Secondary school students (N=12,988) completed Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status and questionnaire assessing experience with cigarettes, inhalants, alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine. Discriminant analyses of substance use, across achievement, moratorium, foreclosure, and diffusion identity statuses, yielded significant functions for…

Thirty young children with handicaps were assessed on five self-recognition mirror tasks. The set of tasks formed a reproducible scale, indicating that these tasks are an appropriate measure of self-recognition in this population. Data analysis suggested that stage of self-recognition is positively and significantly related to cognitive…

Examines joint attentional processes in children's early lexical acquisition and conversational interaction. Early language development builds on adult-child joint attentional focus on nonlinguistic entities. A developmental sequence of joint attentional processes in early language development is proposed, and the role of adults in this sequence…

Monthly observations of the play behavior of 16 young children with blindness over an 18-month period revealed correlations between play categories and development. Children who had high scores on developmental scales also had a high involvement in fantasy play. Children as young as 18 months old, prompted by older children, exhibited pretend play…

Major events in the maturation of the central nervous system (CNS) are reviewed relative to milestones for communication, speech, language, and cognition. Early insults to the CNS and their neuropsychological consequences are discussed. The role of patterns of myelination and dendritic branching to evolving stages of language and cognition are…

Study assessed compliance and internalization for 99 preschoolers previously studied as toddlers. Compliance and internalization were assessed in multiple observational contexts using maternal reports. Found that committed and situational compliance had distinct developmental trajectories, and only committed compliance was associated with…

Responds to calls for combining the ideas of Piaget and Vygotsky, discussing differences between the two perspectives. Notes that differences are found in underlying assumptions about the nature and process of development, philosophy, stages of development, developmental influences, and the integrity of cognitive structures. Suggests that, given…

Addresses the extent to which differences in Piagetian and Vygotskyan psychologies make their theories incompatible. Differences result from a Vygotskyan belief in a material primary cause for development; Piagetians do not hold this view. Explores this difference in perspective, concluding that, despite it, the two approaches are compatible. (JW)

Examined development of young children's psychomotor behaviors on outdoor swings, devising a Guttman hierarchical scale. Found that children consolidate basic movements into proficient swinging skills, and then experiment with the physical properties of the swing and with the social context. Modeling, informal instruction, and practice contribute…

Used a microgenetic method to examine knowledge acquisition as a process by coordinating existing theories with new evidence. Subjects were 17 community college students (ages 22-47) and 15 fourth graders. Assessed knowledge acquisition in problem solving in both physical and social domains. Found multiple strategies for, and varying levels of,…

Three experiments (sorting and theory-of-mind tasks) examined whether, for preschoolers, a particular form of reasoning applied to theory-of-mind and a set of problems requires understanding of mental states. Found that advances in theory of mind, card sorting, and causality depend on ability to switch judgments across conditions; reasoning by…

Investigated developmental change and patterns of individual differences in dimensions of infant temperament. Rothbart Infant Behavior Questionnaire (IBQ) was completed for subjects 5 times between 6 weeks and 30 months of age. Interpretable age changes were found for emotional reactivity, but not for the index of regulation (IBQ soothability).…

Item analysis of a measure of knowledge of sexual abuse prevention concepts, the Children's Knowledge of Abuse Questionnaire, was utilized in an evaluation of an elementary school program which served 111 children in grades 1, 3, and 6. Findings revealed differential responses by children of different ages to certain prevention concepts. (DB)

Three experiments examined whether children, like adults, can surpress interference effects when retrieving from long-term memory to solve arithmetic problems. Found that the associations between a number pair and its sum or product are of sufficient strength during the elementary school years to produce interference effects, depending on the age…

Marshall reviews four types of social models of aging: allocation, construction of life course, personality and socialization, and negotiation, concluding that the life course perspective dominates. Haldemann comments (in French) that broader research is needed to question this dominance; Marshall responds that his goal was to describe, not to…