Early adolescence represents a particularly vulnerable period of development during which young people are susceptible to establishing lifelong behavior patterns associated with poor life, health, and educational outcomes. Previous research demonstrates older adolescents and young adults often experience negative life events (NLEs) prior to…

Two studies investigated children's perceptions of how the cause of achievement outcomes affects children's emotional responses. Children aged 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, and 13 rated the reactions of children in stories to success or failure in study one, and the cause of the stories' outcomes in study two. Age differences were found in both studies. (SKC)

Assessed contributions of familiarity, prior experience, and age to frequency and degree of social participation of preschoolers. Normative analysis of group differences indicated that sex, age, prior peer-group experience, and familiarity did not interact and that all of them independently affected 3- and 4-year-old preschoolers' social play.…

The ability of 96 children (five, eight, and 12 years old) to nominate strategic social action that would alter a peer's ongoing emotional state was examined. Nominated strategies were appropriate to the emotional state to be altered; a shift with age from material intervention strategies to strategies involving verbal intervention or helping was…

Western and Chinese children six years of age judged that an initially intense positive or negative emotional reaction would wane gradually over time. Children four years of age were less consistent, but, when steps were taken to insure their comprehension, they too judged that emotion wanes gradually over time. (Author/RH)

The first part of this paper discusses presentations by other symposium participants which addressed different facets of the developmental paths involved in understanding one's own emotional states, the emotional states of others, why one feels what one does, and whether or not one shows these feelings expressively to others. It is the premise of…

This study examined age and sex differences in young children's skills in decoding nonverbal facial cues of emotional states. The purpose was threefold: (1) to determine whether older preschoolers were better decoders than younger preschoolers; (2) to see whether sex differences would be apparent throughout the preschool period or emerge only…

Children in kindergarten, first, second, and third grades heard scenarios in which a child experienced an emotionally equivocal or unequivocal event. Subjects were asked questions which assessed their ability to discriminate between equivocal and unequivocal situations. Two follow-up studies were conducted. Implications for children's social…

To refine methodology, a study was made of how 52 first-, third-, and fifth-grade boys and girls understood feelings in themselves and their parents. It was expected that older children would use more complex criteria than younger children and that differences would result from the number of points of view subjects had to consider to answer a…

Memory demands made by mothers of very young children are discussed in two studies of joint picture-book reading and one study of mother/infant pairs who looked at family photograph albums. While memory demands made by mothers differed as a function of child's age and linguistic development, at about 15 months of age children were expected to take…

Although studies using recall tasks to measure memory typically report age-related declines in performance for older subjects, little is known about how these research results relate to performance in actual situations. A study was undertaken to determine whether years of experience in a domain of knowledge could compensate for age-related…

Preschool, third-grade and sixth-grade children, and adults were shown vignettes depicting eight types of experiences and asked for their own (for children) or the children's (for adults) expected emotional reactions. Overall, adults showed an absence of developmental considerations in their implicit theories of children's emotional…

Results of two studies suggested that acquisition of route mapping during the preschool years provides a means of organizing spatial information and internal representations necessary for successful problem solving in general. (Author/RH)

Analysis of the Attitudes toward Disabled Persons scale administered to 89 British Columbia (Canada) students in grades 8 and 10 found that (1) female students had more positive attitudes than male students; and (2) grade level and degree of contact were not strong or consistent predictors of attitude. (Author/DB)

This study examined the effects of computer experience, age, and sex on attitudes toward computers among 142 high school language arts students, 107 community college mathematics students, and 105 students living in dormitories at a small liberal arts college. Computer attitudes (computer anxiety, computer confidence, and computer liking) were…