Discusses how a child's language development is facilitated through the child's active involvement in a variety of play, talk, and reading time experiences. States that the natural processes of child development encompassing space, movement, vision, audition, and sensory integration form the backdrop for knowing the world and for the evolution of…

Studied effects of maternal employment and substitute child care on social behavior of four- and five-year-old children (n=2,209). Mothers from National Longitudinal Survey's youth cohort rated their child's social behavior using items from Behavioral Problems Index. In general, findings did not support contention that maternal employment is…

Examines the broad and subtle effects of television watching on children and their families. Discusses the role of television in family life; the effects of television on children's development, behavior, attitudes, and values; children's understanding of messages conveyed by television; the relationship of television and play; and strategies for…

Provides a rationale for providing nature education. Discusses specific goals of nature education, and what teachers can do to capitalize on children's curiosity. Discusses considerations for selecting nature activities. (HTH)

Reviews research analyzing nature of typical elementary-age children's difficulties with revision process. Notes that studies in which children review prepared texts containing embedded errors have revealed that children tend to overestimate their own and others' comprehension of text, and thus, they do not identify specific areas of text that…

Examines historical and conceptual bases of counseling psychology relative to their fit for work with children from birth to 12 years of age. Considers mental health needs of today's children and argues that counseling psychologists can make legitimate contribution to prevention and remediation of common problems that children encounter during…

Explains the concept of autonomy and its significance in young children's development. Includes suggestions for teachers who want to provide a classroom environment supportive of autonomy. Also discusses the benefit of autonomy-based instruction for school performance. (JPB)

Presents a conjoint recognition paradigm and a model that quantifies conscious and unconscious memory for learned materials and for the types of unlearned materials found to induce false memories in children. Validation study showed that model accounted for 7- and 10-year-olds' performance on recognition memory task. Conscious and unconscious…

Examined knowledge of mothers with children from 6 to 58 months regarding which item in play and language pairs was more advanced developmentally. Found that mothers' orderings matched those established in developmental literature and were stable over two weeks. Language knowledge was stronger than, and unrelated to, play knowledge. Accuracy was…

Explores difficulties in the education of children that derive from the unwillingness of teachers to impose their values on students. "Real education" requires attention to shaping the whole person rather than merely conveying information and developing skills. (SLD)

This study examined the relationship between prelinquistic vocalization and expressive vocabulary one year later in 58 toddlers (ages 17- to 34-months old). Rate of vocalizations, rate of vocalizations with consonants, and rate of vocalizations used interactively were all positively related to later expressive vocabulary. (Author/DB)

Listener judgments of the narrative coherence of 6 children with specific language impairment (SLI) were compared with 12 typical peers. The ratings for the children with SLI improved over time. Younger children with SLI had lower ratings than typical children. Differences between older children were not as evident. (Author/CR)

Reviews cognitive processes, control mechanisms, and structures in creative thinking, and examines the way these aspects of cognition develop from childhood to adulthood. The cognitive definition of creativity, cognitive approaches to novelty production, creativity and cognitive development, and mechanisms guiding cognitive processes are explored.…

Fifty-four gifted adolescents performed a creative generation task in which they imagined and drew fruit that might exist on another planet. They developed fruit that was rated as more original than developed by college students, and did so regardless of whether they were explicitly instructed to be more creative. (CR)

Evaluation of the grammatical morphology used by 50 preschool children with specific language impairment as a function of their lexical diversity found their use of finite-verb morphology (based on number of different verbs used) and noun-related morphology lagged behind expectations in comparison to a group of normally developing preschoolers.…