Although children's school success is a parental goal in most cultures, there is wide cultural variation in the qualities that parents most wish their children to develop for that purpose. A questionnaire contained forty-one child qualities was administered to 757 parents in seven cultural communities in Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland,…

The need to develop an integrative readiness of future specialists is a relevant scientific problem. The reasons for this could be based on the fact that that the specialists-to-be were expected to be involved in the fierce competition for vacancies and areas of activity, have modern information and communication tools, i.e. have an integrative…

Recent evidence indicates substantial heterogeneity in the returns to skills across countries, but only a few studies have explained the varying patterns in the return to skills. Using the 2013 STEP data for Ghana and Kenya, we estimate the causal effect of cognitive and noncognitive skills on a large set of labour market outcomes by controlling…

Emotion regulation is essential to cognitive, social, and emotional development and difficulties with emotion regulation portend future socioemotional, academic, and behavioral difficulties. There is growing awareness that many developmental outcomes previously thought to begin their development in the postnatal period have their origins in the…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) tend to be less playful than their typically developing (TD) peers. Although playfulness is considered a personality characteristic, little is known about the stability of this trait in interactions with different caregivers. This study compared the playfulness of children with and without ASD in play…

This systematic review sought to understand the individual characteristics of incarcerated youth within the major risk factor domains identified by the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). A comprehensive search of the literature from 1979 to 2013 identified 85 articles of individual-level risk characteristics that…

In, "Idiographic Filters for Psychological Constructs," Nesselroade, Gerstorf, Hardy, and Ram study patterns of variation within individuals. In this context they make an important suggestion: to test for invariant relations among latent variables, but to allow the relations between these latent variables and their indicators to vary between…

This study was an attempt to integrate cognitive development (i.e., cognitive control) and emotional development (i.e., emotion regulation) in the first years of life. The construct of temperament was used to unify cognition and emotion because of its focus on attentional and regulatory behaviors. Children were seen at 8 months and 4 1/2-years of…

Individuals with Down syndrome are predisposed to show a specific behavioural phenotype, or a pattern of strengths and challenges in functioning across different domains of development. It is argued that a developmental approach to researching the Down syndrome behavioural phenotype, including an examination of the dynamic process of the unfolding…

This study investigated the relationship between the attainment of a Piagetian formal operational concept (proportion) and personal characteristics in 117 children 10 to 12 years old. (SB)

A case study of a 29-year-old woman with high functioning autism is presented. Examples of her use of puns, jokes, neologisms, "portmanteau" words, irreverent humor, irony, sarcasm, and word play based on her obsessional interests are provided and discussed in relation to current theories of autism and of normal humor. (Contains references.)…

Reviews a definition of intelligence consonant with research findings and current as well as previous conceptions which opens the way to a theoretical and clinically applicable conception. Reprints available from author, Psychology Department, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15219. (Author/EK)

Conceptual system as a cognitive-developmental variable in personality has been assumed to relate to different cognitions of self and others and of interpersonal relations at each developmental stage. The assumed relationship between conceptual system and some personality variables was studied in a group of students. (Editor)

Assumptions underlying model rely on Cartwright and Harary's (1960) definition of Heider's cognitive balance theory and Festinger's (1957) cognitive dissonance theory. Diagrams illustrate degree of balance between personal and reference group (curch authorities, classmates, family) attitudes. Parts I and II in earlier issues. (CJ)