Accidental and purposeful disclosures of sexual abuse that were made by children from 3 to 17 years of age who were confirmed as credible victims were studied. The large majority of children at first denied the abuse. Maintains that disclosure is a process with definable phases and characteristics. (BB)

Uses statistical data from the National Survey of Children to examine the effects of work experience on the academic achievement, well-being, and life satisfaction of both younger and more mature male and female adolescents. Finds beneficial consequences for younger males but negative consequences for older females. (FMW)

Of 124 students (ages 5-15) with behavioral/emotional problems, 38 percent were identified as also having learning disabilities and an additional 17.8 percent as having learning problems. The incidence of learning disabilities decreased with age, but that of learning problems remained stable regardless of age groupings. (DB)

In three amplitude discrimination experiments involving a backward masking task, children's rate of perceptual processing was compared to that of adults. Developmental differences in discrimination were compensated for by increases in the psychophysical difference between test tones. No developmental differences in rate of perceptual processing…

Presented preschoolers through college students with lists that included twice-presented items separated by varying numbers of intervening items. Performance on a subsequent recognition test improved as the spacing between repetitions increased. There were no differences in performance between age levels. (BC)

Tested comprehension of syntactic structures by presenting each structure with both plausible and implausible content. Results revealed that cognitive nonlinguistic factors were important for comprehension and that errors and reaction time increased with age. The minimal contribution of neuropsychological factors to this decline suggests that the…

Descriptive information was gathered about 790 students with learning disabilities in primary, intermediate, and secondary grades. Results included identification of learning disabilities peaked in first grade; 76 percent of these students were identified by the end of grade 5; and students with more severe discrepancies tended to be identified at…

A retrospective review of 77 cases of sexual abuse of boys who were assessed by a multidisciplinary child protection team in Florida provided data on age at time of referral, findings of medical examinations, the relationship of offender to child, and type of abuse. (BB)

The hypothesis that a task that increases in complexity (increasing its correlation with a central measure of intelligence) does so by increasing its dimensionality by tapping individual differences or another variable was supported by findings from 46 adults aged 20-70 years performing a mental counting task. (SLD)

Middle-aged (n=160) and older (n=160) adults were asked to list the 10 most important events in the twentieth-century United States. Classification and analysis of answers supported the notion that gender and age are related to value judgment. The effects of education were often opposite on the middle aged and the elderly. (SK)

Developmental changes in the pattern of 50 families' conversations about feelings were examined when the families' second-born children were 33 and 47 months old. The total amount of talk and the frequency of talk about feelings between sibling pairs increased, whereas the amount of mother-child conversation and references to feelings decreased.…

Age and sex differences in children's beliefs about strategies for reducing parental anger were assessed. The central question was whether direct intervention strategies are effective in lessening parental anger and reflect an advanced understanding of emotion regulation. Results showed no simple linear age increase in the belief that direct…

Compared adults (n=165) in their 60s, 80s, and 100s on personality, life events, and coping. Found personality differences: centenarians scored higher on dominance, suspiciousness, and imagination. Although centenarians scored lower on active behavioral coping than other age groups, they used cognitive strategies when coping with health and family…

Assessed alcohol use by 1,190 fourth, fifth, and sixth graders in 4 rural school districts. Found that 596 students drank, but not regularly. Reported drinking increased with grade and age; males drank more than females. Child's attitude toward drinking, family attitudes toward drinking, number of drinking friends, and self-perceived wrongdoing by…

Children's use of the middle concept was assessed in two developmental studies. Experiment 1, with kindergarten through fifth-grade students, showed marked improvement in the mastery of the middle concept across elementary grades. In Experiment 2, discrimination pretraining with two nonoverlapping stimulus sets transferred to the novel test…