Parental deployment has substantial effects on the family system, among them ambiguity and uncertainty. Youth in military families are especially affected by parental deployment because their coping repertoire is only just developing; the requirements of deployment become additive to normal adolescent developmental demands. Focus groups were used…

Whether and when children can apply their developing understanding of belief to persuasion was examined using interactive puppet tasks. Children selected 1 of 2 arguments to persuade a puppet to do something (e.g., pet a dog) after hearing the puppet's belief (e.g., "I think puppies bite"). Across 2 studies, 132 children (ages 3-7 years) engaged…

A study explored word recognition and structural features of words as determinants of reading comprehension. Word recognition scores and comprehension scores for three age groups (6-7 years, 8-9 years, and 10-12 years) representing 1,200 children were used to examine the relationships of structural features of the word recognition task to…

This study examined children's conceptions of authority in sexually abusive situations. It aimed to determine: (1) whether children's perceptions of adult authority in sexually abusive situations differed from their perceptions of adult authority in benign situations; (2) whether children's conceptions of authority changed as a result of…

Two studies tested the observation that infants learn to use a "whole object assumption" between the ages of 8 and 15 months, meaning that they expect a word to apply to the whole object to which it refers. The first study investigated the possibility that infants of 8 to 10 months may attend differently, and more selectively, to events…

Each generation of adolescents is exposed to a wider array of stressors and environmental deficits. Use, abuse, and dependence on alcohol and other drugs greatly impairs youths' ability to develop fully, and exacerbates and compounds other biopsychosocial problems. Physiologically, the onset of secondary sex characteristics, the growth spurt,…

Post-formal operational thought is characterized by both relativism and dialecticism. To examine age differences across adulthood in relativistic and dialectical thought, and to determine whether formal operations are necessary but not sufficient for these forms of thought, 20 young (mean age, 19.6), 20 middle aged (mean age, 46.2), and 20 older…

Research findings suggest the existence of three types of primitive regulation in the behavior of 1 1/2- to 2 1/2-year old children in memory tasks. When children are presented with a game of hide-and-seek to be played with a small stuffed animal, regulatory behavior appears to be related to children's use of stimulus information, precursors of…

This documents describes a perspective on Vygotsky's theory of play and imagination that differs significantly from previous interpretations. Vygotsky proposed a developmental theory of creativity in which creative imagination develops from children's play activities into a higher mental function that can be consciously regulated through inner…

With or without the support of research, clinicians must make judgments concerning relations between different areas of psychological functioning. Recently, studies have been made of possible relations between different areas of mental activity, including logical and emotional conception and social, emotional, and perceptual functioning. Nannis…

A total of 40 children in the three primary grades were studied to determine if they would donate more to a worthy cause after having been exposed to a humorous situation, in contrast to exposure to a serious one. The children who had heard a serious story about sharing donated slightly more to help Ethiopian refugees than did children who had…

This study examined the relationship between level of ego development and parents' self reports of the subjective experience of parenthood. Subjects were 30 mother/father pairs of middle class parents, 10 from each of three phases of the family: families whose oldest children were attending preschool or middle school, or had graduated from high…

The Kreger Model is a developmental approach to the identification and assessment of, and intervention with, emotionally disturbed children. Principles fundamental to a developmental paradigm are outlined, and assumptions fundamental to the Kreger Model pointed out. It is explained that the Kreger Model is a direct response to criteria which…

This paper asserts that the most common mistake that adults make when relating to children who are grieving is to assume that children think like adults. It presents an outline of children's perceptions of death for children between the ages of 1 and 3, and for 4-year-olds, 5-year-olds, 6-year-olds, 7-year-olds, 8-year-olds, and 10-year-olds. The…

Over the past few decades, the complex nature of transitions into stepfamilies has been the focus of considerable attention. Previous scholars have established developmental tasks for remarriage, stepfamilies, and stepsibling relations. A parallel, but unique, set of developmental stages and tasks for the adjustment to stepgrandparenting occur.…