A pair of 9-year-old boys with socioemotional and interpersonal difficulties was observed unobtrusively in 35 weekly hour-long therapy sessions over the course of 2 school years. A transcript/narrative analysis technique was used to identify all interpersonal negotiation strategies each child used within each session. Strategies were classified…

Researchers have long focused upon the problems of student/adolescent drug use; however, such a limited perspective may actually provide inaccurate information as to the actual nature and extent of total drug use. It may be more appropriate to emphasize a lifespan developmental perspective regarding drug abuse behaviors, insofar as drug use must…

Competence in action perception seems to be achieved very early in life. Because research has indicated that competent perceivers of action must be able to discriminate breakpoints in behavior, then recognition memory for breakpoints should be superior to that for nonbreakpoints at all ages where competence in action perception exists. Two studies…

A study was conducted to examine how different kinds of children's nonverbal behavior developed across grade levels. The six kinds of behavior studied were (1) proxemic, or observance of personal space; (2) haptic, or touching behavior; (3) oculesic, or gazing; (4) kinesic, or interpreting emotions from facial expressions; (5) vocalic, or…

This paper examines the interrelationship between children's acquisition and use of symbols and the development of imaginative play. The paper focuses on the use of pretend play as an expression of the child's capacity for symbolic functioning and as an index of intellectual development. The first section of the paper reviews developmental changes…

Interpretation of experimental tasks is influenced by knowledge of the language used, by assessment of what the experimenter intends, and by how subjects themselves would normally represent the physical situation. Whether these processes in which children engage in cognitive studies differ from those employed by adults in similar tasks was…

A study compared mothers' and fathers' speech patterns when speaking to preschool children, particularly utterance length, sentence types, and word frequencies. All of the children attended a nursery school with a student population of 136 in a large urban area in the Southwest. Volunteer subjects, 28 mothers and 28 fathers of 28 children who…

This paper presents the "uses of the past" model of personality development, a model in which adult development transforms an individual's history into resources for meeting present demands. The components of the model are delineated in terms of how: (1) neither the past nor the present is fixed in its effects or its contribution to present…

The timing and nature of the process of retirement for self-employed individuals were investigated. Subjects were 25 farm couples and 24 non-farm couples, all residing in rural Alberta, Canada. Both groups were matched on age, income, and education. Findings support the existence of a retirement process with a developmental sequence beginning at…

A curriculum model is presented for the development of competent citizens. The foundation of the model is not courses or disciplines but, rather, the characteristics of good citizens. These characteristics are identified in terms of understandings, attitudes, skills, and behaviors that are desirable in citizens if they are to promote unity,…

Research on role-model identification has demonstrated the powerful effect that models have on individuals' behavior. To extend prior research on this phenomenon, the role-model identifications of first-, third-, fifth-, and ninth-grade students were outlined and examined. The results did not support the hypothesis that adolescents identify with…

A typology of adolescent media uses is presented, discussing five uses--entertainment, identity formation, high sensation, coping, and youth culture identification--in relation to adolescent socialization. Media differ from other socializing agents in that adolescents have greater control over their media choices, resulting in substantial…

In this study, 375 adolescents from the junior high and high school of a Midwestern, semi-rural community were surveyed to investigate: (1) developmental and gender differences in strategies that adolescents use to cope with family, school, and peer stressors; and (2) the relation between coping strategies and outcome. The students were divided…

This paper describes an on-going study in which clinical research techniques are used to examine children's social cognition and its development. The study focuses on the relation between subjects' verbally expressed reasoning about social issues in two situations: during interview sessions and in natural life settings. Subjects for the study are…

Evidence shows that there are differences in the ways in which men and women speak. It has also been well documented that females are generally ahead of males in language acquisition and are less often diagnosed as speech pathologic. A review of the research gives some indication of the reasons for the development of sex differences in spoken…