Analyzes rationales for governmental intervention in child care and parent education. Considers response to social trends, enhancement of parental competence and child development, provision of support to families, equal opportunity for women, and community development as areas through which social goals may be achieved by incremental changes. (GC)

Discusses a five-session group experience within the context of establishing a support group for single custodial fathers. Includes topics of dating, remarriage, homemaking and house maintenance, and the effects of divorce on children. A follow-up showed fathers appreciated the sense of community and specific information and coping strategies.…

Examined one-year follow-up data on a cognitive-behavioral treatment. Improvements were found for subjects in all treatment groups, and these effects were attributed to increased age. Results indicated that conceptually trained children showed significantly better recall of the material than either concrete trained or control group children.…

The use of symbols in the play of young children during the preoperational period of cognitive development provides the foundation in representation that will be needed later when using higher abstract forms such as written words. (JN)

Reports a successful method of teaching toileting procedures to a young elementary student. Implications discussed for school psychologists were: (1) handling intervention through a consultation model; (2) using the simplest approach before attempting more powerful procedures; and (3) attempting treatment despite previously unsuccessful…

Mothers were asked to predict their children's responses to standardized intelligence test items. Negative correlation was expected between inaccurate maternal knowledge of children's ability and degree of children's psychological development. False maternal predictions correlated - .80 with correct children's responses. Nearly all of the…

Results suggested that when role taking is viewed as requiring a shift to less subjective views, different types of role-taking skills (communicative, spatial, relational, and cognitive) are moderately related. Results also indicated intellectual ability underlies these role-taking skills. (Author/DB)

This article describes the bilingual/multicultural curriculum models developed by four Head Start projects. (DB)

Reviews three areas of research relevant to the impact of women's changing status on children's development: infant competence, maternal employment, and group care of very young children. Concludes that women's increasing social participation will not harm but rather benefit children, as long as comprehensive family support services are provided.…

The Plowden Report drew heavily on Piaget's theories of cognitive development, especially his concepts of activity and discovery learning and readiness. But Piaget's theory is not a pedagogical one and it has little to say about teaching content and methods. Recently, criticism of his theory has grown. (Author/SJL)

Presents findings from an in-depth study of children's composing processes in an effort to explain handwriting performance in relation to child development and the writing process. (GT)

The influence of the oral input of five deaf mothers on the language development of their two-year-old children was investigated. The results indicated that children, when cognitively ready, need little exposure to the normal model language to learn to speak during the early stages of development. (Author/DLS)

The shaping of human motor development is demonstrated by the orderly sequence of events which occur throughout the individual's development process. Muscular strength and proficiency in gross motor skills improve with advancing chronological age throughout childhood and adolescence, with sex differences in performance tending to favor males. (JN)

Both right-and left-handed normally developing 6-year-olds showed considerable evidence of bilateralization of hemispheric functions for spatial and verbal information processing; the slowly developing children (ages 5-9) exhibited unusual patterns of hemispheric specialization usually opposite those typically expected in children or adults.…