Part of an ongoing longitudinal research project, a study was made to develop a method and a multilevel model for evaluating at its earliest stages the relationship between a mother and her child. The main hypothesis of the study was that the early mother-child relationship, consisting of maternal responses and a mother's images of her role in…

Human development has two different stories to tell. One describes the growth of the universal characteristics that are present in all human beings because humans possess a particular set of genes. Four examples of biologically prepared, universal characteristics in the psychological growth of children are the growth of memory, of moral sense and…

This paper presents data gathered from three countries. Samples of students of high-school age from Japan (N-l700), India (N-1446) and Illinois (N-9582) completed the High School Mathematics Test, and, at the same time, responded to a questionnaire designed to measure various demographic and psychological variables. This paper reports not only on…

In comparing research conducted in the Netherlands and the United States on parental reports of child behavior, this document reports several studies in which Dutch parents of children ages 3 to 36 months completed a translated version of Bates' Infant Characteristics Questionnaire (ICQ). In the first part of the Dutch study, 7,000 parents…

Workshops on child development explored the cognitive development of children, mass media and its effects on children, parenting, the emotional and personality development of children, and educating the exceptional child, including the gifted. The discussion of cognitive development focused on the need to collect information about cognitive…

Psychometric research was conducted on the TEMAS (meaning "themes" in Spanish) Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). Personality functioning is rated in terms of constructs such as delay of gratification, achievement motivation, reality testing, and self-concept. The TEMAS test was administered to 140 public and 140 private school students…

The paper reports findings of a study describing and analyzing the creative and social behavior of four highly original children in the context of 1 year's preschool experience. Videotape, interview, participant observation, and artifact data were collected to construct the descriptions. The study attempted to answer the following questions: (1)…

A study was made of how Australian mothers feel about having their children in day care, with particular emphasis on mothers' feelings about separation from their children. A total of 10 mothers and 1 father participated in the pilot study. All but 1 parent had a child in day care at least 3 days per week. The children, who were between 4 and 22…

Studies of the effects of parental occupation on offspring's vocational aspiration or choice have shown that family variables contribute to the development of occupational personality types. To investigate the congruence between parent and offspring Holland occupational personality type codes, and to assess the variations of this congruence across…

As data on the reliability and validity of ratings of infant temperament have accumulated, researchers have begun to ask what caregiver ratings really measure. An argument has been made that ratings of social behavior are less a reflection of enduring individual differences than a measure of rater characteristics and error variance. This study…

The relationship between characteristics of academic disciplines and intellectual traits of undergraduates was studied. Subject matter areas were structurally reflected in the university as department or major field groupings. A total of 2,278 students, graduating in either 1969-1970 or 1979-1980, were administered the 14 scales of the Omnibus…

A theoretical framework for incorporating item response theory into the measurement of attitude and other personality processes is presented. The person by item model is introduced by considering the conceptual usefulness of such a model in understanding item responding, outlining the form of the model, briefly discussing methods for examining the…

A new interactive model of attention, perception, memory, and arousal is introduced; and its use in assessing characteristics of the perceptual process is demonstrated. The principal concern is not the presentation of new data; rather it is placement of existing psychological data within a new context. Topics discussed include: attention as an…

The relative influence of selected life history experiences on the development of three vocational types (investigative, social, and enterprising) proposed by J. L. Holland is studied using causal modeling procedures. The lack of explicitness in the developmental postulates of Holland's theory is seen as a major deficiency. Among the principal…

Implemented in an urban community college's child development teacher training program, this practicum project addressed the problem of discrepancies between training and work environments. General goals of the practicum were: (1) to design a learning styles training format for preschool teachers; (2) to provide teachers with factual information…