Parental care plays an important role in the emotional and cognitive development of the offspring. Children who have been exposed to abuse or neglect are more likely to develop numerous psychopathologies, while good parent-infant bonding is associated with improved resiliency to stress. Similar observations have also been reported in non-human…

Evaluates the degree to which the social-referencing perspective provides a valid explanation of some features of infant behavior. (MP)

Observed infants' responses in a food-requested procedure to explore their understanding of other people's desires. Found that only the 18-month-olds were able to engage in some form of desire reasoning. Children not only inferred that another person held a desire, but also recognized how desires were related to emotions and understood something…

The study reported in this paper traces the nature of the changes which take place as the child gradually acquires perspective-taking skills. The results indicate that at first the young child can correctly represent only the location of the object nearest another observer; later, he can correctly represent a before-behind relationship between…

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…

Cognitive activity of children from 1.5 to 5 years of age participating in problem solving and in spontaneous play was analyzed in terms of the successive coordination of existing patterns and the incorporation of new mental components. Analysis identified a series of developmental levels. (Author/RH)

Observations of 22 preschool children with cognitive delays during home-based play, made approximately 13 months apart, found no statistically significant change for the proportion of time spent in various categorical play behaviors. Children's relative ranking on play sophistication also remained stable. Significant changes were found in…

Reviews and integrates several aspects of peer interaction in the infant/toddler period. Reveals convergence between age-related changes in social skills and similarly timed cognitive developments. (HOD)

Compared coupling characteristics of clapping simultaneous with walking or galloping, consistency across trials, and phasing variability among 4-, 6-, 8-, and 10-year-olds. Found that for walk/clap tasks, children adopted adult-like coupling patterns by age 8 and with the same consistency by age 10. Across age, children became less variable in…

The strengths and limitations of a developmental approach to the study of teacher change are described. The developmental approach is characterized by: (1) a focus on an end state (maturity); (2) the assumption that all individuals go through the same sequence of changes leading to that end state; and (3) the assumption that these changes are…

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…

Examined the ability of three-year-olds, four-year-olds, kindergartners, and second graders to predict how certain internal and external conditions affect behavior. In two studies, a forced-choice procedure revealed that even the youngest group could predict the effect of various causes, while a third study examined more complex types of causal…

Presents an integrated clinical approach, based on a developmental, structuralist framework, to classify adaptive and pathological personality organizations and behaviors in infants and preschool children. (Author/DB)

Examines the implications of temporal separation for children's developmental differences in inferences drawn about an individual's characteristics after observing multiple instances of that individual's behavior. Also tests two competing hypotheses about how young children process information separated in time. (HOD)

This paper reports on a Santa Barbara, California study to determine the need for establishing a minimum age for bicyclists using the public roadways, examining the proposition that children below a certain age are developmentally unable to perform safely in traffic. Data on the disproportionate incidence of accident involvement among young…