Retrospective pretests ask respondents to report after an intervention on their aptitudes, knowledge, or beliefs before the intervention. A primary reason to administer a retrospective pretest is that in some situations, program participants may over the course of an intervention revise or recalibrate their prior understanding of program content,…

Argues that developmental psychology remains parochial in spite of increased cross-cultural developmental research. Reviews research and theories dealing with cognitive development in childhood and adolescence. Contributions outside Piagetian and Vygotskian traditions are outlined along with suggestions for further research on emotional…

Examines difficulties associated with the use of conversational features in the analysis of mother-infant vocalization episodes. Observations of six mother-infant dyads revealed difficulties involving (1) pooling of data; (2) the unit of analysis; and (3) selection of appropriate "expected" values for dyadic parameters used in tests of…

Employed a developmental context to discuss the problem of assessing both quantitative and qualitative deficits in the behavioral profiles of various diagnostic subcategories of developmentally disabled children. Methods of appropriate matching of control groups are suggested to help delineate specific and general deficits in subgroups of…

Analyzes multiple components of planning, including problem representation, goal selection, a decision to plan, strategy choice, strategy execution, and monitoring. Analyzes three tasks typically used to study planning: the Tower of Hanoi; errand scheduling; and story comprehension. Argues that the components required to perform a planning task…

Considers possible contributions of developmental psychology to analysis and solution of practical problems by proposing a practical action model comprising the following: nature of the phenomenon or problem; existence of the phenomenon or problem; outcome in case of no intervention; goals for intervention; achievement of goals; and assessing…

A life-course perspective is applied to the study of human development in an ecological context. Human lives are depicted in terms of aging, career and historical setting. The adequacy of global measures is assessed and explanatory assessments of the relation between environmental and personal change are recommended. (Author/RH)