The authors' goals in this article are to (a) describe a new task for the assessment of shifting attention between different affective stimuli, The Children's Attentional Shifting Task (CAST); (b) present the theoretical background for the development of the CAST; and (c) report initial information on the developmental appropriateness and validity…

Three major components have been repeatedly implicated for the origin(s) of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS): system, minor sickness and surroundings. All these factors also frame infant temperament, and therefore it seems logical to suppose that the babies who either succumb to or are at risk of SIDS may present with certain behavioral…

Despite their diverse themes, the various articles in this special issue all focus on the possibility that the child's view of the world is infused with premises and assumptions taken on board from other people. Demonstrating that process of transmission from parent to child is not easy. One powerful strategy would be to show that parental…

This study examined motivation (prosocial goals), individual characteristics (sex, ethnicity, and grade), and friendship characteristics (affective quality, interaction frequency, and friendship stability) in relation to middle adolescents' prosocial behavior over time. Ninth- and 10th-grade students (N=208) attending a suburban, mid-Atlantic…

Purpose: Downsizing is a very pervasive organizational process. At these critical junctures many organizations do little to prepare their employees for a mass layoff. The main purpose of this study is to examine how the incorporation of job counseling and professional retraining programs during a period of downsizing affected the responses of both…

The author relates that she was an introvert child. It has always taken her time and energy to find her place in a group. As a grown-up, she still needed quiet time to regroup during a busy day. In this article, the author presents an interview with Marti Olsen Laney, author of "The Hidden Gifts of the Introverted Child." During the interview,…

The present study tested whether theoretically derived risk factors predicted increases in body dissatisfaction and whether gender moderated these relations with data from a longitudinal study of 428 adolescent girls and boys because few prospective studies have examined these aims, despite evidence that body dissatisfaction increases risk for…

Angry children need to learn positive expressions of anger, and adults need to accept the angry feelings while teaching children proper ways to express feelings. This guide for classroom use explains that there are good and bad ways to express anger. How students can communicate when angry is explored. It is important to remind students that they…

The cognitive style dimension of scanning refers to consistent individual differences in the extensiveness and intensity of spontaneous attention deployment, leading to individual variations in vividness of experience and the span of awareness. The cognitive style of focusing was conceived as an adaptive counterpart to the defense mechanism of…

This study examined parents' and children's affect regulation skills and constructive behavior to test whether a modeling mechanism or a parent-child interaction mechanism best accounted for children's behavior. Thirty-six married couples and their 4- to 7-year-old children participated in the study. The families were asked to play a board game…

There is no accepted definition and no adequate measure for the concept of Emotional Intelligence (EI). Some of the myriad issues surrounding EI are discussed here. One problem in the consideration of EI is the confusion between the terms "feelings" and "emotions." Differences between the two are examined and a working definition of feelings is…

This study examined the nature and impact of two aspects of classroom learning (interpersonal teacher behavior and classroom climate) on the affective and cognitive outcomes of elementary mathematics students in Singapore. A secondary purpose was to explore gender differences in students' achievement, attitudes, and perceptions of the classroom…

A study examined readers' cognitive and affective responses to photographs and accompanying stories published in 20 newspapers. Subjects, 204 high school students (mostly 18-year-old seniors) in 9 Illinois high schools, each read the front page of one of the 20 newspapers (chosen from across the country) and completed a quiz dealing with…

This study explored relations between emotions (including shame, guilt, and the intensity of positive and negative affects), family structure (alliances between family members and boundaries between family members), and family process (disengagement, enmeshment, and cohesiveness). The sample consisted of either students enrolled in a general…

This study has two purposes: (1) to test the Personal Feelings Questionnaire--3 (PFQ3), a lengthened, psychometrically improved version of the PFQ2 guilt-proneness measure, for construct validity; and (2) to evaluate hypotheses regarding the relationships between shame- and guilt-proneness and nine types of psychopathological symptoms among…