A study of 44 infants who suffered asphyxia during the perinatal period examined the influence of perinatal asphyxia on the maturation of auditory pathways by serial recordings of the brainstem auditory evoked potentials (BAEP). The general maturational course of the BAEP following asphyxia was similar to a control group. (Author/CR)

Investigated age differences from early childhood to adulthood in the capacity to understand--in a psychologically meaningful way--traits in stories wherein main characters perform actions based on a positive, negative, or incidental motive that result in an emotional consequence for another character. Found that even 5- to 6-year-olds made trait…

Examined preschool children's inferences about the likely appearance of a target figure based on information about the figure's occupation or personality traits. Without explicit gender-category information, girls' performance on gender-consistent and gender-inconsistent trials was equivalent; boys performed better on same-sex attributes. With…

Study 1 identified proximal processes in home environments of 78 children aged 6-9: maturity facilitation, use of stimulating materials, and parent-child relationship. Study 2 tested the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment instrument for consistency and construct and criterion-related validity with samples of 307, 171, and 73,…

A longitudinal study of 43 typical children (ages 2 to 8) and 21 children with specific language impairments (SLI) found that a diverse set of morphemes share the property of tense marking, that acquisition shows linear and nonlinear components, and that mean length of utterance predicts rate of acquisition. (Author/CR)

Identifies fundamental principles of psychology to explain how the self begins and develops over the life span. The influences that contribute to the creation of false and true selves in gifted children are discussed and strategies for promoting the true self of gifted children are offered. (Author/DB)

Three experiments examined children's understanding of functional relations in economics. Found that preschoolers understood effects of demand and second graders also understood effects of supply, but even fourth graders often failed to understand motivation and morality effects. Fourth but not second graders explained how motivation and morality…

Reviews the construct of attachment, its role as a motivational system in infancy, and its development in the first three years. Emphasizes that attachment must be assessed in the context of particular infant-parent relationships, and reviews specific infant and caregiver behaviors salient to the assessment of attachment. (Author/CR)

Proposes an account of the development of temporal understanding, linking it with episodic memory development. Distinguishes between ways of representing time in terms of frameworks involved; describes perspectival and nonperspectival frameworks and those representing recurrent sequences or particular times. Describes emergence of new kinds of…

Investigated the effect of language on Chinese-speaking children's performance on false-belief tasks under three between-subjects conditions. Chinese-speaking adults and young children responded to false-belief tasks. Results revealed a rapid developmental pattern in the children's understanding of false beliefs and suggested the important role of…

Research on parenting shows that the stability of the emotional connections and the predictability of the caretaking relationship are the significant variables that predict positive child adjustment. Offers social policy recommendations that support men in their fathering role without discriminating against women and same-sex couples. (SLD)

Because all children with autism are deficient in joint attentional skills (ability to direct and maintain shared attention with another individual), this article reviews the literature on joint attention, its relationship other language rule systems, and its development in typical children. A case study illustrates the developmental course of…

This report presents three case reports of male children who meet criteria for autism and also Aarskog syndrome, a genetic disorder characterized by hypertelorism, short nose, long philtrum, short stature, brachydactyly, and shawl scrotum. Two of the children also presented with severe mental retardation. (DB)

Two experiments with 11 children (ages 3 to 7) exhibiting functional phonological delays evaluated the Sonority Sequencing Principle (a principle governing the permissible sequences of consonants within syllables) as applied to the acquisition of onset clusters and adjuncts. Findings are integrated in discussion of the representation of onset…

This study evaluated the accuracy of automated methods of grammatical categorization ("tagging") of transcribed conversational language samples from 30 normally developing children. On a word-by-word basis, automated accuracy levels averaged 95.1%; accuracy of tagging whole utterances averaged 77.7%. Results suggest that further improvement of…