This research details the changing ways in which young people of different ages differently warrant the conviction that, notwithstanding evidence of good and bad behaviours, selves can be understood as unified across the various roles and contexts that they occupy. Canadian adolescents and young adults were asked to explain the apparent disunity…

Explores implications of two cognitive development perspectives for characterizing ontogeny of causal reasoning. Reviews literature on causal reasoning in the preschool years and concludes that the hypothesis of an invariant causal scheme is only partially correct. (Author/SO)

Three age groups were read the same short story. Their responses to interpretive questions were taken as texts and analyzed for age-distinctive word usage. Characteristic forms of talk were found, and age-specific patterns of interpretive thinking were derived from the forms. In general, 10 year olds saw a plot, adolescents a plight, and adults a…

Comments on the study reported by Feldman and others in this issue. Suggests that, in the study, subjects' word frequencies might be the result of subjects' familiarity with the words rather than the words' narrative role and that there is uncertainty in inferring interpretive patterns of subjects from word frequencies. (BC)

Replies to the commentary by Olson and Salter on an article by Feldman and others, both reported in this issue. Maintains that the evidence does not support Olson's and Salter's conjecture that the source of age-distinctive lexical differences reported in the Feldman study is a simple function of word frequency. (BC)

Children between the ages of 19 and 41 months were videotaped with a peer in a standardized playroom for four 15-minute sessions in order to examine a developmental model describing the relation between changes in pretense (pretend play, transformations, and communications) and changes in peer-oriented social behavior. (MP)

Concepts about and evaluations of the unequal distribution of personal possessions were examined in Americans and Israelis of various ages ranging from kindergarten to 50-year-old adults. A number of developmental and cultural differences are discussed, and the general pattern of results is interpreted as reflecting different experiential…

Critically reviews research on developmental differences in reactions to the physically disabled in order to illustrate age-related influences and to provide a clearer conceptualization of such reactions. (Author/CM)

Investigates the degree of realism in the future time perspective of 113 Belgian adolescents ranging in age from 15 to 17 years. (SS)

The notion that elderly adults respond more slowly than younger adults in order to ensure accuracy was investigated. The Matching Familiar Figures Test was administered to 10 males and 10 females from each of the following age groups: 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, and 70-79 years old. (Author/SS)

Explored the relationship between divergent thinking and self-esteem across the adult lifespan. Subjects from 18 to 84 years of age responded to a self-esteem inventory and an exercise in divergent thinking. Self-esteem predicted divergent thinking across age groups, whereas age differences accounted for little variance in divergent thinking.…

Utilizing an interaction-transaction perspective on perceived control within six life situations, a multivariate cohort study investigated patterns of interaction associated with 90 individuals representing different periods along the adult life course; adolescence, adulthood, and retired adulthood. (Author/SS)

Studies the effects of perceptual salience on performance in problems requiring the coordination of information. Subjects were groups of children, younger adults, and older adults. For each of the age groups, those problems containing the most salient information were solved faster and more accurately than problems containing the least salient…

Several experiments with 8- to 9-year-old children are reported to demonstrate that "decalage" observed between success in problems of conservation of weight, volume, and density is due to the different task situation as presented by Piaget and Inhelder. (Author)

A dialectical schemata framework was used to interpret, code, and compare 27 interviews on the nature of education with freshmen, seniors and faculty members at a small, highly selective liberal arts college in order to provide a description of the organization of dialectical thinking and its presence in mature thought. (Author/DB)