This study charted the longitudinal trajectories of wives' and husbands' reports of marital love, satisfaction, and conflict and explored whether and how first- and second-born offspring's pubertal development was related to marital changes. Data were drawn from the first 7 years of a longitudinal study of family relationships. Participants…

Awareness of the important roles dispositions play in the teaching process and in young children's education is growing. With the inclusion of disposition in the revised National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) standards, education for preservice teachers must increase its focus on the nature of dispositions. This…

Background: Children with intellectual disability (ID) have a higher risk for psychiatric disturbance than their peers with normal intelligence, but research data on risk factors are insufficient and partially conflicting. Method: The subjects comprised 75 children with ID aged 6-13 years. Data were obtained from case files and the following four…

Fuzzy trace theory explains why children do not have to use rules of logic or premise information to infer transitive relationships. Instead, memory of the premises and performance on transitivity tasks is explained by a verbatim ability and a gist ability. Until recently, the processes involved in transitive reasoning and memory of the premises…

Toxic exposures during pregnancy and early childhood continue to play an important role as a preventable cause of neurodevelopmental disabilities in the U.S. and around the world. Identifying and eliminating these toxins should be a priority, but the task is made exceedingly difficult due to the severe limits of scientific knowledge in this area…

This article presents results from an interview study of 45 parents/caregivers (representing 27 families) whose infants were correctly identified as deaf during the first phase of the implementation of the national universal Newborn Hearing Screening Programme in England. Average age of children when parents were interviewed was 25 weeks. Two…

Strategies for promoting reflection in prospective early childhood teachers are summarized. Each strategy was field tested and documented in the course "The Development and Administration of Child Service Programs," which was team taught during the summers of 1994 and 1995 at The Pennsylvania State University. About 30 students enrolled…

As the Head Start program has matured, the need to establish a comprehensive Career Development Program has become increasingly apparent. Job openings for personnel from program assistants to professionals, created and sustained by Head Start funding, are considered by DHEW administrators as critically important to provide employment and…

The context of the Comprehensive Headstart, Child Development, and Family Services Act of 1972 is presented along with a section-by-section analysis of it. Section 1 is the title. Section 2 is a statement of findings and purpose. Section 3 authorizes appropriations. Title I describes Headstart, Child Development and Family Services Programs which…

The purpose of the U.S. Department of Education's online newsletter "The Education Innovator" is to promote innovative practices in education; to offer features on promising programs and practices; to provide information on innovative research, schools, policies, and trends; and to keep readers informed of key Department priorities and…

The purpose of this study was to test direct, additive, and mediation models involving family, neighborhood, and peer factors in relation to emerging antisocial behavior and social skills. Neighborhood danger, maternal depressive symptoms, and supportive parenting were assessed in early childhood. Peer group acceptance was measured in middle…

Language is a gift of special significance to the human species. Whether the source of the generosity is nature or nurture, or some combination, is controversial, but few scientists or laypeople would dispute the evolutionary and practical value of the key mode of communication. From infancy, language is integral to just about everything one does,…

This study examined whether having a depressed parent intensifies the secondary deficits that often co-occur with offspring's depression symptoms. The sample was adult offspring of parents who had been diagnosed with depression 23 years earlier (N = 143) and demographically matched nondepressed parents (N = 197). Respondents completed mailed…

Drawing on a range of sources in the history of play, this article discusses how play for all ages mirrors social change, especially but not exclusively in America. The article explores three broad themes from colonial times to the present: first, how play was shaped by changes in work and time at work; second, how play activities were transformed…

This study explores parental ethnotheories of children's temperament through mothers' responses to McDevitt and Carey's Behavioral Style Questionnaire (1978) for 299 children aged 3 to 8 years and interviews with their parents, in Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. We first established a standardized,…