Investigates the role of maternal affective arousal as a moderator of the effect of mothers' child rearing practices on children's empathic responding. (PCB)

Two studies examined the relationship between children's perceived social control and their visual reactions to videotapes of positive, neutral, or fearful child-doctor interactions. Found that children with high levels of social control showed high visual engagement when viewing the fearful scenes, whereas low-control children showed relatively…

Critiques the work of R. L. Stine, writer of juvenile horror fiction. The "Goosebumps" series for readers ages 8 to 12 years and the "Fear Street" series for those ages 9 to 14 years, both created by Stine, are shock fiction for the young--fiction that is all sensation, but no real feeling. (SLD)

Presents several exercises to be used with student actors. Notes that the exercises show how actors reach emotions through the senses and help student actors eliminate self-consciousness. (RS)

Six experiments measured preschoolers' ability to remember the affective reactions of characters in television shows. In two experiments, less than 1 percent of characters' reactions were recalled. In three experiments, children accurately recognized labels for reactions immediately after their portrayal but showed reductions in recognition memory…

Examined the relationship between perspective taking in response to another's distress and prosocial behavior and dispositional affective empathy in late childhood. The tendency to reflect spontaneously on the inner experience of others who are unfortunate was positively related to prosocial behavior in boys and to affective empathy in both sexes.…

Emotional characteristics of gifted children are examined. Frameworks developed by G. Betts and M. Neihart and by A. Roeper, which classify children by features of their characteristic emotional response, are described. Gifted children's unusual levels of sensitivity and intensity are noted and illustrated with a case example. (JDD)

Photographs of facial emotional expressions posed by adults classified as mentally retarded were judged by familiar and unfamiliar adults who were not mentally retarded. Happiness and sadness were accurately posed most often. The ability to encode facial emotional expressions was correlated with assessments of interpersonal competence provided by…

Describes a men's therapy group in which touch seems to facilitate self-disclosure and interpersonal communication. Claims despite cultural taboo for men to engage in physical touching, the act of embracing another man, in context of therapy group, does seem to encourage expression of deeper feelings and lessen the isolation men often feel in the…

Responds to Susan McLeod's "The Affective Domain and the Writing Process: Working Definitions." Suggests and defends an alternate way to define affect, based on the interweaving of affect and cognition. Discusses the "cognitive-affective dance." (PRA)

Infants participated in a nonsocial contingency task immediately after a social interaction with their mothers. The amount of time mothers and infants spent in a state of vocal turn-taking predicted individual differences in infants' subsequent performance on the contingency task. (PCB)

Explored hypothesis that husbands with lower levels of emotional involvement with their families are less likely to participate in research. Administered questionnaires to wives (N=57) of husbands refusing to participate in study and wives (N=120) of husbands who willingly participated. Found nonparticipant husbands rated as less emotionally…

Measures of positive and negative affect and affect ability; of look, approach, and proximity behavior; and of overall response pattern were obtained from 66 infants of 12 months. These measures and other results suggested that both parents are significant sources of emotional guidance for infants in conditions of uncertainty. (RH)

Advocates adding to the "KWL" instructional strategy chart a fourth column signifying children's affective responses, thus expanding the chart to "KWLA" as students assign their own relevance and personal value to their learning experiences. (SR)

Examined data from National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to investigate relationship between infant affect and quality of home environment. Found that infant irritability was negatively correlated with quality of home environment in both low-risk and high-risk families. Infant positive affect was more strongly related to quality of care in…