A conceptual model describing the environmental factors and parent and child characteristics that contribute to the development of conduct disorder in early childhood is proposed. Environmental stressors associated with poverty, poor parenting strategies, and child deficits in communication skills are posited to be negative factors that affect…

Questioned day care center children during free play about their collective activity to determine how the representation of cooperation is structured and what kind of transformation appears during development. Found a developmental trend of representation of group activity after age 2. Results highlight the importance of group and day care center…

Subsyllabic awareness was investigated with a word synthesis task completed by 96 children in kindergarten, first, and second grade. Evidence supports a developmental trend that shows performance improved with each grade. Children blended speech segments more easily when the segments were the syllable onset and rime. (SLD)

Presents a study designed to determine which particular aspects of pregnancy, birth, and babies were of most interest to 8-year-old children. Children were interested in details of a baby's behavior and development as well as the impact of its arrival on the parents. There were distinct gender differences in those topics, which particularly…

Synthesizes theoretical perspectives from social opportunity, critical pedagogy, and interactive literacy to interpret data on schooling outcomes for Black, Hispanic, and White students. The analysis draws on the High School and Beyond database to show significant patterns of divergence as well as convergence in the process of academic…

Presents a model for understanding children's formation of schemas of self, other, and how self and other do and should communicate emotion. Attributes important roles to families' tendencies to display or not display emotion and to their rules regarding desirability and importance of communicating emotion. Notes that child characteristics and…

The effects of anticonvulsant medication or alcohol use during pregnancy on the development of children are examined. Malformations of children whose mothers used anticonvulsant medications or alcohol while pregnant are illustrated. Prevention of the use of alcohol and anticonvulsant medication by pregnant women is discussed. (CR)

This article reviews research showing that high-quality parent-infant interaction is important in the promotion of child resiliency and should be emphasized in family-centered early intervention programs. Research on risk factors that threaten the quality of parent-infant interaction and thus resiliency in infants and young children is also…

Evaluated a conceptual model that links temperament, emotional knowledge, and family expressiveness to preschoolers' emotional regulation ability by giving "disappointing" prizes after a task. Subjects were 82 preschoolers. Found that children's positive displays when presented the disappointing prize were inversely related to the…

Major shifts in policy have marked the attitude toward homework in U.S. educational history. This discussion focuses on the effort to abolish homework waged by Progressive educational experts in the early 20th century. Health was the primary argument against homework in the years before World War I. (SLD)

Describes physical and motor development characteristics of children from early childhood to adolescence, and discusses theories of motor skill development with practical applications for parents and teachers. The final section discusses declining fitness levels in children and ways to improve fitness in school-age children. (SLD)

This study examined how family structure affected children's delinquency and math test scores, parenting practices as a mediator, and racial differences in these effects. Findings indicated that single parenthood related to reduced well-being among European American children, but not African American children. Cohabitation related to greater…

Two studies investigated the developmental trends and concurrent validity of the Language Proficiency Profile-2 (LPP-2), a measure of language and communication skills for deaf children. Results indicate that the LPP-2 has good utility not only as a measure of overall language development but also as a predictor of achievement for English language…

This listing provides the title, author, and length of doctoral dissertations completed during 2002 relating to children and adults with deafness or hearing impairments. Topics include speech development, literacy, peer tutoring, curriculum based assessment, and the effect of student placement on narration skills. Ordering information is provided.…

Examines short-term memory for spoken words ignored at the time of their presentation. Age differences in the persistence of memory was found. Suggests that relatively attention-free properties of short-term memory may change with development in childhood, and priority should be given to distinguish maturational and experiential influences on…