Production and judgment tasks were used to investigate five- through eight-year-old children's metalinguistic awareness of pragmatic rules concerning direct and indirect requests for action and information. Results showed several effects for age of child and for type of request. (Author/RH)

Describes how one first-grade classroom dealt with the tragedy of the Challenger explosion. (MD)

To ascertain whether marital quality influences parental teaching strategies in different instructional contexts, mother-child and father-child interactions were observed during a book-reading and a direct instruction task. While few differences in teaching styles were detected between nondistressed husbands and wives, teaching styles of mothers…

Discusses ways in which teachers and parents respond to children's artwork. Presents six traditional approaches to responding to children's art and analyzes these approaches in terms of each one's impact on the child artist. Suggests alternate and more appropriate ways to respond to children about their art. (BB)

Comparison of 28 gifted and 20 normal young children suggested that the gifted child is not neccessarily gifted in all areas. In general, sex and handedness history operate similarly in the gifted and normal groups; males perform better than females and the right-handed children perform better than left-handed children. (Author/CL)

Presents different types of imaginary play for the elementary classroom. Covers areas such as play acting, puppets, music, and art as outlets for children's imagination. Outlines the teacher's role in facilitating imaginative play. (DR)

The KinderSkills program, in which parents serve as motor development teachers of their children, has operated for five years. A recent innovation was to add grandparents to the program to see if the motor skill levels of the grandparents also would improve. This program is described and evaluated. (MT)

Demonstrates young children's shift toward a taxonomic basis for organization of both named and depicted objects. Concludes that perceptual organization in young children cannot be attributed to an inability to ignore visual information but seems to be based upon the centrality of perceptual features to the representation of objects. (Author/NH)

Aerobic dance classes may be safe for older children, but are inappropriate for children in the fourth grade and under. Programs for these children should emphasize creativity. Resources for program development are given. (MT)

Quantitatively describes the gait development of a group of African children to determine how pattern changes would relate to growth and maturation. A total of 65 children from the Gusii tribe of southwestern Kenya, ranging in age from 13 to 69 months, were selected for study. (Author/RH)

Abilities of 2-, 5-, and 7-year-old children to interpret, judge acceptability of, and produce class extensions were assessed. It was concluded that increasing ability to deal appropriately with class extensions is primarily due to general advances in language acquisition rather than to any development unique to the class-extension word-formation…

Investigates whether children differentiate between the social-interactional, moral aspects of harm and the nonsocial, prudential aspects of harm. A total of 90 subjects 6, 8, and 10 years of age were administered an interview about two moral rules and one prudential rule. Three types of assessment were obtained: criterion judgments,…

Common problems in using and scoring the Developmental Sentence Scoring procedure to quantify young children's grammatic structure expressive language are reviewed. Scoring examples are provided to help clinicians learn the DDS procedure. (Author/CL)

Interviews with teachers, mothers, and fathers of 32 children in early childhood special education revealed high correlations for multiple data sources. Mothers tended to provide the highest ratings for the children, closely followed by fathers. Diagnosticians provided the lowest ratings, with teacher ratings falling between parents and the…

The Denver Developmental Screening Tests (DDST) was administered to 25 Southeast Asian children (one to five years old) and scores of 150 other DDSTs performed on Southeast Asian children were reviewed. Findings suggested that scores may reflect differences in social and cultural experiences between these children and the standardization sample.…