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…

This study examined the relationship between age-interval between siblings and children's creative abilities, as well as parental views on the creative abilities of 116 children (ages 9-12 years). The study found that larger age intervals resulted in greater creativity and that age intervals also interacted with birth order, family size, and age.…

In a follow-up study, it was found that children with good early phonological awareness had well-developed lexical and sublexical reading and spelling procedures. Results suggest that early phonological skills relate more strongly to the development of sublexical than lexical processing systems. (Author/LB)

Children, mothers, and mothers' parents completed questionnaires about the children's involvement with their grandparents. Grandparents were more involved with grandchildren from single-parent than from two-parent families. As grandchildren's pubertal development progressed, grandparents became more involved with grandsons, and grandfathers became…

Measures of family stress and social support were administered to 80 mothers with a child with mental retardation in 1 of 3 normative transition periods. There were no significant differences in family stress scores across the groups, but mothers of preschoolers utilized social support more than mothers of preadolescents and adolescents. (JDD)

Children whose mothers were consistently more responsive during the children's infancy and early adolescence achieved higher IQ and arithmetic scores, had more positive self-esteem, and were reported by teachers to exhibit fewer behavior problems than children of mothers who were consistently less responsive. (BC)

Conducted 4-month participant/observation and 52 interviews with sixth and seventh graders. Identified six categories that students viewed as being their responsibilities for learning: doing work, obeying rules, paying attention, learning or studying, trying/making effort, and responsibility as something given or taken. (Author/NB)

This study followed 206 adolescent boys and their families from the fourth through eighth grade to test a model for conduct-related school failure. Results indicated that low parental academic achievement was associated with ineffective discipline practices and child antisocial behavior in the sixth grade and that ineffective discipline had a…

Two studies examined parent expectations and punishments of mature-faced children as compared to their baby-faced peers. Study 1 revealed that parents allocated more cognitively demanding chores to mature-faced 11 year olds depicted in photographs than to baby-faced children. Study 2 revealed that parents perceived misbehaviors of mature-faced…

Notes that, although literature on middle school teaching focuses on developmental stresses of young adolescents, it rarely offers specific ways to respond to student behaviors associated with these changes. Delineates the physical, cognitive, and social-emotional motivations behind typical early adolescent behaviors and then offers middle school…

Structural equation modeling analysis of 349 youths, aged 9-16, in St. Kitts, West Indies, showed that physical punishment by itself does make a modest, but significant, direct and negative contribution to youths' psychological adjustment. Children tended to experience themselves to be rejected in direct proportion to the frequency and severity of…

Teachers as Facilitators (TAF) program used teachers as leaders of small groups that promoted social, emotional, and academic development of children at high risk for substance abuse. Found that school personnel were capable of accurately identifying and referring students; TAF program was effective in improving students' perceived academic…

Fifth and sixth graders completed a sex role orientation measure, viewed a film portraying a child playing gender-appropriate games with members of the same sex or gender-inappropriate games with members of the opposite sex, and made judgments about the child. Subjects' judgments were influenced by the child's gender-related behaviors but not by…

Studied parent-child agreement on parenting behaviors and mediators of agreement for 134 families. Results revealed low degree of agreement between parents and children in reports of parenting behaviors. Differential levels of agreement between father-child and mother-child reports suggests that reports might be related to children's transition…

Discusses how adolescents are defining their need for "safe spaces" in ways useful to the current policy debate about community safety. It reveals adolescent's greater interest in preserving public spaces and youth programs and offers new insights into the causes of youth crime. Reasons for cooperative efforts to define and explore…