Effects of parents' divorce on children's adjustment have been studied extensively. This article applies new advances in trajectory modeling to the problem of disentangling the effects of divorce on children's adjustment from related factors such as the child's age at the time of divorce and the child's gender. Latent change score models were used…

Viewing indirect aggression on television has been shown to have negative short-term effects on a viewer's subsequent aggressive behavior; however, the longer term relationship between viewing indirect aggression on television and in real life has not yet been examined. Three hundred and forty-seven adolescents, aged 11-14, were asked to list…

Guided by the heuristic model proposed by Eisenberg et al. [Psychol. Inq. 9 (1998) 241], we examined the relations of mothers' reported and observed negative expressivity to children's (N = 159; 74 girls; M age = 7.67 years) experience and expression of emotion. Children's experience and/or expression of emotion in response to a distressing film…

The early identification of children with learning disabilities (LD) is difficult but can be accomplished. Observation of key behaviors which are indicators of LD by preschool and kindergarten teachers can assist in this process. This early identification facilitates the use of intervention strategies to provide a positive early experience for…

There are various opinions concerning the value of positive reinforcement when discussing modifying behaviors of young children. In some cases, individuals considered positive reinforcement difficult to implement and, in extreme cases, even felt it to be detrimental. Educators often use praise interchangeably with positive reinforcement when…

Differential responsiveness to intervention programs suggests the inadequacy of a single treatment approach for all children with autism. One method for reducing outcome variability is to identify participant characteristics associated with different outcomes for a specific intervention. In this investigation, an analysis of archival data yielded…

Although the verbal operants that comprise Skinner's account of verbal behavior provide a seemingly complete description of the behavior of the speaker with respect to what is ordinarily called the expression of meanings, it may be shown that the account is intrinsically deficient in describing the receptive behavior of listeners with regard to…

Two-year-olds' appreciation of the shared nature of object labels versus object preferences was examined in 2 studies. A total of 128 24- to 27-month-olds played a finding game with an experimenter during which they were taught a piece of information about a target object in a nonostensive learning context. In Experiment 1, children were presented…

This study examined the relationship between children's ability to delay gratification and time spent in make-believe play in a sample of 39 three-to five-year-old children. Delay of gratification was determined in an experimental situation (Mischel, 1974). Children's play was assessed using a teacher questionnaire, a mother interview, a child…

This dissertation describes how the medical categories of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Reading Disability (RD) have become commonsense ways to understand educational problems. I explore historical precursors of ADD and RD followed by a report on fieldwork I conducted in a first grade classroom of mostly Latino and low-income children. I…

Researching the epidemiology and estimating the prevalence of fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and other fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) for mainstream populations anywhere in the world has presented a challenge to researchers. Three major approaches have been used in the past: surveillance and record review systems, clinic-based studies, and…

Background: Previous research has reported on the effectiveness of the Signposts program for supporting families of children with an intellectual disability and difficult behaviour (Hudson et al., 2003; Hudson, Cameron, & Matthews, 2008). This paper reports on an investigation of the extent to which child characteristics moderate the…

School-based approaches to addressing aggression in the early grades have focused on explicit curriculum addressing social and emotional processes. The current study reviews research on the distinct modes of aggression, the status of current research on social and emotional processing relevant to problems of aggression amongst young children, as…

Research examining the influence of social relationships on child outcomes has seldom examined how individuals derive social capital from more than one context and the extent to which they may benefit from the capital derived from each. We address this deficit through a study of child behavior problems. We hypothesize that children derive social…

In a 19-year longitudinal study, the 15% most inhibited and the 15% most aggressive children at ages 4-6 years were followed up until age 23 years and were compared with controls who were below average in preschool inhibition or aggressiveness. As adults, inhibited boys and girls were judged as inhibited by their parents and showed a delay in…