Suggests that models of parenting style, such as Baumrind's popular model, are insensitive to variations in parenting resulting from characteristics of the different situations in which the parenting is expressed. Argues that considering parenting in context adds greater specificity to the model and enhances the potential for predicting child…

Barbie is presented as the perfect cultural site for interrogating margins, borders, and contradictions in females' lives. This article illuminates such issues by interrogating the "cumulative cultural text of Barbie." Texts criticized are: Barbie collector cards; "Barbie" and "Barbie Fashion" comic books;…

Reviews: (1) "Deciding Who Lives: Fateful Choices in the Intensive-Care Nursery" (Renee Anspach); (2) "Maltreatment and the School-Age Child: Developmental Outcomes and System Issues" (Phyllis Howing and others); (3) "Preventing Prejudice: A Guide for Counsellors and Educators" (J.G. Ponterotto and P.B. Pederson); and…

Reviews: "Child in the Family: Developing Child Series"; "Parents, Kids and Books: The Joys of Reading Together"; "Toys"; "Traits of a Healthy Family"; and "Excellent Beginnings: Helping Schools Reach Families." (DR)

Dictated words and pictures by 48 young French children, aged 3 to 6 years, demonstrated that young children have the capacity to produce graphics that exhibit some of the characteristics of writing. Developmental stages in children's recognition that their own efforts were not true writing were identified. (SLD)

The biggest problems with public schools is that they are public, big, compulsory, and pluralistic. Their powerlessness to achieve a broad consensus for common methods of socialization harms the education of both students who come to school already socialized and those whose background of deprivation did not give them these social values. (SK)

Reviews the six cross-cultural research articles in this issue. The articles document diverse environments of child development; explore universality and variation in mothers' and children's behavior; and delineate relationships between culture, parental behavior, and developmental outcomes. A strength of the research is its collection of…

This article argues that current models of intervention for infants and toddlers with disabilities suffer from conflicting research results and practical implementation problems and discusses alternative approaches, including the need for comprehensive needs assessment, protocols for matching services with needs, interagency system changes, and a…

Six experiments involving 192 infants and 1 experiment with 16 college students examined sensitivity to acoustic correlates of phrasal units in English. A basic finding is that nine-month-old infants are sensitive to acoustic markers that correspond to major phrasal units, a sensitivity that develops after six months. (SLD)

This third article of a series reviews recent metacognitive projects inspired by the theory of L. S. Vygotsky. These projects include research on (1) children's memory development; (2) the mother-child dyad; (3) the origin and function of adaptive inner speech; and (4) problem learners. (SLD)

Provides an overview of outdoor learning environments, discusses types of children's play that promote their learning and growth, examines the role of outdoor play on children's development, and lists several indoor activities which can also be used as outdoor activities. (BC)

A longitudinal analysis of the spontaneous speech (first-person pronouns and reflexives) of three children tests the claim that children's poor performance in binding and coreference is due to performance factors. Children appear to understand the principles of binding and coreference at the earliest stages of language development. (33 references)…

This paper reviews the research on speech perception and reassesses the contribution of innate capacities versus external stimulation in conjunction with age in first- and second-language acquisition. A developmental model of speech perception is then discussed in relation to neonatal auditory perception. (Contains 86 references.) (MDM)

Reports a longitudinal study comparing 211 male inpatients in Stockholm, Sweden, alcohol clinic with a random sample of 200 men from Stockholm's general population. Random sample and inpatient males who also reported drug use had more psychosocial problems and had grown up in families with more abuse of alcohol and drugs than those who did not…

Describes an approach to working with parents that emphasizes the parents' own learning processes and that can be termed a "developmental partnership." Parents are explicitly acknowledged as the primary educators of their own children. Issues in developmental partnership, including the role of the unconscious in relationships focused on…