Taking issue with the preceding article by Caruso and Detterman, the author contends that research can be one of many respected voices in the political process. According to him, recent research on the effects of early education has played a crucial role in policy decisions about Project Head Start. (Author/WD)

Describes project SWING (Starting With Individual Growth), a comprehensive preschool education program for children at risk of a wide range of learning or social difficulties. (Author/RH)

Four-year-olds succeeded in making comparisons between sets of objects when comparison questions called for comparing set with set or subset with subset. However, when comparison questions called for comparing set with subset, the children failed to complete such tasks successfully. (Author/DB)

A study of racial attitudes among Black and White kindergarten children found that White youngsters in segregated kindergartens tended to assign a much lower percentage of positive projections to Blacks than did their counterparts in Black segregated and desegregated kindergartens. (Author/MJL)

Results of a study of social cognitive ability and "requestive" performance of preschool children in dyadic interactions with peers revealed a significant effect of degree of familiarity on the frequency of verbal requests and a significant influence of the level of social cognition on the informational adequacy of the initial request.…

Discusses a book by James E. Levine on "Day Care and the Public Schools, Profiles of Five Communities." Criticizes Levine's approach as emphasizing quantity and low cost and giving little attention to quality. (GC)

The relationship of family constellation and sociocultural variables to intellectual performance was examined. A language/schooling factor consisting of language of child and parents, parents' schooling attainment, and country of parents' education was the best predictor of intellectual performance. (Author/GK)

Preschool children were shown eight pictorial representations of substance abuse. All children could identify some of the behaviors and relate some health benefits or hazards of the behavior. Parents and television were the primary sources of knowledge. Preschool children may be a suitable target population for substance abuse and other…

The New York State Experimental Prekindergarten Program, which operates in 52 school districts, is designed to reduce potential educational deficits of economically disadvantaged children. This article reports on the program's effects on cognitive functioning of children in their kindergarten years and discusses implications for educational…

Three measures--logical reasoning ability, lexical comprehension, and home teaching activities--provided the best overall model in accounting for differences in children's performances across the print awareness measures. (HOD)

An observational study among 50 preschool children was conducted to assess the validity of experimental findings that at elementary-school age levels boys display greater mastery motivation than do girls. Generally, findings revealed that older preschoolers did, but younger preschoolers did not, show evidence of the sex effects found in previous…

Discusses problems in both the "unfolding from within" and "enforcement from without" theories of children's cognitive development. Suggests that "mediation from above," which assumes that children are not independent beings, at least in the beginning, offers additional insight into children's interactions with adults. (WD)

Existing evidence on the Milwaukee Project, an early intervention effort with preschool disadvantaged children, suggests a decline of the experimental children to the level of the untreated controls in those measures, such as school reading, not under the control of the project. (DB)

The article defines and describes coping and stress, their relationship to learning, and how they are assessed for educational planning for preschool handicapped children. The Coping Inventory, an observation assessment instrument, is used to show how the teaching and learning of coping behavior can be part of each child's educational plan.…