Discusses U.S. and Australian research on adolescence and the factors affecting friendship. Compared with Australian students, American adolescents were found to prescribe more closeness and more assertiveness to same-sex friendships; those in private schools were more assertive and less close. Girls prescribed more closeness but had less…

Examined effectiveness of preventive stress inoculation program for adolescents (n=48) that consisted of progressive muscle relaxation, cognitive restructuring, and assertiveness training. Compared with control subjects, trainees showed significantly greater improvements on self-report measures of trait anxiety and stress-related symptoms at…

Examined mother-child interaction in play and teaching tasks. Mother-child interaction aggregates represented task orientation, positive emotion, and allowance of autonomy. Maternal interaction aggregates predicted teachers' ratings of children's positive social behavior, assertiveness, and sadness in the preschool setting. (BC)

Study attempted to increase the positive self-esteem of preservice teachers through a brief assertion training course. Students received either three, six, or nine hours of training, and controls received no training. Pretesting and posttesting found significant increases in self-acceptance and self-concept after assertion training. (SM)

The ability of 10 adults with mental retardation to exhibit linguistic control within peer and staff dyads was evaluated. Participants produced significantly more utterances with staff than with peers; however, they did not exhibit significant amounts of directives or questions, the two types of verbal control bids studied. (Author/CR)

An individual with a developmental disability discusses self-advocacy, involvement with the American Association on Mental Retardation, dislike of the term "mental retardation," the need for such organizations to work more closely with people who have disabilities, and the need for such organizations and society at large to be more…

Our action research project report provided students with social skills training to effectively handle bullying situations in the fourth grade. Our study involved 70 fourth-grade students and began Monday, January 14, 2008 and concluded Friday, May 2, 2008. The behaviors documented from the fourth grade students were name calling, exclusion,…

The current work investigated the effects of social influence on children's recall accuracy and metacognitive monitoring. Two studies were conducted in which 8-and 10-year-olds were confronted with postevent information in an interview situation. An interviewer (Study 1) or a confederate (Study 2) provided postevent information with two levels of…

An overview of academic matriculation with an emphasis on specific skills, concepts, and applications that can be used to develop an appreciation of success in higher education is presented. By defining the student as the center of planning, techniques are provided to translate ideas and abstract thought to real-world applications. Recommendations…

Assertiveness training can help people identify patterns of behavior that block effective communication. The concept of assertiveness and some practical exercises for exploring assertiveness with groups or individuals are presented in this curriculum guide. Intended for use in high school, in adult education classes, in job-related inservices or…

This monograph describes projects of the Minnesota Governor's Planning Council on Developmental Disabilities which focus on empowerment and self-advocacy for individuals with disabilities and their family members. Individual sections address: (1) Partners in Policymaking (an intensive course to train individuals with disabilities and family…

Patterns of drug use among teenagers indicate they are highly influenced by peers. To examine the influence of Say It Straight, an alcohol/drug abuse prevention program aimed at teaching adolescents to deal with peer pressure, sixth, seventh and eighth graders (N=509) created and role played situations in which they wanted to say "no" to…

There is little literature comparing personality differences between traditional (under age 25) and reentry women students (aged 25 and older). The purpose of the present study is to examine these differences. A background questionnaire and five additional scales: (1) the Work and Family Orientation Questionnaire (WOFO-3); (2) the…

Interpersonal communication can be viewed in terms of an aggressive-nonaggressive continuum. Past research has often focused on nonaggressive forms of interpersonal communication, such as understanding how people get to know one another, how trust and intimacy develop, and the role of self-disclosure in relationship development. However,…

In light of cultural stereotypes in which Black women function as strong heads of households while Hispanic women serve as obedient wives, a study examined whether Black and Hispanic subjects evaluated assertive speech differently when attributed to a male or female speaker. Subjects, 75 Blacks and 100 Hispanics, all undergraduate students…