Currently, professionals disagree about whether children should be informed about their illnesses and the possibility of their deaths. Some experts feel discussion of these subjects would only upset the children while others feel this knowledge is the children's right and will allay the children's anxieties. What is needed but not available is…

The convergence of several lines of psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic research suggests possible explanations for age-related influences on language acquisition. These factors, which include cognitive development, sociocultural context, affective factors, and language input, can be helpful to language educators. By being alert to the cognitive…

The timing and order of life events must be studied from both cross-cultural and cross-temporal approaches since timing and order of life events in the aging process vary with sociohistorical change in different societies. This study examined the timing of marriage from the life-course perspective. Subjects were 52 rural Japanese mothers between…

One of the purposes of this study was to develop a coding scheme based on Wertsch's theoretical extension of Vygotsky's ideas for describing parent-child interaction during exploration. This scheme was then applied to identify the most common patterns of parent and child situation definitions, negotiations of shared definitions, and questions…

In order to determine the extent to which New York City students are dropping out of high school, the progress of the over 70,000 members of the class of 1986 was followed from September 1982, through June 1986. By the date of their anticipated graduation, the class of 1986 was characterized by the following: (1) 22 percent had dropped out; (2) 12…

A study compared the amount of contact and the attitudes of young and old individuals toward computers and computer-based instruction (CAI). Developmental differences were examined in the effectiveness of two instructional design features--the use of pictorial (graphics) versus highlighting--and extent of learner participation. Fifty elderly…

The purpose of this project was to develop a motor performance test for preschool children that would be economical to administer, valid, and reliable. Four test items--standing long jump, hopping within an 18-inch square, balancing on one foot, and a timed gross agility task, were selected from published tests to assess children's strength,…

A three-stage developmental model of the socialization of altruism as a reinforcer was tested. The model posits mood as a mediator of helping behavior. The first stage of the model is characterized by a relatively low level of altruistic responding, regardless of mood state, among preschool children; the second by the acquisition, among…

The beneficial role that leisure can play in the lives of older persons is increasingly recognized by gerontologists and leisure service specialists. To study the psychological benefits of 18 commonly chosen leisure activities, 1,649 older adults, aged 55-75, responded to 27 paragraphs measuring the psychological benefits of leisure activities,…

This study tested the hypothesis that category naming is more difficult than instance naming because it requires suppression of readily available instance names. In experiment 1, junior kindergarten and grade one children named pictures of single objects under two conditions: "own" name (i.e., instance or basic level) or…

With the growing number of dual career families, research has focused on sex-roles and the relationship between career and family values. An assertion is made that the instrumental role (independence, self-reliance) has been associated with support of the family, while care of the home and family requires an expressive role (nurturance).This study…

Two studies examined the effects of different types of imaginal elaborations on recall. In Experiment 1, 6-year-olds, 9-year-olds, and college adults were given 20 word pairs embedded in one of four types of sentences: short plausible, bizarre, personalized, or self-generated. With no mention of a memory test, subjects were asked to use the…

This study investigated how preadolescents and adolescents solve problems involving three temporal dimensions. Specifically examined was the question of whether speed and space information would influence the time judgments of 90 subjects 9, 12, and 15 years of age who solved 16 word problems describing the displacements of two cars. The problems…

A study designed to examine the variation that occurs in the request production of children between the ages of 6 and 7 observed the kind of requests children make, what they request, whom they ask, and how they formulate their ideas. Twenty native French-speaking children divided into two age groups (6- and 7-year-olds) were asked to complete two…

A longitudinal study of the language development of children of adolescent mothers followed 20 adolescent and 20 older mothers from their children's birth through three years of age. This report is based on data collected from a subsample of 20 mothers. Mother-child interactions in feeding, teaching, and play at eight months and two years were…