Notes that the study of language attitudes is rich in a history stretching across several decades and social scientific disciplines. Points out that beliefs about language use can bias social interaction and decision making and that more study is required to increase understanding of the language attitude process. (74 references) (Author/CK)

Examined relationships between social contingency in mother-child interaction and the social competence of 47 two-year-olds from low-income families. Found that social contingency was related to children's use of self-regulatory strategies but not to empathic responsiveness. Child negative emotionality and gender contributed to explanations of…

Reviews the literature on shame and on adolescence and suggests that attention to the role of shame in adolescent development is warranted. Discusses how social-cognitive, physical, and interpersonal changes associated with adolescence may be associated with normative increases in shame, and how shame may be implicated in gender-related shifts in…

Individual differences in the ability to connect thoughts to emotions were studied with 321 participants who read the writings of a target group and guessed the emotions of targets. Findings are interpreted to mean that some forms of emotional problem solving require emotional openness as well as general intelligence. (SLD)

Examined parents' awareness of their daughters' attitudes, beliefs, and feelings about their bodies. Sixty-six adolescent daughters completed an eating disorder scale, a body figure rating scale, and made ratings of their shape and weight. Greater discrepancies between parents' estimates of daughters' body esteem and daughters' self-reported body…

Applied Affect Control Theory (ACT) to investigate the interaction process between leisure participants and their environment. Surveys of people on an urban, multiple-use trail indicated that most exhibited a dynamic emotional experience even though they were in the setting a short time. Respondents exhibited different emotions across events.…

The second of a four-part series on the development of infants and toddlers, this article reviews current research on social and emotional development during the first two years and provides a selected list of activities designed to promote infants' optimal development. Attachment behavior and affective behavior are two major topics explored. (EV)

Responds to a letter from a parent facing serious problems in putting her child to sleep at night. Suggests that a child's eagerness to spend as much time as possible with his or her parents can create problems at bedtime. Proposes increasing shared time, and putting the child to bed, but handing over to the child responsibility for sleeping. (AA)

A test-retest study of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator with 99 graduate students over 20 months yields findings consistent with previous studies, but an examination of type dynamics using log-linear analyses indicates that dominant thinking and dominant sensing do not retest as well as dominant intuition and feeling. (SLD)

Latent-variable confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the interrelationships of depressive and anxious symptomatology and 12 measures of psychosocial functioning in 5,900 adolescents in the community. Findings are discussed in terms of potential contributors to gender differences in distress and psychosocial functioning. (SLD)

Investigates the connections of middle school students' emotional dispositions and academic-related affect with their school performance. Results indicated that although students' emotion regulation, general affective dispositions, and academic affect were related to each other, each of these variables also made a unique significant contribution…

Examines negative emotional response in 124 Canadian college students. Using sad stories and music, tests how information about others' responses influences their casual attributions. Shows subjects informed they had reacted more negatively than others made more internal casual attributions. Suggests consensus information does not influence affect…

Examines reasons that the care of infants in day nurseries often becomes impersonal rather than intimate, and suggests ways of counteracting this. (DE)

Uses expectancy-value theory to untangle student perceptions of soap opera viewing. Indicates (1) that anticipated entertainment and social interaction are powerful expectations, whose effects are mediated by affective and cognitive factors; and (2) that self-concept also plays a major role in determining exposure levels. (SR)

Quantitative results from a study involving 78 elementary students suggest that content-related attitudes do not significantly affect subjects' reading comprehension. However, qualitative results suggest that attitudes may affect reading comprehension in qualitatively different ways. (IAH)