Focuses on definition of sensitivity, developmental changes in sensitivity, and clinical implications of attachment. Maintains that promptness, consistency, and appropriateness are the main components of sensitivity across parenting dimensions. Suggests that studying infant antecedents to attachment security is equally important to that of parent…

Used growth curve analysis to describe the development of 186 preschoolers with vision impairments. Found that mental retardation and developmental delay were associated with lower developmental ages and slower growth rates. Visual function of 20/800 or worse was associated with lower developmental ages and slower growth rates in personal-social…

Investigated the ability of young children to recognize themselves in delayed videotapes and recent photographs. Results suggested a significant developmental delay in young children's success on mark tests of self-recognition using delayed feedback as compared to live feedback, which may have important implications for characterizing the…

Examined early development of guilt in 106 children observed in laboratory paradigms in which they were led to believe they had damaged valuable objects during 2 sessions at 22, 33, and 45 months. Found support for a mediational model in which fearful temperament contributed to guilt proneness, which served to inhibit children's tendency to…

Focused on (1) the effect of mother-child interaction during a problem-solving task on subsequent, independent child performance; and (2) the variability in the division of task responsibilities and maternal regulation of the child as a function of task difficulty, child age, and task component. Participants were 60 three to five year olds and…

Results indicate that children who witness teachers' appraisal actions interpret some of them differently at different ages. Participants were 136 first through sixth graders who were assessed on measures of perceptions of target children and perceptions of teacher's opinions of target children. (RH)

Four experiments studied effects of difficulty of word identification on optional conceptual processing by second, third, and fifth graders, and college students in a cued recall task. Results indicated that contrastive processing facilitates recall, and that difficulty of word identification may limit the extent of optional contrastive…

A study of effects of age and schooling in grades five and six on raw scores from a variety of general ability tests found that schooling: (1) is the major factor underlying the increase of intelligence test scores as a function of age; and (2) has a larger effect on verbal than nonverbal tests. (RH)

Examined developmental changes in the use of distance-based and calendar-based approaches to estimate the recency of two events. Found that children's ability to discriminate temporal relationships between two events appears by four to five years of age. In contrast, use of calendar information and cognizance of annual patterns was found only in…

Posits that an evolutionary perspective can unite the study of the typical development for and individual variation within a species and that environments within the normal range for a species are required for species-normal development. Individual differences in children reared in normal environments arise primarily from genetic variation and…

Examined consistency in prosocial dispositions, using longitudinal data from preschool through early adulthood. Found that spontaneous prosocial behavior observed in preschools predicted actual prosocial behavior, other- and self-reported prosocial behavior, self-reported sympathy, and perspective taking in childhood to early adulthood. Prosocial…

Although the identity formation model is widely used to assess adolescent ethnic identity development, the model propositions have rarely been tested. The existence of the identity statuses (diffuse, foreclosed, moratorium, achieved), the proposed developmental trajectories, and whether youth in the achieved status report higher levels of…

Examines the development of, and interrelations among, three types of autonomy during the transition from childhood into adolescence: emotional autonomy in relationships with parents, resistance to peer pressure, and the subjective sense of self-reliance. (HOD)

Examined the self-understanding and moral judgment of 15 African American and Hispanic American adolescents nominated by community leaders for their exemplary caring behavior. These "care exemplars" were more likely than comparison adolescents to describe themselves in terms of moral personality traits and goals and to view themselves as…

Examined children's ability to describe, understand the causes of, and realize the value of three types of pain. Preschoolers, elementary school students, and college students were interviewed using open-ended questions. Although older children had more complex and precise understandings of pain, this pattern differed according to the type of pain…