Describes school-based psychoeducational program on severe mental illness, intended to serve as framework for providing didactic and experiential activities to increase middle school students' understanding about mental illness and their willingness to seek personal assistance when facing this crisis. Describes each of the program's four sessions.…

Examined deaf children for immediate memory of pictures of objects in two experiments. Deaf children did not use rhyme as a recall cue, but deaf children and age-matched children who could hear were both sensitive to name word length in recall. Implications of findings are discussed. (BC)

Investigated hypotheses generated by Gudjonsson and Clark model of interrogative suggestibility. Adolescent boys (n=40) completed Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale and measures of intellectual skills, memory, field-dependence, hostility, and attitudes toward persons in authority. Suggestibility correlated negatively with intelligence quotient and…

Examined use of Bender Gestalt Visual-Motor Test with school-age adolescents over age 11. Mean error scores suggest that visual-motor development is not maturationally complete by age 11 years, 11 months. Suggests additional research focusing on extending normative sample or developing new scoring system for adolescents. (Author/NB)

Examined impact of religion and gender on fifth graders' (n=142) attitudes toward life and death. Although all children displayed high attraction and low repulsion to life and low attraction and high repulsion to death, religious children displayed higher attraction to death. Found main effect of gender and gender x religiosity interaction.…

Fourth through sixth graders (n=418) completed Children's Depression Inventory (CDI). Teachers (n=31) rated students using CDI items and single global rating or global rating only. Sixteen teachers received instruction on childhood depression. Found moderate correspondence for both measures. Familiarity was related to correspondence; confidence…

Examines suicide attempts and completions among middle school students to alert middle school counselors to the reality of child suicide. Discusses common symptomatic areas under the categories of drug abuse, social influences, acting out, pubescence, depression, and nuclear threat. Offers suggestions for the prevention of child suicide and…

Examined responses of 9-19 year olds to different forms of interadult anger expression. Children perceived all forms of anger expression as more angry than control conditions and had more negative reactions to anger expression than to control conditions. Results suggest that others' anger is viewed as a negative emotional event and reacted to as a…

Factors that have slowed progress in middle grades reform include (1) emphasizing school-level, structural changes, such as merging curricular areas and instructional assignments, which do little to change the experience of students; and (2) basing reform more on rhetoric than research. Reviews the articles in this special issue, which seeks to…

Studied optimal experiences in 47 campers aged 11-12 years and 21 staff using experience sampling forms at random times during the day. Respondents rated the challenge of the activity and the amount of skill required on a four-point scale. Results suggest a high potential for optimal (flow) experiences in a camp setting. Provides suggestions to…

Young adolescents who lived with both biological parents, single divorced mother, single divorced father, mother and stepfather, father and stepmother, or multiply divorced parent appraised dimensions of family climate and dimensions of parenting. Differences among family structures were found on warmth, conflict, permissive parenting, and…

With eighth-grader in White House, America is in for four years of voyeuristically observed adolescence. As Chelsea Clinton and millions of other 12 year olds know, junior high is where real psychological action is. Middle school is cruel, self-conscious culture, replete with rumors, complicated dress codes, and popularity-driven status hierarchy.…

Assessed the effectiveness of exclusion or selection (modified trial-and-error) training in establishing auditory-visual conditional relations. Subjects were boys (ages 8 to 11) with learning problems in school. Found that exclusion training was significantly more effective in teaching new auditory-visual conditional relations and in generating…

Studied the attraction responses of child athletes to coaches who differed in their behavior patterns during the season. Children with low self-esteem responded positively to coaches with high self-esteem and negatively to coaches with low self-esteem on the instructiveness and supportiveness dimensions. Moderate- and high-self-esteem children…

Interviewed 57 11-year olds and 56 15-year olds about hopes for the future. Found that high level of family discussion increased interest in future family. Influences of parental control and family discussion changed as adolescents grew older. Adolescents with high self-esteem were more internal in their thinking about future than those with low…