While American educators fret about the mediocre educational performance of American students in international contests (e.g. the Program for International Student Assessment) and wonder why the Chinese education system produces such high-achieving students, educators, journalists, and public officials in China want to know what causes and how to…

This article explores the relationship between early adolescents' understanding of social issues and their comprehension of a fictional story about interracial conflict. It combines qualitative and quantitative analyses to examine the ways in which social awareness and reading comprehension skills may be interrelated when children and adolescents…

This paper centers on the process of conducting research on children's social development through a partnership between university-based researchers and teachers and students in an urban New England school district. It does so through the eyes of its first author, a second year graduate student who is negotiating the dual roles of researcher and…

For developmental social psychology to be clinically practical, it must use categories of experience similar to categories that counselors, clinicians, and other practitioners find useful. Describes how individuals may function at different levels depending on the context in which they are expressing their understanding. (Author)

To test role-taking development 60 middle class subjects, 10 boys and 10 girls of each age (4, 5, and 6), were administered a role-taking task designed to enable the role-taker ("S") to make and explain predictions about a peer's responses to a situation in which "S" has information not available to the peer. Results suggested…

This paper discusses a developmental-descriptive approach to the study of children, adolescent, and adult understanding of interpersonal relationships. A study is reported which compares the level of interpersonal reasoning of children with clinically identified peer relation problems with the reasoning level of a case-control sample of better…

This report focused on the analysis of the concept of social role-taking (social perspective-taking) from a structural or Piagetian point of view. The stages of social role-taking were defined, in accordance with structural criteria, to try to indicate why, for a given stage, each aspect of the stage logically implied each other aspect. The…

A model of the development of interpersonal negotiation strategies in adolescents is proposed which included social-cognitive, interpersonal, and contextual aspects; and which has implications for such school-based interventions as classroom curriculum, individual/group counseling, school climate/discipline, and parent involvement. Implications…

Role-taking, a prototypical social-cognitive skill, is the ability to view the world (including the self) from another's perspective. (Author/MB)

Argues that research in the context of programs designed to promote the psychosocial competence of children and adolescents is an important road to understanding the fundamental anatomy of social development. Focuses on the theoretical work, research, practice and institutional inventions of the author's professional career. (Author/SD)

This paper presents a structural-developmental model of social cognition and discusses the implications of this approach for social intervention research. This model of social development is concerned with social reasoning and judgment. The basic assumption of this model of social cognition is that the structure of social reasoning develops…

This paper discussed a stage theory of childhood, preadolescent, and adolescent concepts of role-relationships and social reasoning in friendship. It was hypothesized that these concepts develop through levels of perspective-taking, within which individuals view and structure interpersonal relationships. At level one, relationships are based on…

This paper describes an on-going study in which clinical research techniques are used to examine children's social cognition and its development. The study focuses on the relation between subjects' verbally expressed reasoning about social issues in two situations: during interview sessions and in natural life settings. Subjects for the study are…

Education specialists have written volumes on the best ways to help children learn to read and write, but who is helping them navigate the potentially treacherous waters of social interactions? While in school to study, children are also preoccupied with understanding the rules governing social relationships. Issues of trust and loyalty, rivalry…