This study investigated the hypothesis that background television affects interactions between parents and very young children. Fifty-one 12-, 24-, and 36-month-old children, each accompanied by 1 parent, were observed for 1 hr of free play in a laboratory space resembling a family room. For half of the hour, an adult-directed television program…

A purported hallmark of temperament characteristics is that they appear very early in the course of development and are persistent across time and situation. There is, however, a small, but growing cadre of research findings that question this traditional view. It may be that temperament characteristics are not necessarily established during the…

Suggests that testing developmental ordering hypotheses is difficult because rare use of ratio scales prevents direct comparison of measures. Demonstrates that the observed data pattern is constrained by the underlying relationship--although observed data pattern may not reflect the exact relationship, it limits possible relationships. Shows the…

Evaluates empirical studies on child development. Suggests that most such research consists of studies of a priori, nonempirical, logical relations between concepts, whose definitions guarantee the relationship studied. Argues that hypotheses are empirical if variables involved are semantically and logically independent. Research that is not based…

Piaget's theoretical position assumes that the ability to solve complete multiplication will be an earlier development in the child than partial multiplicative classification and his experimental findings support this hypothesis. The present experiment using 159 children aged 4:7 to 7:6 years re-examined the issue. (Editor/RK)

Comments on the ideas espoused by Smedslund (PS 522 552) in this issue. Agrees to the idea of spending more intellectual energy in distinguishing between a priori and empirical hypotheses but emphasizes that concepts are not always accurate reflections of reality and that even empirical disconfirmation of an a priori hypothesis sometimes can…

Infants under six months are able to discriminate native and non-native consonant contrasts equally well, but as they learn the phonological systems of their native language, this ability declines. Current explanations of this phenomenon agree that the decline in discrimination ability is linked to the formation of native-language phonemic…