The United States is experiencing a shortage of STEM workers, with many students leaving the pipeline before attaining a career in STEM. STEM education researchers have identified factors at the high school and college level that contribute to attrition, but earlier life events remain underexplored. In this work-in-progress paper, we examine…

Self-esteem has been regarded as one of the most pivotal component in almost every day human daily activities. Trajectory of self esteem development means that on the average, one's self-esteem is relatively high in childhood, then drops during adolescence, later to arise gradually throughout adulthood, and then declines sharply in old age. The…

This paper reviews the literature on handedness in infants and reaching behavior in neonates and speculates on evolutionary reasons for the development of handedness. Modern studies have reliably detected handedness from the second half of the first year of life. One study found a preference for the right hand in unimanual tasks at 6.7 months.…

This exploratory study began by postulating a theoretical model of the dynamics of racial identity choice by biracial children based on the literature cited and counseling experience with biracial children in public educational institutions in Hawaii. The structured interview approach was used with high school students (N=50). A questionnaire…

Although the majority of researchers are probably in agreement regarding the existence of childhood depression, there is less than consensus regarding its structure. In this study age-related differences in child and adolescent self-reports of depression were assessed using two different analytic strategies. Subjects were children (N=515) and…

Young infants discriminate both native and nonnative phonetic contrasts, but 10- to 12-month-olds and adults fail to discriminate some nonnative contrasts. To explain this, Best, McRoberts, and Sithole (1988) hypothesized that at the age of 10-12 months, a phonological influence begins by means of which nonnative sounds are assimilated to native…

This study explored children's development of a "mental time line" and considered the propositions that younger children view the temporal domain as bi-polar, while older children display signs of using finer gradations on their mental time ruler that approach conventional structures of clock and calendar time. Subjects were a group of…

This study examined the influence of misleading information on children's memory of a real-life event. After participating in a play session, 10 three-year-old children and 10 six-year-old children heard a narrative that included inaccurate information about the play session. The children were then presented with items from the play session (event…

Three studies examined the abstractness of children's mental representation of counting, and their understanding of the cardinality principle, namely, that the last number word used in a count tells how many items there are. In the first experiment, 24 toddlers of 2-3 years counted objects, actions, and sounds. Findings revealed that children…

Two experiments tested Hasher and Zacks' (1984) age-invariance hypothesis of frequency memory, which proposed that frequency memory is fully developed when a minimal level of physiological maturation is reached (by two or three years of age). Participating in the first experiment were 24 subjects at each of three ages: 8 years, 11 years, and young…

In an investigation of the development of mapping as distinct from drawing, 39 middle and lower class Cambridge, Massachusetts children in kindergarten and first- and second-grades were shown a small three-dimensional model town, asked to make a smaller, three-dimensional copy of the model, and then asked to make a map showing each item in the…

To more fully understand how attitudes toward death and dying develop and change across the lifespan, 90 male and female subjects between the ages of 2 and 18 years and 90 male and female subjects between the ages of 18 and 97 were administered questionnaires and interviews about dying. The results revealed that children's attitudes were…

The hypothesis was investigated that, in a structured interview, older children and children from divorced families would express more complex, abstract, and integrated reasoning about marriage and divorce than younger children and children in intact families. It was further hypothesized that children with divorced parents would reach a more…

This study examined characteristics of human figures representing the self as drawn by 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds and the presence of age or gender differences. A total of 150 children who were selected randomly from day care centers drew themselves on paper with crayons. There were equal numbers of boys and girls in each age group. Human figure…

This paper examines the effect of participation in an Outward Bound course on participant levels of situational fears. Patterns of situational fears were studied with regard to: (1) fears before, immediately after, and 1 year following the Outward Bound course; (2) the intensity of these fears; and (3) relationship of fears to gender, age, and…