newborn to 10-month-old children. (Author/RH)

Examined the effects of maternal age on the well-being of children using hospital records and home interviews with 282 low-income, Black and Hispanic mothers of children 2 to 4 years old. There was little variation in these outcomes by age of mother and few significant differences. (JAC)

Variables affecting placement requests by 251 families for their developmentally disabled members were examined. Results reaffirmed the importance of degree of disability, behavior problems, and external stressors for the decision-making process but also demonstrated that previous assumptions concerning their relative importance should be…