This study examined research on children's block play, using content analysis to review 75 documents that focused on such play. Each document was coded by type (empirical study or nonempirical article) and by 15 topics and 76 subtopics grouped into 4 broad categories: (1) environment/ecology; (2) block play and the school curriculum; (3) block…

This paper explains the creation and validation of the Narrative Comprehension of Picture Books task (NC task), an assessment of young children's comprehension of wordless picture books. Study 1 explored developmental improvements in the task, as well as relationships to other measures of early reading. Subjects, 158 K-2 students, were…

This guidebook for parents and early intervention personnel was developed by the "Let's Play! Project," a 3-year federally supported project that worked to promote play in infants and toddlers with disabilities through the use of "low-tech" assistive technology. The guide is organized around six emerging stages of play development: (1) sensory…

This volume compiles papers from a 1996 conference on communication held at Clark University (Worcester, Massachusetts). The goal of the conference was to share the work and ideas regarding the development of communication and meaning comprehension. The papers are organized into three parts, covering the organization and the origins of…

In recent years, much stimulating research has emerged in relation to children's theories of mind, construed as the understanding of others' intentions, beliefs, and desires. Within that context, there is renewed interest in the developmental origins of social cognition. An expression of that new interest, this book assembles current…

Distilling the essential elements of the report "Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children," this paper summarizes how reading develops and how reading instruction should proceed. After an introduction and overview, sections of the paper summarize the following: highlights for parents, caregivers, preschool teachers, directors, teachers,…

If counselors are to meet the needs of adolescent clients they must understand the unique perspective of this population. This includes understanding of not only the presenting problem that the client brings, but how adolescents experience the counseling process and counselor/client relationship. The primary interest of the author was what…

At any given time, any given child may hold different, even competing, understandings of the strategies and processes involved in reading, writing, and coordinating the two. And different children's developmental paths may differ in significant ways even though they eventually achieve common outcomes. Different developmental paths notwithstanding,…

This book presents activities to help elementary school teachers show their students that physical activity can be meaningful and fun. Focused on skill development and fitness rather than competition, these activities take a progressive, developmentally centered approach that will help teachers meet a range of individual needs so that every…

This action research project describes a program to increase the application of spelling skills in students' writing. The target population consisted of first grade students in a middle-class community in the northern suburb of a large metropolitan area. The problems of inadequate application of spelling skills to student writing were documented…

Of 48 male subjects in an initial 2-year interval follow-up interview study of social perspective-taking levels, 41 subjects were reinterviewed 3 years later according to the same interview procedures. Results supported the hypothesized sequential order of developmental levels. (Author/MP)

The issue of whether or not early adolescence is a transitional or stable period of development may be dependent on our ability to describe ways in which early adolescents are quantitatively and qualitatively different from when they were children and how these early adolescent characteristics are forerunners to the more elaborate constructs of…

Some of the findings of a longitudinal study of three infants between their 11th and 22nd months to document development of linguistic expression of the agent concept indicated that first vocalizations were inconsistently associated with nonverbal agentive behaviors and later mature utterances coded agent-action-recipient events. (MC)

Thirty-five unpublished booklets on Montessori music education conceived by Maria Montessori and authored by her music consultant, Anna Maria Maccheroni, are discussed. They extend the brief portion devoted to music in Montessori publications and result in a comprehensive and distinctive music education program. (Author/IS)

Reviews research dealing with language acquisition to show that there are developmental trends in the acquisition of syntax. (FL)