Assessed the relationship of attachment status to autobiographical memory in preschoolers. Found that mother-child dyads with insecurely attached daughters engaged in relatively more negative memory talk than those with securely attached daughters. Secure-daughter dyads elaborated more on emotional themes than insecure-daughter dyads. Relations…

Comparison of the effects of pretest anxiety on the social and nonsocial problem solving of 45 boys (ages 9 to 11) with learning disabilities (LD) and 45 nondisabled boys found the LD group reported significantly higher pretest anxiety which escalated over the course of the problem-solving session. However, boys with or without LD were equally…

Reviews the major literature on creative processes in children that should be predictive of adult creativity, focusing on affective processes and children's play. Describes Russ's (1993) model of affect and creativity, and cognitive processes, personality processes, and affective processes important in creativity. Discusses theories of play,…

Investigates the influence of children's affective dispositions and knowledge of emotions on their ability to use nonaggressive conflict resolution strategies, exploring connections between autonomy and socioemotional development. Finds that individual differences in affective dispositions and emotional knowledge influence children's abilities to…

Examined relations of children's regulation and emotionality to their social functioning. Found that resiliency mediated effects of individual differences in attentional regulation on social status and socially appropriate behavior, and that negative emotionality moderated the positive relation between attentional control and resiliency. Also…

Two experiments involving skilled readers (159 college students) explored the benefits to student attitude and content retention of adding emotional interest, through seductive text, or cognitive interest, through signals for structural understanding, to scientific text. Results support the benefits of cognitive over emotional interest. (SLD)

This article describes key steps parents can take to develop an achievement orientation in gifted children: heal the gifted child within the parent; give consistent messages; develop early independence; utilize encouragement; develop multiple self-definitions; set challenging but realistic goals; and model persistence. (Author/CR)

Presents four articles on children's anger in preschool, chronic parental anger, and the teacher's role in identifying and defusing anger: (1) "'I'm bery, bery cwoss!' Understanding Children's Anger" (Marie D. Hammer); (2) "Parental Anger: Causes, Triggers, and Strategies To Help" (Roberta J. Wilburn); (3) "The Language of Anger: The Words that…

Discusses the digital divide between Latinos and non-Latinos in computer use and considers the role of affective factors. Highlights include negative attitudes of elementary Latino students; relationships between computer practices and student performance; beliefs about the usefulness of computers; and implications for educators. (LRW)

Results of a study of 925 educated Chinese who recalled child-rearing patterns of their parents indicated that greater perceived parental dominating control was related to less perceived parental warmth and that greater parental warmth and less parental control were related to greater perceived family harmony. (RH)

The structure of voters' affective reactions and trait attributions to national political figures was studied through 3-mode factor analysis of ratings by 78 college students of 16 political figures. The factor analysis suggested that positive and negative affect and affect and trait factors were distinct but correlated. (SLD)

Young children are capable of prosocial behavior interactions during participation in games; and for the children who participated in the study reported in this article, games possessing cooperative goal structures resulted in more prosocial behavior interactions than games possessing competitive goal structures. (IAH)

Assesses effectiveness of two desensitization strategies for reducing children's emotional reactions to mass media. Examines children having passive exposure, modeled exposure, or no exposure to lizards before watching a horror movie involving lizards. Finds that modeled exposure decreases emotional reactions and negative interpretations, whereas…

Examined developmental changes in the ability of 83 children aged 3-12 to determine emotion by interpreting facial and situational cues. Results showed that children's reliance on situational cues increased with age, while reliance on facial expression decreased. (RJC)

This paper examines the affective components which were an integral part of science goals of the 1980's using data from the Second IEA Science Study in the United States. Data indicated that students in the United States were generally positive about chemistry and science. (CW)