When in childhood concepts about alcohol and drinking begin to develop has just begun to be investigated. A study was conducted to examine cognitive, maturational, and differential exposure influences on the acquisition of concepts about alcoholic beverages in preschool children. Knowledge about alcoholic beverages and drinking was assessed in 65…

Recognizing the need for some form of evaluation of students' ability to understand the organization of ideas in different subject areas, a study was conducted to evaluate 450 paragraphs written by students aged 12 to 17. Students chose one of three groups of four words each to write on. Each group represented a category, the subjects being…

After a pilot study identified possible responses that children and adolescents give when defining concrete and abstract nouns, a study investigated the development of concrete noun (specific objects) and abstract noun (concepts) definitions given by 10, 14, and 18-year-olds, as well as whether abstract and concrete nouns are defined in a parallel…

Human beings have as great a capacity for losing or forgetting a language as they do for learning one. Many have lost language skills due to a lack of a linguistically appropriate environment in which to use a particular language. Millions of individuals who have studied a second language in high school or college for several years have lost the…

Are young children able to become competent in two languages simultaneously? In an attempt to answer this question, Singaporean Chinese, Malay, and Indian children of 3.5 through 6 years of age who attended six different types of preschool centers were grouped into age bands separated by an interval of 6 months and were given four English tests…

Analysis of Hispanic birth data for 22 states in 1980 showed the following: (1) The fertility rate for Hispanic women was 95.4 births per 1.000 women aged 15-44; this rate was 53 percent higher than the rate for non-Hispanic Whites and five percent higher than for non-Hispanic Blacks. (2) Age-specific birth rates indicated that the fertility of…

A study investigated developmental changes in children's fluency in interpreting metaphors. Specifically, it examined the development of an implicit interpretation strategy found in adults of mapping relational structure from base to target. Ten subjects from each of three age groups--five to six years, nine to ten years, and college-age…

This paper reviews the literature on the elderly prisoner, defined in the majority of studies as 50 or 55 years of age. A discussion from several surveys dealing with the numbers of older adult felons is presented and the crimes that brought these older men to prison are described. Some of the characteristics of older prisoners are discussed,…

This report reviews background and test performance data on one large segment of potential graduate school applicants--Graduate Record Examination (GRE) test takers who were 30 years of age or older and test takers who had received their bachelor's degrees more than eight years earlier. When contrasted with younger test takers, the older group…

This paper examines the growing college premium for younger men and the earnings patterns for other groups that developed between 1973 and 1987. At first glance, the rapidly increasing college premium for young men seems to confirm several frequently cited economic trends, including a massive restructuring of the economy that displaces all less…

Disparities in rates of mobility among groups in the population have long been of interest as indicators of potential differences in access to economic and social opportunities. Racial differentials in mobility within the United States are seen as evidence of the lack of assimilation of blacks into the American mainstream. This paper tests for a…

A needs assessment was conducted with clients of the Rehabilitation Center for Brain Dysfunction (Irvine, California) and other local populations of learning-disabled adults. This report discusses the background of the problem addressed by the needs assessment, presents the results of an in-depth analysis of the responses to the survey instrument,…

Although emotions have been widely studied, researchers have rarely focused on the elderly. Consequently, many questions remain unanswered concerning the emotions of older adults. This study examined age differences in emotional intensity of short- and long-term emotion. Older adults (N=61) and younger adult college students (N=93) completed the…

A review of research was conducted on the possibility of a sensitive period for the acquisition of native-like pronunciation in a second language, as well as on related questions concerning the universality of this phenomenon, age factors, biological versus cultural origins, and developmental psychology. The review showed variation in studies and…

This study investigated the effects of intraprogram synopses on children's comprehension of essential and peripheral content of an action-adventure television drama. The impact of these synopses on the comprehension of commercials also was investigated. A total of 30 second graders and 30 fifth graders participated. Synopses were presented to…