The present article proposes a new developmental model of how young infants adapt and respond to complex contingencies in their environment, and how this influences development. The model proposes that typically developing infants adjust to an increasingly complex environment in ways that make it easier for them to allocate limited attentional…

Social skills and symbol skills are positively associated in middle childhood, but the relation between these domains is less clear in newly verbal toddlers. Vygotsky proposed that symbols are both tools for interaction and mental tools for thought. Do symbols help even very young children build skills for interacting with and conceptualizing the…

Facial affect processing is essential to social development and functioning and is particularly relevant to models of depression. Although cognitive and interpersonal theories have long described different pathways to depression, cognitive-interpersonal and evolutionary social risk models of depression focus on the interrelation of interpersonal…

The purpose of this study was to teach empathetic responding to 4 children with autism. Instructors presented vignettes with dolls and puppets demonstrating various types of affect and used prompt delay, modeling, manual prompts, behavioral rehearsals, and reinforcement to teach participants to perform empathy responses. Increases in empathetic…

Discusses the article by Lewis in this issue in the context of complex systems theory. Reviews several concepts of complex systems theory, including self-organization, entropy, phase transitions, stochastic processes, nonlinearity, and attractors. Notes that Lewis highlights the need for psychological models to treat nonlinear processes, chaotic…

Presents a model of cognition and emotion that suggests that feedback between cognition and emotion generates, maintains, and reconfigures interpretations of emotion-eliciting events at micro- and macrodevelopmental time scales and that personality and behavior self-organize in response to fluctuations in perception or cognition and trace…

Research on humans and monkeys is reviewed that supports the view that the medial temporal lobe, and, perhaps more specifically the amygdala, is the neural substrate underlying social deficits in autism. The relationship of early medial temporal lobe lesions to memory and socioemotional behavior is reviewed, as are the roles of the amygdala and…

A conceptual framework of social competence is presented to formulate actions that will enhance the social competence of learners with mental disabilities. This chapter discusses the individual's culturally determined inputs; the processes of social affects, social skills, and social thinking; and the desired social outcomes. The history of social…

Systematic observations of affiliative interaction in 15 stable peer groups were conducted across three years in an urban day care center. Groups contained 193 French-speaking children ranging in age from one to six years. (Author/RH)

This paper examines the identification of children with learning disabilities who are at risk for problems in the social domain. Based on sociometric measures, teacher rating scales, and measures administered to the children, it is found that children with learning disabilities may have problems related to rejection or related to neglect, and that…

Evaluates the effects of expanding sex-role alternatives on the passage of American middle-class women through the Eriksonian model of identity achievement. Contrasts contemporary norms regarding appropriate feminine roles with the more constricted social expectations of Erikson's time. Discusses validity of Erikson's original model of female…

A multifaceted model to promote peer play was implemented with play groups including 3 children (ages 6-8) with autism, resulting in decreased isolate play and collateral gains in social play, and decreased stereotyped object play and collateral gains in functional object play. Advances in play behaviors were generalized and were accompanied by…

The primary core deficit in autism spectrum disorders is social development. While frequently acknowledged as a critical aspect of intervention for improved functioning, research on the specifics of social development and effective models of intervention is not commensurate with the acknowledged importance. We present a model of social competence…

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…

In this study, preferences for activities with people vs. objects were examined in preschool children and related to two kinds of intellectual abilities. Children with high object orientation were expected to be relatively advanced in organizing and classifying physical objects. In contrast, children with high people orientation were expected to…