Three studies examined children's ability to differentiate aggression and social withdrawal using attributional constructs. Found that even very young children understand the meaning of responsibility and are capable of using it to act as intuitive judges, weighing the evidence to make inferences about responsibility and then meting out judgments…

Compared models of depressive symptoms in a 6-month prospective study of 95 nonreferred 11- to 13-year olds. Results showed that adolescents who perceived their parents, siblings, and friends as supportive, suffered fewer depressive symptoms. Life stress failed to correlate with concurrent depressive symptoms. Attributional style was primarily a…

Discusses three related issues of democratic governance of the National and Affiliate Group Board members of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. These issues include the principle of choice of error, the fundamental attribution error, and inequities in compensation among workers in different fields. (BB)

Discusses a study of how attributions and types of situations influence U.S. and Finnish undergraduates. Explains that both groups reacted to hypothetical situations. Reports that subjects experienced greatest pride when attributing achievements to effort or ability and greatest shame when attributing failure to lack of effort. (SG)

Examines the potentials of technology to help the cooperative learning process. The need for interaction between cooperative learning practitioners and technology users is discussed; and research on the integration of technology into cooperative learning is reviewed, including group dynamics, making each student accountable, and attributional…

Aggressive and nonaggressive Latino and African-American adolescents read scenarios describing negative outcomes initiated by a hypothetical peer and made judgments about their reactions to the outcomes and about the peer's intentions. Data supported a model in which emotion mediates aggressive behavior. (BC)

Two studies examined children's understanding of the origins, behaviors, and properties of objects. Children (1) were sensitive to the distinction between natural things and artifacts; (2) identified specific kinds of natural cause; and (3) understood the link between internal parts and self-generated activity. (BC)

Three studies examined parents' goals during disagreements with young children. Found that women focused on relationship-centered goals more than men. Public situations increased concern for short-term parent-centered goals. Empathy predicted long-term child-centered and relationship-centered goals. Parent-centered goals were associated with power…

Studied attributions for school-based loneliness for 36 Finnish students with a high degree of loneliness and 42 with a low degree of loneliness. More lonely students mostly used a nonself-serving internal-stable attributional style, while less lonely students attributed temporary loneliness to external, unstable, and controllable causes.…

Explores causal attributions of success and failure as functions of religious orientations among a sample of Polish university students. Participants assessed secular and religious attributions on three dimensions: controllability, stability, and locus. Finds that religious and non-religious participants attributed both success and failure to…

Attributional beliefs of African-American 11- and 17-year-old students with mental retardation were assessed. Results indicated that strategy ratings were intercorrelated, as were capacity ratings, yet the two constructs were differentiated by both age groups. Belief in the importance of internal strategies was positively related to recall and…

Describes a study of college developmental students' perceptions of their high school coursework, teachers, and own personal characteristics. Suggests that students regarded their schools and teachers positively, but that they tended to blame external factors such as task difficulty and teaching quality for their limited successes. (20 citations)…

Attribution retraining was conducted with 82 German 8th grade girls as part of feedback provided by trained teachers in the students' first physics course. In comparison with controls, attribution retraining significantly improved students' performance in physics. Training also had favorable effects on the motivation sets and self-related…

Investigated effect of sentence ambiguity on recall and recognition of story information by aggressive and nonaggressive boys. Found that aggressive boys recalled approximately equal proportions of ambiguous and unambiguous information. Nonaggressive boys recalled more unambiguous than ambiguous information. Nonaggressive boys recognized…

Using prospective cohort data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this study examines the extent to which health insurance coverage and the source of that coverage affect adult health. While previous research has shown that privately insured nonelderly individuals enjoy better health outcomes than their uninsured counterparts, the…