Written by selected faculty members associated with the adoptions training project of the University of Southern California, the eight papers in this collection reflect the content of intensive, short-term educational programs for administrators, supervisors, and workers employed in adoption services. Individual papers provide an introduction to…

Based on Piaget's theory, this book discusses the educational value of group games for the young child's social and intellectual development, suggesting ways to select or modify both new and familiar games to make them more appropriate for children's learning. Part 1 of the book provides a theoretical introduction to what is meant by good group…

Written in Spanish and English, the booklet briefly discusses what parents can do to help their child learn at school. The booklet briefly notes the importance of getting enough sleep; eating breakfast; praising the child; developing the five senses; visiting the doctor; having a home and garden; talking, listening, and reading to the child;…

To explore long-range outcomes of the Mt. Druitt Early Childhood intervention project and to investigate the development of children in Australian government schools, research was begun in 1981 which included elements of both followup and longitudinal studies. The Mt. Druitt Longitudinal Study, discussed in this report, broadened the emphasis of…

Fifth in a series of the Child and Family Resource Program (CFRP) evaluation reports, this volume focuses on the infant/toddler component of CFRP and its impact on children approximately a year and a half after they enter the program. A brief summary of the CFRP evaluation design and preliminary findings presented in previous evaluation reports is…

The Knowledge of Child Development Inventory (KCDI), which is appended, is a 56-item multiple choice test of knowledge of child development from birth to age three. Test items were based on authoritative materials covering the cognitive, physical, emotional, and social development of young children. The KCDI was meant to be appropriate for use…

Prompted by the concern of parents and educators with both the process of a child's language acquisition and the amount of time spent watching television, a content analysis of children's television commercials was conducted to see if this form of mass media could be used to stimulate language skills in children. The 36 commercials were drawn from…

This document reviews a number of recent studies written in French that investigate the nature of communication between 2-year-old infants and others. The review includes three parts. The first part focuses on studies aiming to constitute a behavioral catalog of the child. Characteristically, these studies offer a posteriori interpretations of…

Viewing human development as a process by which the human gains self-control, this essay argues that locomotion and speech are control-oriented motor movements and suggests that cognition is also a form of movement developed as the individual achieves control over his or her thinking processes. Support for this view of cognitive development is…

This handbook is intended for anyone interested in developing and teaching parenting and childrearing classes to parents of children up to and including 3 years of age. Part One, chapters 1 through 9, offers an overview of how to become an effective group leader. Part One, chapter 10 explains the format in which specific childrearing information…

To discover the relationship between cognitive development and writing, a means of assessing writing is needed that reflects accurately changes in the way children write as they grow older. This may be accomplished by using Piaget's characteristics of concrete and formal operations. His framework permits general descriptions of thinking, organized…

The experiences of one child's storytelling events over a period of nine months were tape recorded in a study that examined which variables were the most important in the child's learning of narrative. The variables considered took into account the impact of different storytellers, different story genres, different interactions (kinds of parental…

A study was undertaken to explore the problems beginning writers face and how they grapple with them. The subject, a six-year-old boy, was observed over 10 writing sessions and an analysis was made of his composing behavior and the illustrations and texts he produced. In addition, his composing aloud protocols were analyzed. Results suggest that a…

The Bridge To School Program was designed to supplement and extend the scope of an ongoing early childhood developmental program, the "Readiness Program", by providing individualized attention and instruction to specially selected seriously learning disabled children between the ages of 5 and 7 in order to facilitate the development of…

This study explored questions concerning the specificity of facial expression of emotions in infants. A sample of 27 infants (nine each at ages 10, 11, and 12 months) were tested in six experimental and six control conditions. Two of the experimental conditions were designed to elicit fear, two happiness, and two surprise. Videotapes of the…