Life span developmental psychology proposes that the ability to create a coherent life narrative does not develop until early adolescence. Using a novel methodology, 10-, 12-, and 14-year-old participants were asked to tell their life stories aloud to a researcher. Later, participants separated their transcribed narratives into self-identified…

Children's understanding of numbers is often assessed using a number-line task, where the child is shown a line labeled with 0 at one end and a higher number (e.g., 100) at the other end. The child is then asked where on the line some intermediate number (e.g., 70) should go. Performance on this task changes predictably during childhood, and this…

A rich tradition in developmental psychology explores physical reasoning in infancy. However, no research to date has investigated whether infants can reason about physical objects that behave probabilistically, rather than deterministically. Physical events are often quite variable, in that similar-looking objects can be placed in similar…

This qualitative study explores the correspondence between contemplative practices and "orders of consciousness" from a constructive-developmental perspective, using Robert Kegan's approach. Adult developmental growth is becoming an increasingly important influence on humanity's ability to deal effectively with the growing complexity of…

This paper considers the functions of supportive individuals in the lives of community college and 4-year college students and how such support can promote hope, defined as agency and pathways thinking. We surveyed 181 college students regarding their supportive relationships and found that parents were most likely to be nominated as a primary…

California is home to more than 9 million children. With 12 percent of the nation's children, the well-being of California kids has a big impact on the well-being of children nationally. Unfortunately, California recently ranked 38th out of 50 states in children's well-being. Research has shown a strong connection between children's socioeconomic…

A great deal of developmental research has relied on self-reports solicited using the "some/other" question format (""Some students" think that...but "other students" think that..."). This article reports tests of the assumptions underlying its use: that it conveys to adolescents that socially undesirable…

The tapestry of classrooms today is transforming into a mosaic of colors, languages, and backgrounds. As the population of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students continues to rise, a deeper understanding of how teachers construct meaning and understand their internal and relational experiences when working with these students has…

This paper makes a fundamentally simple line of empirically supported argumentation. The increasing demands for high level student learning can best be achieved by the use of the substantive research evidence of the past decade demonstrating that developmentally oriented instruction facilitates academic, behavioral, and social performance. Most…

Cronbach and Meehl ("Psychol. Bull." 1955; 52:281-302) stated that the key question to be addressed when assessing construct validity is "What sources contribute to variance in test performance?" We illustrate the utility of generalizability theory (GT) as a conceptual framework that encourages psychological researchers to…

Two studies investigated the role of locomotor experience on visual proprioception in 8-month-old infants. "Visual proprioception" refers to the sense of self-motion induced in a static person by patterns of optic flow. A moving room apparatus permitted displacement of an entire enclosure (except for the floor) or the side walls and…

Two studies, an experimental category learning task and a computational simulation, examined how sequencing training instances to maximize comparison and memory affects category learning. In Study 1, 2-year-old children learned color categories with three training conditions that varied in how categories were distributed throughout training and…

This is the second of two reports commissioned by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) intended to address the dire need for teacher preparation policy and programs to reflect recent advances in scientific knowledge of child and adolescent development. In the first report, "Principles and Exemplars for…

In 1946 the well-known Danish educator Sofie Rifbjerg (1886-1991) travelled for six months to the USA. The purpose of her trip was to study American developmental psychology. On her way she spent some time at the Institute of Child Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. The institute had become famous because of its working on…

A critical approach to the application of research by developmental psychologists is proposed, using a concept of culture derived from agricultural metaphors in the English language. The approach is illustrated in a study of afterschool activities for California children. (SLD)