THE FIRST OF A SERIES OF THREE PROJECTS WAS DESIGNED TO STUDY THE RESPONSES OF CHILDREN AND THEIR PARENTS IN AN EFFORT TO FORMULATE AN EXPERIMENTAL GUIDANCE PROGRAM. A GROUP OF 111 NINTH-GRADE STUDENTS WHO LIVE IN LOW-RENT DISTRICTS WAS STUDIED. IN ADDITION TO THE ANALYSIS OF THE STUDENTS, SCHOOL RECORDS, APTITUDE TESTS, AND PREFERENCE TESTS, THE…

Parental discipline appears to play a major role in the development of delinquent and aggressive behavior. The belt theory predicts that parents who have used corporal punishment are likely to produce children who exhibit delinquent behavior. A striking factor is that all delinquent youths see corporal punishment as necessary in child rearing and…

This report of a research project examines the relationship between learning gain and certain noninstructional factors. Specifically, the comprehension, vocabulary, and mathematics gains of Title I students enrolled in a particular elementary school during the 1978-79 school year were correlated with 19 noninstructional variables collected from…

The frequency with which a child's parents use a given linguistic form has been considered influential in language development. This hypothesis has been challenged, however, notably by Ervin (1964) and Brown (1973). The frequency hypothesis makes the assumptions that: (1) children are not selective in what they attend to, (2) they listen to most…

This research correlates maternal sociodemographic and psychological data and dimensions of maternal behavior at four and twelve months with dimensions of infant adjustment and competence at twelve months. Interviews of 321 low-income mothers were completed during the third trimester of pregnancy, at four months and at twelve months.…

A mother's interactions with her young daughter were studied with special emphasis placed upon the frequencies of linguistically instructional input and the strategies employed to provide this information. The girl was between 18 and 28 months old and her mean length of utterance (MIU) was between 1.5 and 4.3 morphemes. Only maternal input was…

The influence of maternal language use patterns on the use patterns of the child was investigated in a black, low-income mother-child pair over a 20-month period, beginning at the child's 11th month of age. Video recordings were made of the pair's interaction in an unstructured playroom setting approximately every four weeks. Child multi-word…

The behavior, attitudes, and social class of 48 Negro mothers and 48 Negro fathers were related to the development of their fifth grade boys' flexible thinking, defined as the ability to consider alternative means to a given end. The parents were interviewed at home and asked to teach their sons four tasks. Linear relationships were found linking…

This project was designed to follow up a group of 163 mothers and their 4-year-old children, who were subjects in a study of the differential effects of middle class and lower class cognitive environments on Negro urban preschool children. The objectives of the followup project were: (1) the expansion of the investigation of cognitive input…

This study examined the relationship between college students' perceptions of their parents' attitudes toward them during childhood and adolescence and the subjects' own child rearing attitudes. A total of 188 undergraduates enrolled in an introductory psychology course participated in the study. Forty-two males and 46 females were themselves…

Parents have a significant role in preparing their children to read; they can help shape and strengthen the school's reading program. Articles included in this Right to Read bulletin deal with the following topics: the heightened interest among educators in parent involvement in reading instruction; sharing tasks between parents and teachers in…

An experiment was performed to assess if, and how, attention to a problem solving task varies with anxiety level. It was hypothesized that high anxious children would glance away from a task more often than less anxious children, in light of research literature which suggests that high anxious children are inattentive to tasks in order to avoid…

"Infralanguage," a non-verbal channel of communication, exists within daily conversation. Two divisions of "infralanguage" have been identified: the non-stated thematic, that is, themes presented in topics of discourse; and the sequence of those themes within conversation. This unspoken communication is implicit and ubiquitous…

Although early socialization and present life situation are indeed important factors to career orientation, the sex role ideology of a woman is equally if not more significant in her career motivation. Questionnaire data from 278 women aged 18 to 50 were used to examine the relative importance of early socialization, present life situation, future…

The three related papers of this symposium report a model, methods, and research on parent involvement, parent-teacher interaction, and child adjustment and achievement. The development of the project from conceptualization of the domain, development and analyses of methods for data collection, to the analysis of correlations of parent and teacher…