Examined continuity, stability, and change in behaviors reflecting infant reactivity and regulation. Subjects were 100 infants of 5 and 10 months old. Found that infant behaviors during frustrating situations showed both change and continuity, but the relationship between reactivity and regulation changed in that both factors became more…

Examined multiple measures of 82 young children's emotionality, regulation, and social functioning over a 2-year period, finding that social functioning was predicted by low negative emotionality and high levels of regulation. Also found that vagal tone was positively related to competent social functioning and emotionality/regulation for boys,…

Videotapes of spontaneous facial and gestural reactions to affective slides were segmented by male and female college students using a group adaptation of Newtson's unitization technique. (Author/SS)

Presents a description and analysis of group glee (joyful screaming, laughing and intense physical acts occurring in simultaneous bursts or in a contagious fashion), studied by means of videotapes of 596 formal lessons in a preschool. Information collected concerned occurrence, location, frequency and duration, teachers' responses, incidence of…

Examines the naturally occurring social interactions of five- to eight-year-old children at a summer day camp. Children were observed in their routine camp activities, which took place in a variety of settings: some highly structured and adult-centered, some less highly regulated. (Author/MP)

This book seeks to explain how gender affects human development from infancy through adolescence and into adulthood. The book's introduction states the two theses of the book: first, gender differences appear primarily in group, or social, contexts; and second, gender differentiation can be understood only in a developmental context--the sexes…

Reviews research on the determinants and the effects of parents' attributions. The evidence suggests that parents do form attributions for their children's behavior; these attributions vary in predictable ways across judges (mothers versus fathers), targets (age or sex of child), and behavior outcomes (positive or negative); and attributions…

Examined children's emotional and behavioral regulation and emotional and prosocial responses to a crying infant. Found that children who could regulate their arousal were unlikely to become distressed and more likely than other children to talk to and comfort the crying infant. Girls were more responsive and engaged in more active responses than…

A videotaped interaction between a stimulus person (SP) and an interviewer was viewed by 80 male and 80 female college students. The SP's physical appearance and behavior were varied in a 2 X 2 X 2 factorial design with student gender as the third independent variable. The effects of these three variables upon general attractiveness ratings and…

The construct of moral reasoning may be conceived of as having a dualistic nature, with moral decision-making termed either empirical morality or normative morality. Although it has been tacitly assumed that normative moral values can be inferred from empirical morality methods of investigation, there exists data to suggest that this may not be…

Defines affect attunement as a process in which two individuals mutually create, match, and share their affective states. Examines whether adolescents perceive affect attunement in others, and whether this perception is related to gender. Results revealed that adolescents do perceive and discriminate different levels of affect attunement in others…

Investigates children's person-by-situation knowledge of probable causes of emotion in self and in others, and compares this to adults' construals. Shows that children can generate contextual explanations for affective states in self and others that are both shared by other children and adults and selectively related to different kinds of…

This study examined young children's sensitivity and positive responsiveness to their mothers' needs, using data on 90 preschoolers and their depressed and nondepressed mothers. The highest frequencies of caring behavior were from children with severely depressed mothers, problems in affect regulation, and secure attachment. Girls were found to be…

This study examined the effects of five variables--student grouping at the computer, keyboarding status, academic discipline, student gender, and gender of partner--on student social behavior, both verbal and affective, in microcomputer classrooms in a public business high school. The effect of these variables on teacher behavior was also…