Focusing on the preconversational child who has yet to develop a stable or generalized habit of spontaneous conversation, this book presents ECO (Ecological Communication Model), a new intervention model for social and communicative development of developmentally delayed children. The model is based on two perspectives: the literature on the…

As part of a longitudinal study of children's social development, this study explored preschool home environments of elementary school children who were persistently bullied and victimized by their peers. Subjects included approximately 200 children randomly sampled from predominantly lower and middle socioeconomic populations. One-fourth of the…

This research report describes a study of Marquesas Islanders and how they interact with each other at different life stages from childhood, through youth and adulthood. Fieldwork for this study was conducted for a 10-month period on the island of 'Ua Pou, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia. A small community of about 200 people in a valley on…

In response to the growing public interest in seeing that higher education institutions address the personal development needs of students, this study evaluated the personal and social growth of college students and introduced an index of personal and social growth of college students. The study used the new American College Testing Program's…

This is a step-by-step guide to developing a social skills curriculum and designing its instruction. It teaches how to construct assessments and plan interventions to address problems in student social behavior using procedures that can be used to set instructional goals and develop interventions for almost any student who has trouble with social…

The "Talk It Out" approach is presented for use by elementary school teachers. Talk It Out employs the techniques of conflict resolution, mediation, and negotiation in order to resolve problems that occur in most classrooms, such as teasing, put-downs, pushing, hitting, cheating, gossiping and refusing to share. Readers are provided classroom…

Understanding the quality of the day care environment is useful for practitioners and policymakers in the evaluation and improvement of day care provisions. Regulated features, interactive dimensions and global indices of quality have been examined in relation to child developmental outcomes. This study investigated the effects of variations in…

This study of 19 northern Michigan Ojibwa families examined antecedents to holding traditional values, and the relationship between mothers' and fathers' level of holding traditional values and their elementary school children's academic and social functioning. Participating families had a child between ages 3 and 11 years; the focal child of the…

Human beings are in a constant ebb and flow; transcending boundaries at work and play, they learn, pray, and exist in an interdependent society. Given this reality, many practitioners, from kindergarten to college, have devised various methods of collaborative learning to meet the challenges of an increasingly diverse demographic and ethnographic…

A study of 150 regular and special education teachers assessed teacher attitudes toward the inclusion of students with disabilities in the regular classroom and toward co-teaching and collaborative planning to meet the instructional needs of students with disabilities in the regular classroom. Analysis of the findings reveal a strong positive…

This final report discusses the outcomes of an outreach project based on the validated Developmental Therapy-Teaching model that emphasizes teaching skills which foster a child's social-emotional-behavioral competence. The project assisted early childhood and local child care programs in replicating components of the model in inclusive or pull-out…

This study examined differences in family functioning and resources, parenting style, and child outcomes in low-income families in which mothers were and were not employed. The participants were 194 low-income families whose children began kindergarten between 1992 and 1994. Child outcome measures included the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test…

Noting that beyond the individual variations among humans, there is a body of mental abilities common to every human being, this book examines the debate among researchers about the extent to which humans are "preprogrammed," and suggests a new scientific psychology of human development. By examining experimental data obtained from…

This paper identifies three different historical perspectives about citizens with developmental disabilities and their relationships to their fellow citizens and to state and federal governments. These perspectives are compared and contrasted as a basis for thinking about the future. A chart illustrates the perspectives of a distant past, a more…

This newsletter presents five articles focusing on the social development of infants and very young children. The first article, "Sympathetic Behavior in Very Young Children," by Lois Barclay Murphy, gives examples of early sympathetic behavior, traces the development of sympathy, identifies individual patterns of sympathetic response,…