Students (n=1,500) in grades 2, 8, and 12 were given pure-tone threshold hearing tests to determine whether prevalence of hearing loss varied with age. A significantly higher prevalence of hearing loss was found in older children. Comparison with earlier data found a greater prevalence of hearing loss among second and eighth graders today than 10…

An auditory comprehension task was used to determine the ways in which first and fifth graders and adults use topic continuity and contrastive emphasis in the assignment of referents for pronouns in sentences. The finding of significant differences in performance for emphasized and unemphasized pronouns suggests that subjects use constrastive…

Second, fourth, and sixth graders were given passage of text whose material could be represented as four-level class inclusion hierarchy. Students were asked to construct external representation of passage and answer questions that required them to reason about contents of passage. Quality of representation and performance on question tasks were…

In this study of sensitivity to viewpoint, children between the ages of 6 and 14 years were asked to draw an L-shaped array of 3 cubes from 1 of 3 views. At every age, children showed sensitivity to their view in the sense that there were consistent differences between the drawings produced in the three viewing conditions. (SH)

Adolescents 10 to 18 years of age were interviewed 4.5 years after their parents' divorce. Adolescents' feeling of being caught between parents was related to high parental conflict and low parental cooperation. Closeness to both parents was related to low feelings of being caught between parents. Feeling caught was related to poor adjustment…

Each of 111 families with seventh grade daughters was observed in a family interaction task. Results indicated that conflict with parents, and especially with the mother, was more frequent shortly after menarche than at other times. Withdrawal of positive affect was associated with menarcheal status. (BC)

Examined third and seventh graders during dual tasks to estimate the mental effort required to elaborate accessible noun pairs. Findings indicated that the accessibility difference was limited to the third grade. Findings support a knowledge-base view of developmental differences in elaboration effort. (SH)

Compared characteristics of 234 elementary school students of average intelligence, 114 of whom were referred for psychological services. Found boys referred 4 times as frequently as girls; 16 times as many boys within relatively youngest group were referred as girls within oldest group. Groups were discriminated using mathematics achievement,…

Examines age differences in control beliefs for several domains, including intellectual aging and memory, for 200 adults aged 20-89 years. In domains of health and intellectual aging, older adults have lower internal control and higher external control beliefs than young and middle-age adults. A memory training program is described. (SLD)

Describes a model of adaptation to the environment across the life span. Proposes that an individual's performance in an activity is affected not only by cognitive capacity but also by perceptions and definitions of the activity. Empirical support for the model, based on a survey of individuals' everyday experiences and on laboratory studies, is…

School-aged, hearing-impaired children's propensity for incorporating complex syntax into the narratives and conversations they produced was investigated. Language samples containing both conversations and narratives in the form of story retellings were collected from seven subjects with moderate-to-severe hearing losses. (48 references) (VWL)

Assessed the cognitive readiness for parenting of 171 pregnant adolescents, 48 nonpregnant adolescents, and 38 pregnant adults. Found that adolescents were less cognitively prepared, experienced more stress in parenting, and were less adaptive in their parenting style than adult mothers. Relationships between cognitive readiness and parenting…

Analysis of retrospective self-reports about childhood curiosity to see persons in the nude, with heterosexual and homosexual pedophiles, gynephiles, and androphiles, suggests that establishment of erotic sex preference proceeded that of age preference, and a greater proportion of pedophiles than gynephiles or androphiles remembered childhood…

Sixty female and 51 male young adults completed a questionnaire concerning abuse in family of origin, focusing on child abuse before age 10, child abuse between ages 10 and 17, adult-to-adult abuse, and child sexual abuse. Men and women reported different experiences with all types of family abuse except extreme child abuse. (Author/JDD)

Measured the facial expressions, heart rate variability (HRV), and skin conductance of 37 third graders and 29 sixth graders while they viewed a film about a distressed child. Found that high HRV was predictive of children's sympathetic rather than distressed reactions and that, for boys, sympathetic responsiveness positively predicted a…