Elementary school teachers are introduced to role playing as a device for encouraging students to understand and empathize with other people's attitudes, values, and feelings. Two approaches to classroom role playing are discussed. The first, set forth by Schaftel, includes the following steps: warming up, selecting role players, setting the…

Reexamined the theoretical question of early childhood egocentrism by replicating Piaget and Inhelder's mountain experiment with variations to insure the age appropriateness of the task for 3- and 4-year-old children. (SDH)

Shifting theoretical perspectives of intercollegiate policy debate, especially the changing affirmative case constructs, warrant reformulations of various strategies open to the negative case such as those developed by W. Ulrich, R. Dempsey, and D. Hartmann. Options open to the affirmative have increased, e.g., the comparative advantages case, the…

To explain the role of empathy in forms of prosocial behavior, two studies were conducted to examine the relationships among different dimensions of empathy, communication, and prosocial behavior. Study one tested three models hypothesized to explain this process, an altruistic model, an egoistic model, and a dual-process model combining aspects…

Although role or perspective taking has been considered important for the development of mature social thought and behavior, and training for perspective taking has been used to remediate deficient behavior, few studies with either normal or disturbed populations have examined naturally occurring behaviors expected to correlate with…

Traditionally, social psychology has conceptualized sex and gender as subject variables with sex as a biological substrate and gender as a sociocultural consequence of sex. These ideas rest on the assumption of two distinct biological categories. However, gender is better thought of in dialectical rather than oppositional terms. Gender is both…

The effect of interpersonal problem-solving skills training on the verbal and behavioral competence in the social problem-solving of preschoolers was assessed. An intervention was designed to help preschoolers set goals, generate alternatives, and evaluate outcomes in problematic social situations. For the verbal component of social…

This paper examines the whole notion of global education by discussing theoretical and practical understandings by major figures in the field. Global education is a recent addition in social studies and there are many different understandings and conceptual which effectively teach the concepts in schools as part of the entire curriculum. A review…

An investigation was undertaken to further the conceptual and operational nature of interpersonal solidarity. Specifically, the investigation considered additional criterial attributes of solidarity to those previously studied by L. R. Wheeless. The sample consisted of 162 adults drawn from elementary and secondary school teachers, college…

This study examines the possibility that ability to avoid detection of deceptive behavior via nonverbal behavior might be related to an individual's role-taking skill. Sixty-one 5 to 12 year-old boys and girls were led to be verbally deceptive or truthful by saying that they either had enjoyed or not enjoyed an unpleasant experience or had enjoyed…

A study involving 39 retarded (24 to 92 months old) and 61 nonretarded (18 to 54 months old) children was designed to determine what fundamental social cognitive skills young retarded children possess, to describe the characteristics and developmental factors of such skills, and to determine whether previous findings on the development of these…

Suggests the value of a prewriting sheet which asks remedial students to specify an occasion, audience, and purpose for each of their one-paragraph papers. (DD)

Explores (1) problems of the validity of tests of spatial ability, and (2) problems of the recessive gene influence theory of the origin of sex differences in spatial ability. Studies of cognitive strategies in spatial problem solving are suggested as a way to further investigate recessive gene influence. (Author/RH)

In examining the concept "rural" and the rural sociologist's perspective towards the world, it is concluded that the concept "rural" is poorly understood for the purpose of "normal science," and that the world should be viewed as an ongoing process rather than stable fact. (KR)

Extends the concept of decentering to understand family patterns. Shows how decentering can be used with Rational Emotive Therapy and Transactional Analysis. These theoretical ideas are the basis for a cognitive model of therapy--TARET Systems, having a major goal of increasing awareness through shifting perspective on oneself and others. (Author)