Examined the relationship between perspective taking in response to another's distress and prosocial behavior and dispositional affective empathy in late childhood. The tendency to reflect spontaneously on the inner experience of others who are unfortunate was positively related to prosocial behavior in boys and to affective empathy in both sexes.…

An investigation of the applicability of behavior modification techniques to the operant crying behaviors (OCBs) in a regular kindergarten classroom was conducted. With baseline, reinforcement, and extinction conditions, the OCBs of two 5-year-old subjects were significantly decreased between baseline and reinforcement conditions. (Author/CS)

Jerzy Kosinski's "The Painted Bird" is used as a case study to illustrate the universal and necessary unity which binds loneliness, hostility, anxiety, and despair over the possibility of communicating within individual isolated human consciousness. (HOD/Author)

Attempted to determine the differential effects of positive, neutral and negative affect in nonverbal teacher behavior on the cognitive and noncognitive task performance of students stratified by grade (second and sixth), race (black or white) and sex, randomly assigned to the three levels of the experimental factor. (Author/ED)

Study measured teachers' and children's facial, verbal and physical affectionate behaviors in seven day care centers during a variety of daily routines. Affectionate behavior occurred much less frequently than other social interaction. Implications for day care programming and research are discussed. (Author/RWB)

Effects of preaching, recipient deservingness, personality attractiveness, and sex of subjects on pledging and donating behaviors were investigated with fifth and sixth graders. Findings are discusssed in terms of (1) saliency of stimulus object and children's stereotyping of the elderly; (2) children's conception of relationship between…

A total of 416 elementary school children described in writing what their grandparents meant to them. Girls were more likely than boys to mention love. Younger children reported obtaining more affective provisions (e.g., attachment and nurturance) from grandparents while older children reported more cognitive provisions (e.g., guidance and pride…

Examined 28 preschoolers' affective and behavioral responses to 3 potentially problematic peer situations. Results supported a model of social competence which maintains that expressed emotions and understanding of emotions influence social cognition about affective and behavioral aspects of developmentally important peer situations. Social…

Investigates kindergarten children's ability to comprehend and appreciate cognitively-oriented humor. Conceptual development was measured by assessing children's responses to a liquid conservation task modeled after Piaget. Results fail to support previous theories and indicate that a majority of the children fully comprehended and were able to…

A content analysis was performed on 57 selected children's books to identify the kinds of information presented about death. Among the factors analyzed were the place of death, who died, cause of death, feelings expressed by the dying person, the nature of the funeral, and questions asked by the child characters. (A selected bibliography of…

Affective responses of two year olds to their day care teachers' affectionate and caregiving behaviors were observed during free play times. Teacher behaviors were affectionate and caregiving physical contact, affectionate words, smiling, and use of questions and instructions. Smiling was the behavior most likely to elicit positive responses from…

Examined the play activities of 49 at-risk (AR) and non-at-risk (NAR) elementary school students, using the Smilansky Scale for Evaluation of Dramatic and Sociodramatic Play measure. Found that AR students displayed higher levels of hostile acting out behaviors than did NAR students, whereas the NAR group engaged in more verbal communication…

Examined emotion regulation decisions and outcome expectations following emotionally expressive behavior in fifth, eighth, and eleventh graders as a function of goals, age, and gender. Found that participants distinguished between vignettes characterized by prosocial versus self-protective goals. Goal type influenced emotional regulation decisions…

Explores children's perceptions of four aspects of marriage: expression of affection, companionship, tension, and marital power. (HOD)

Toddlers in foster care, exposed prenatally to cocaine, were assessed for development, temperament, play behaviors, and adaptive and maladaptive behaviors. Compared to nonexposed toddlers, these toddlers possessed more risk factors at birth and experienced more illnesses after birth; scored lower on conceptual development and higher on expression…