A sense of mastery is an important component of psychological health and wellbeing across the life-span; however, relatively little is known about the development of mastery during childhood and adolescence. Utilizing prospective, longitudinal data from 444 adolescent sibling pairs and their parents, our conceptual model proposes that family…

This study examined the influence of home environment, socioeconomic status, and visual functioning on mothers' perceptions of the family needs and development of 19 toddlers with visual impairments from Latino and Anglo backgrounds. Differences were found between the mothers' perceived needs based on ethnicity and their children's degree of…

In this paper, the authors highlight features of the social and cultural context which surrounds services to children. Emphasis is given to the point that those who work with children exist within the same cultural landscape occupied by the children, parents and other parents. Whilst this landscape is diverse, it contains certain dominant,…

To examine the neurobiological consequences of early institutionalization, the authors recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) from 3 groups of Romanian children--currently institutionalized, previously institutionalized but randomly assigned to foster care, and family-reared children--in response to pictures of happy, angry, fearful, and sad…

Objective: To examine the relative contributions of maternal characteristics and behaviors in predicting infant weight gain over the first year of postpartum life. Design: Longitudinal study of maternal feeding style throughout infancy. Setting: A Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children center. Participants:…

First, second, and third graders (N = 102) who had completed from 1 to 3 years of literacy instruction in other schools and had experienced failure entered a private school for struggling readers and received instruction in either of 2 types of systematic phonics programs over a 4-year period. One group received a keyword analogy method (KEY) that…

Both the polyvalent notions of culture and development have been central for building psychological theories. In the present paper, both notions are discussed within the framework of general developmental science and thus from a necessarily systemic perspective. Development is surely culturally informed, yet the process of cultivation is largely…

In his testimony before the Joint Economic Committee of the United States Congress, the author discusses what he considers to be the underlying question concerning issues of early childhood education: How to invest in preschool programs so that they have a reasonable chance of being a success. The testimony takes the form of a series of questions…

Parental involvement is one of the most important factors in student success. This brochure, a companion piece to the Learn and Serve America video "Bring Learning to Life," provides information on the definition and benefits of service-learning as well as practical steps that parents can take to ensure service-learning is a part of their…

In Giyoo Hatano's passing, we have lost an esteemed colleague and a treasured friend. Among his many contributions to our field, our work, and our lives, we honor and build on his and his colleagues' work on conceptual growth. We liken the view developed by Hatano and his colleagues to Toulmin's evolutionary scheme for understanding conceptual…

There have been few investigations of the effects of very immature preterm birth on specific linguistic competencies and phonological working memory at preschool age. Study 1 aimed to investigate early grammatical abilities in very immature healthy preterms, taking into account their cognitive development and biological and social factors. The…

Three experiments (N = 123) investigated the development of live-video self-recognition using the traditional mark test. In Experiment 1, 24-, 30- and 36-month-old children saw a live video image of equal size and orientation as a control group saw in a mirror. The video version of the test was more difficult than the mirror version with only the…

Within children's services, frameworks for assessing outcomes have been developed in the absence of consultation with children with autistic spectrum disorders and their parents. The research reported here worked with parents, other key adults and children with autistic spectrum disorders to identify desired outcomes. It found similarities with…

Children rely extensively on others' testimony to learn about the world. However, they are not uniformly credulous toward other people. From an early age, children's reliance on testimony is tempered by selective trust in particular informants. Three- and 4-year-olds monitor the accuracy or knowledge of informants, including those that are…

It is becoming increasingly clear that little in development is predetermined or permanently fixed. Rather, gene expression is activity dependent, and epigenesis is probabilistic. So, the study of genetic disorders needs to change from the still widely held view that developmental disorders can be accounted for in terms of intact versus impaired…