Examined contribution of family variables such as parenting and literacy activities to the pre-academic competence of 93 Head Start children. Found that maternal educational expectations, home literacy variables, and maternal school involvement were predictive of children's competence even after accounting for the effects of maternal education,…

Examined the association of parental support and parental pressure with enjoyment, performance, self-esteem, and other characteristics of young tournament tennis players. Results indicate that parental support was significantly associated with enjoyment and with the importance players ascribed to their tennis game. Parental pressure failed to…

Presents an analysis of personal, socialization, and structural factors affecting the lifespan achievement of 15 Asian American women identified as gifted. Their families' intense focus on educational achievement and hard work are described, and the need for better preparation to overcome obstacles in the workplace is discussed. (Author/CR)

Notes that the literature of group studies is controversial and confusing on the effect of communicative variables on small-group decision making. Postulates that two classes of variables (homogeneity and task) moderate the relationship between group communication and group performance. Advances the ambiguity model to reconcile the contradictory…

The visual imagery of four individuals with blindness was compared with that of five sighted individuals using the detection of mirror symmetry. The two participants who lost their sight later in life outperformed the two with congenital blindness, indicating the importance of early visual experience in visual imagery. (CR)

Examined 2-year-olds' comprehension and production of novel nouns, verbs, or actions at 3 intervals after training conducted in massed or distributed exposures. Found that for comprehension, children learned all item types in all training conditions at all retention intervals. Production was better for nonverbal actions than for either word type…

This study tested 5- and 8-year-olds and adults in a bisection task with a sequence of stimuli in which time and number co-varied. Findings indicated that the number of stimuli interfered with 5-year-olds' performance on the temporal bisection task. Number interference decreased both with age and counting strategy. In the numerical bisection task,…

This study explored 5- to 17-year-olds' use, self report, and awareness of verbal problem-solving strategies and strategy effectiveness. Findings indicated that children's verbal strategies moved from overt, to partially covert, to fully covert forms with age. Self-reports of strategy use were accurate yet incomplete. Strategy awareness was low…

Discusses high-involvement work teams, in which groups of workers participate in improving their work activities; describes how a typical work team progresses through a project; and introduces a systems model of interrelated steps through which teams may progress to solve problems. (LRW)

Results from a representative sample of 123 adults in the United Kingdom tested with the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised and a test of word identification time are in line with previous findings that speed of information processing is significantly related to performance IQ but not to verbal IQ. (SLD)

The differentiation hypothesis suggests that the degree to which general intelligence ("g") pervades performance on mental tests is greater at lower ability levels. Analysis of data from Differential Aptitude Test results for over 10,500 Irish school children ages 14 to 17 years supports the differentiation hypothesis. (SLD)

Two experiments examined how 5- and 10-year-olds revised their category representations when exposed to exemplars that were congruent or incongruent with existing knowledge. Findings indicated that judgments about feature co-occurrent within the learned category were influenced by both stereotypical beliefs and exemplar observation. Stereotypical…

Three experiments with 164 individuals between 4 and 80 years old examined age-related changes in explicit memory for three perceptual features: item identity, color, and location. Findings indicated that performance on explicit memory tests was not a consistent inverted U-shaped function of age across various features, but depended on the…

Examined performance on ventromedial prefrontal tasks of preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), preschoolers with developmental delays, and typically- developing 12- to 46-month-olds, matched on mental age. Found that children with ASD performed similarly to comparison groups on all executive function tasks. Ventromedial, but not…