Over the last decade, notable advances have been made in the classification of child and adolescent psychopathology. The use of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-III (DSM-III) diagnostic categories for depression with children and adolescents was investigated using archival classification data spanning an 8-year time period.…

The category breadth indexes of 128 children at each age (4 and 11) were related to personality data available at ages 3, 4, 7, 11, and 14 in form of independent California Child Q-Sort (CCQ) description. Results suggested that breadth of categorization at age four correlated negatively with intelligence, while at age 11 it correlated positively…

Supported by the United States Office of Education, Small Projects Program, Grant No. 7-E-103.

This study used the "double easy-to-hard" paradigm to examine the hypothesis that the class inclusion (CI) task should be equivalent in relational complexity to the transitive inference (TI) problem. Participating in the study were 64 girls and 50 boys, with a mean age of 8 years, 6 months. Stimuli for easy versions of the tasks were…

Explores the utility of reciprocal two-point code type classifications of Personality Inventory for Children (PIC) profiles and evaluates a second classification scheme based upon groupings of empirically and conceptually similar PIC code types. Results indicate a profile classification strategy can be usefully applied to PIC protocols. (Author)

Describes differences in the socialization setting provided by all-boy and all-girl play groups, and explores possible reasons for children's tendency to congregate in same-sex groups. Considers three classes of possible explanatory processes: biological factors, socialization pressures from adults, and gender cognitions. (RH)

Investigated 7-year-olds', 9-year-olds', and adults' ability to classify children's and adults' faces by sex using only biological based internal facial structure. Found that participants categorized adult faces by sex at accuracy levels varying from just above chance (7-year-olds) to nearly perfect (adults). All groups were less accurate for…

Research has shown that children use physical features to distinguish among people, and that race can be distinguished by certain features such as skin color and the shape of eyes, nose, and lips. However, L. Hirschfeld (1993, 1994) has argued that children must have the concept of race before they form the race social category and that other…

Investigated whether 7- to 9-year-olds use gender category to resolve uncertainty when evaluating behavior. Subjects were shown pictures of unfamiliar children and were told that each had performed a behavior open to multiple interpretations. When the unfamiliar peers were male, both male and female subjects were more likely to remember behaviors…

Outlines a general theory of childhood victimology, with a typology that characterizes abuse as extraordinary, acute, or pandemic. Efforts to prevent childhood victimization must recognize its differential character and the importance of the child's stage of development in recognizing and dealing with victimization. (SLD)

P. M. Lewinsohn has theorized that depression is related to the amount of positive reinforcement that an individual receives. Lewinsohn has supported this model in adults by showing that depression is correlated with an increase in unpleasant activities and a decrease in pleasant activities. This study extended Lewinsohn's model by developing…

The major innovation of the American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual III" (DSM-III) was the explicit specification of criteria for determining whether an individual's problems qualify for a particular diagnosis. However, neither the choice of child diagnostic categories in DSM-III nor the choice of criteria…