Young children's use of motives and outcomes as criteria for moral judgments was measured under three modes of story presentation and several different combinations of positive and negative motives and outcomes. Recall for the critical story information was also assessed. (Author/RH)

Preschool children ranging in age from three to five years were presented with an array of moral judgment tasks designed to assess their understanding of differing moral criteria. Results showed that older children correctly understood more criteria and that understanding of the relevant moral distinctions was developmentally ordered. (JMB)

Preschoolers named and gave reasons for liking/ disliking an actual best friend and an actual enemy. Questioning of parents and observation of subjects' free play were conducted to verify the existence of close, reciprocal friendships. Content analyses of subjects' responses revealed that different dimensions underlie unilateral and reciprocal…

Defines structural equation modeling (SEM) and points out its relation to other more familiar data-analytic techniques, as well as some of the potentials and pitfalls of SEM in the analysis of developmental data. Discussion focuses on causal modeling, path diagrams, ordinary least-squares regression analysis, and powerful methods for model…

Used computer simulations to examine effectiveness of different criteria for measuring infant visual habituation. Found that a criterion based on fitting a second-order polynomial regression function to looking-time data produced more accurate estimation of looking times and higher power for detecting novelty effects than did the traditional…

In a series of five experiments, young children (two- and three-year-olds) were presented with novel objects in which perceptual and functional features varied independently. Results indicate that early conceptualizations and word meanings are perceptually based when perceptual and functional features are independently available. (Author/RH)

Five common play criteria were applied by subjects to a videotape of nursery school children's behavior, rated separately for occurrence of play. The idea that play is best predicted by a combination of criteria was supported by the finding that, when more criteria occurred simultaneously, the more certainly a judgment of play was implied.…

Presents an overview of a developmental structuralist model based on integration of psychoanalytic and Piagetian developmental psychology. Includes discussion of patterns and insights from a clinical-descriptive intervention study of multirisk families and suggests lines for future research. (RH)