Expands the Cross model of psychological Nigrescence to hypothesize the changes in racial identity that a Black person can experience at various points in the life cycle. Describes how various stages of racial identity are manifest at three periods of life: late adolescence/early adulthood, middle adulthood, and late adulthood. (Author/TE)

Twenty-three autistic children (age 4-19) and 23 mental age-matched controls completed a task of sustained attention. Results suggest that autistic children's difficulties in sustaining attention may be attributable to developmental delay and motivational contingencies of task rather than to a primary impairment in ability to sustain attention.…

Examined children's conceptions of the causes of wealth and poverty. As their ages increase, children explain wealth and poverty by referring to individual differences in work, effort, and intelligence rather than social, structural, or political factors. (PCB)

Studies of young children's sequence of development from counting to the beginnings of formal arithmetic are reviewed. Four essential basic skills are identified: use of counting words, enumeration, the cardinality rule, and quantitative comparison. The contribution of counting to the development of arithmetical proficiency is stressed. (JDD)

States that the concept of developmental stages is going through a revival. Compares developmental stages from three points of view: (1) Piaget's original formulation, (2) cognitive development, and (3) socio-moral development. Outlines reasons for maintaining a hard-structural stage model by the Kohlbergian theorists. (GG)

Discusses ways in which children's literature can be used to help preschoolers deal with developmental change related to family relationships. Describes 52 children's books that focus on family relationships. (RJC)

Discusses ambiguities in research that arise from the fact that chronological age reflects different components. Considers methodology, components of age as indices of different aspects of development, differential effects of experiences according to their timing, and maturational delay. (RJC)

Comments on Weikel and Palmo's article and discusses critical issues for future of mental health counseling: (1) identity of mental health counseling; (2) its relationship to other helping professions; and (3) distinctive nature of practice of mental health counseling. Argues a psychoeducational and developmental focus may be critical for specific…

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…