Recounts the author's experiences as a 2-year-old Elvis Presley fan who learned how to recognize, retrieve, and play a large number of his favorite 45 rpm recordings. (RS)

Examined instrumental learning in premature infants by providing 45 infants at 33 weeks conceptual age with either a teddy bear that "breathed" quietly at the infant's respiration rate (BB) or a nonbreathing bear (NBB). Over a two-week period, infants provided with the BB decreased their latency to contact the bear; infants exposed to the NBB…

Discusses young children's learning in depth versus superficial learning, and presents the results of a study designed to assess 5-year olds' competence in physical knowledge. Found that the majority of children could identify basic principles, such as the floating and sinking properties of objects, but could not grasp more advanced ideas such as…

Presents activities and games to teach students in grades K-6 how to throw and catch correctly. Because throwing and catching are developmental skills, teachers must pay attention to them, and students must practice them repeatedly. Activities are presented by grade level because children's skills vary between (and within) grades. (SM)

Four-month intervention program gave adolescent mothers (n=76) major input in identifying knowledge they needed concerning their children's growth and their own parenting skills. Results revealed significant differences between participants' pre- and posttest scores on measures of infant and toddler development knowledge. Further analysis…

Addresses Nelson's commentary on Ward, Vela, and Hass' study of children's category learning (both of which are in this issue). Discusses the issue of whether a holistic processing view provides a better account of children's learning than does an analytical view. (PCB)

Two studies showed that children of about four years of age had begun to understand that beliefs may be held with differing degrees of certainty. This understanding was tied to the children's understanding of the nature of beliefs and the distinction between appearance and reality. (PCB)

Study of 937 children, grades 3-8, showed that authoritative parenting (balancing responsiveness and control) increased child competence; low self-esteem, confidence, and achievement were associated with beginning and continuing smoking; authoritative parenting was inversely related to child smoking; and children were more likely to smoke if…

England's Summerhill School is an alternative school based on child-centered philosophies involving, freedom, love of children, and natural development. A recent television program generated negative publicity that could endanger its future prospects. (SK)

Clinical child psychologist responds to four articles by Wagner, Stern and Newland, Kaczmarek and Wagner, and Powell and Vacha-Haase (this issue) on counseling with children. Notes that counseling psychologists are experts on what kinds of environments help children grow and reach their potential. Sees this knowledge as being directly relevant to…

Suggests that in learning and development, the process of comparison can act as a bridge between similarity-based and rule-based processing. A structure-sensitive comparison process, triggered by experiential or symbolic juxtapositions can: (1) facilitate understanding of structural commonalities and the abstraction of rules; and (2) facilitate…

Explores the concept of spiritual sensitivity in children, noting that some gifted children show early evidence of an understanding of spiritual concepts. It examines the role of asynchrony in the development of spiritual concerns and offers examples of how gifted children experience these concerns in their everyday lives. (DB)

Examination of the child prodigy phenomenon suggests it is a result of extremely accelerated mental development during sensitive periods that leads to the rapid growth of a child's cognitive resources and their construction into specific exceptional achievements. (Author/DB)

Longitudinal data from a school-based alcohol-prevention trial involving 385 girls and 353 boys were used to show how a model using individual growth modeling and a covariance structure approach can investigate relationships among individual changes in two domains (positive and negative alcohol expectancies). Advantages of the approach are…

Using Girl Scouting as an example group, the authors discuss eight issues in measuring outcomes of youth programs: multidimensional outcomes, attention span, developmental changes, use of comparison group, age-appropriate measures, culturally sensitive instruments, program versus individual evaluation, and ethical issues in testing. (JOW)