The paper proposes a model which combines traditional metacognitive explanations for the acquisition of social skills in behaviorally disordered adolescents with situationally specific environment variables. Research is reported suggesting that newly learned social skills may not generalize to a wider variety of real life situations because social…

Nursing, as a profession dealing with the health care system, places considerable emphasis on empathy, i.e., responsiveness to the feelings of another. To investigate whether individual differences in empathy are reflected in freshmen nursing students' scores on the Paired Hands Test (PHT), which measures the construct of the "others'…

The relationship between affective responsiveness, synchrony of mother/infant interaction, and developmental status was examined in 32 normal infants (eight infants each at the ages of 4, 8, 12, and 16 weeks). Data were collected in infants' homes and included (1) naturalistic mother/infant play; (2) presentation of auditory, tactile, visual, and…

While the geriatric population covers an age range of 30 to 40 years people over age 60 are often treated as a homogenous group. To study the possibility of age changes and differences within the older population, data were collected from the charts of 60 patients (randomly selected within each of three age groups: 60-69, 70-79, 80-89) of an…

What children do in play is simultaneously influenced by the properties of the play object and the skills of the child. Properties of objects lend themselves to re-engagement in investigative play or support for shared action. Repeated play with particular objects increases the number of actions possible with these objects. The process of…

The research concerning intellectual functioning in addict populations has not addressed basic questions concerning why and how intelligence quotients (IQ) might be related to drug addiction. A study was undertaken to estimate intellectual functioning based upon a demographic profile for Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) Full…

A group of 144 high school dropouts were surveyed in an effort to dtudy the prevalence and correlates of their drug use as compared to that of 2,277 high school students. The results were reported according to grade level, sex, and ethnicity. (Author)

Intimate self-disclosure to a stranger or an acquaintance was seen as less appropriate than nondisclosure. Disclosure to someone of a different age was seen as less appropriate than nondisclosure. Disclosure or nondisclosure to a person of the same age or to a friend was perceived as appropriate. (Author)

If a person has an extreme score on a personality-trait measure, that trait should play a role in dictating which aspects of the environment are important to the individual. Subjects were asked to rate their dyadic communication with each of eight significant other people on a number of bipolar adjective scales. A multidimensional scaling analysis…

This study was designed to determine the extent to which (speech) motor timing control, as defined by a statistical model, improves in consistency with age and the degree to which peripheral feedback is used by children to maintain this consistency. Clinical applications and possible genetic implications are discussed. (Author/ED)

Research involving perceived internal versus external control of reinforcement as a personality variable has been expanding at a rapid rate. This article discusses (a) the place of this construct within the framework of social learning theory, (b) misconceptions and problems of a theoretical nature, and (c) misuses and limitations associated with…

Study supported by National Science Foundation Grant No. GB-1742, "Ability Components of Skill Learning.

To investigate the development of symbolic play, 18 Japanese normal boys and girls were individually tested once every even-numbered month from when they were 12 to 24 months of age. Symbolic play was generally defined as behavior which represents actual or imagined experience by using objects, gesture or language alone or in combination. The…

Recent work in attribution theory has shown the importance of not only the distinction between beliefs in internal and external causes, but also between relatively fixed, stable causes and those more unstable and subject to change. The relationships of causal attributions for success and failure in achievement and social affiliation with…