In 2007, I embarked on a PhD study to explore diverse students' experiences, representations and understandings of personal development and personal development planning at one British university. The timing of this project was critical because universities were charged with a responsibility to provide opportunities for students to engage with…

In his conceptualization of the developmental course of interpersonal understanding, Selman (1980) specifies a set of issues which are central to the concept. For each issue, he assumes that development proceeds through an ordered sequence of ontogenetic levels and that developmental progress has a high degree of inter-issue consistency. In…

In industrialized countries, a fundamental shift in child bearing practices has resulted in an increase in the proportion of families with one child. Assumptions contributing to negative ideas about the single child include the notions of the deprivation of positive sibling influences and of debilitating, anxiety-ridden parenting by mothers and…

Application of a common framework in studies of the development of social cognition can reduce conceptual and methodological ambiguities and enable clearer study of core issues. This paper describes the core issues and their attendant problems, outlines a model of information integration that addresses the issues, and describes some illustrative…

Examined the relationship between anxiety and self-actualization in a sample of college students. Items (N=33) from the Personal Orientation Inventory were found to measure anxiety and scored negatively for self-actualization. Removal of anxiety items and rescoring yielded self-actualization measures related postively to anxiety test scores.…

This paper discusses the utility of a general systems theory paradigm for psychology. The paradigm can be used for conceptualizing such complex phenomena as change over time in living systems, person-society interactions, and the epistemology of multiply determined changes. Consideration is also given to applications of the approach to…

Tested children for recall of paired associates. Traditional measures of recall suggested that older children displayed better retention than younger children. But when data were reevaluated using a technique that statistically controlled for degree of learning, developmental differences in retention disappeared. (BC)

Draws on research with Brazilian street children to present methodological and ethical challenges inherent in research with street children; provides suggestions for overcoming these challenges. Issues of concern include the following: definition and sampling, and lack of clarity in these areas; measurement aspects, including surveys,…

An analysis of five funding competitions sponsored by the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services in the area of secondary special education and transitional services research found that the projects have not emphasized community-level change to facilitate lasting improvements in youths with disabilities and have not taken a…

The main purpose of this paper on a study of Indonesian concepts of human nature is to demonstrate practical instances of cooperation between Western and Third World researchers. It is asserted that Western researchers must understand the general views of human nature held by individuals in Third World countries before they can apply theories in…

The analysis presented here focuses on different problem situations extracted from everyday interactions in which individual developmental changes of the child interfere with well-established interaction patterns of the family. These problem situations require conjoint mastery of two objectives: (a) successful integration of the child into the…

An aim of many students of human development is to penetrate behavioral variability in such a way as to reveal stable phenomena. This broad aim is challenged on numerous fronts when researchers study infant behavior, for students of infants are everywhere confronted with variability. But, in the context of research, variability of subjects'…

Speakers at the Lipman Research Institute's inaugural symposium examined research and issues related to appropriate programs for 4-year-olds. David Weikart described the Perry Preschool Project, an ongoing study begun in 1962 of 123 black youths at risk of failing, and the High/Scope Preschool Curriculum Study. Jane Stallings covered short-term…