Over the last 20 years, we have learned much about the extent to which early-life deprivation affects the mental health of children and adolescents. This body of evidence comes predominantly from studies of children raised in institutional care. The Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) is the only randomized controlled trial designed to…

There is now wide consensus that the quality of family relationships is involved in the development of child executive functioning (EF), a set of cognitive skills that bear critical importance for social and academic adjustment at school. This body of research has, however, focused almost exclusively on dyadic parent-child interactions and failed…

Background: Personal construct theory (PCT) is a constructivist approach to understanding human thought and action. Preliminary research focusing on applying PCT concepts and methodologies to understanding individuals with high-functioning autism (HFA) has suggested its utility for both research and clinical interventions. The developmental period…

This study examined the extent to which executive function (EF) mediated associations of socioeconomic status (SES) and home-environment quality with academic readiness (math, letter and word identification, and knowledge of story-and-print concepts). Forty-nine 54-66-month old children and their mothers participated in a home observation and…

This was a two-phase qualitative study that investigated the humorous aspects of humorous photographs young children took in their school and home environment, which were examined in the context of the theory of the absurd and the empowerment theory. The participants in the study were six children--three boys and three girls--between the ages of…

Children with high levels of aggressive behavior and conduct problems create major management problems in school settings and interfere with the learning environment of their classmates and with their own academic achievement. A contextual social-cognitive model can provide a framework for understanding risk factors involved in the development and…

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) is a lifelong condition that significantly affects the individual's learning, development, behavior, family, and quality of life. Diagnosing children with this condition and providing effective supports is challenging for professionals because little intervention research has been performed with the…

To examine the neurobiological consequences of early institutionalization, the authors recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) from 3 groups of Romanian children--currently institutionalized, previously institutionalized but randomly assigned to foster care, and family-reared children--in response to pictures of happy, angry, fearful, and sad…

Background: Trials in developing countries suggest that improving young children's diet may benefit cognitive development. Whether dietary composition influences young children's cognition in developed countries is unclear. Although many studies have examined the relation between type of milk received in infancy and subsequent cognition, there has…

Examined reasoning in normal, autistic, and deaf individuals. Found that deaf individuals who grow up in hearing homes without fluent signers show selective impairments in theory of mind similar to those of autistic individuals. Results suggest that conversational differences in the language children hear accounts for distinctive patterns of…

Abstracts of important research on cognitive style, which has implications for individualized instruction, are presented. Studies are presented which investigate the effect of early childhood coorelates of cognitive style, consider the impact of family environment on the highly intelligent and highly creative adolescent, examines similarities and…

Arguments for and against banning television commercials aimed at children under age 12, as well as the role of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the First Amendment, and parents in regulating such commercials, are explored in this paper. Following an introduction that describes the controversy, a second section of the paper details the…

This report describes the first phase of a two-part study of the processes through which social and economic disadvantagement affect the early cognitive development and educability of urban preschool Negro children. Contents include: the background, conceptual context, and research procedures; the relation of family resources and maternal life…

Used observations and home visits to examine sex differences in language ability of 54 disadvantaged children at risk for poor language outcomes. Found that language difficulties increased over time, boys were at a constant disadvantage to girls in language development, and sex difference in language ability appeared even when families had similar…

Studies conducted with middle-class balanced bilinguals in "additive" environments, where both languages are prestigious, have generally reported that bilinguals showed a higher level of cognitive performance than monolinguals. In these studies, bilinguals showed higher levels of general intellectual skills, higher levels of divergent thinking, a…