Conducted as part of a research program examining teachers' use of compliance gaining strategies to control specific student misbehaviors, a study investigated the strategies used by experienced teachers in dealing with student misbehaviors. The purpose was to compare the findings with those of an earlier study with prospective teachers. Subjects…

The study examines and compares free/spontaneous play behaviors of 20 Hispanic (from Ponce, Puerto Rico) and 20 Anglo (from State College, Pennsylvania) 5-year-old children from middle class socioeconomic strata. Within each of the groups there were 10 boys and 10 girls. Each child was observed in a group play setting in four observational…

A review of studies on black youth indicates a need for more attention to research concerns such as theory development, carefully constructed methodologies, and sensitivity to the interrelatedness among and between demographic variables. Some topics, like the well-adjusted black adolescent, are rarely handled in empirical studies. In this document…

Adolescence may be conceptualized as a period of life that begins and ends with major developmental transitions: the transition from childhood to adolescence and the transition from adolescence to young adulthood. This study focused on the nature of change in early adolescence and the relationship of that change to adjustment or problem behavior 4…

Research has revealed relationships among a wide range of substance use behaviors, including smoking, alcohol use, and drug use. To investigate whether a substance use factor emerges when different indicators of substance use, different samples, and three health related issues, (i.e., meal regularity, exercise and hours of sleep) are examined, the…

Models of well being and human functioning have traditionally been based on empirical studies done with children and young adults. As part of an ongoing research program to develop and test a model of effective functioning and positive health in older adults, 31 elderly individuals (7 males, 24 females), with a mean age of 73.58 years, completed…

Interviews with 19 adults participating in adult basic education or literacy programs were conducted to ascertain the strategies they used to compensate for reading and writing difficulties. Although the project intended to secure this information from adults diagnosed as learning disabled, it had to rely on self-reports and educational history to…

This paper addresses issues regarding the hyperactive child, the impulsive child, and the low frustration tolerance child. It points out the subjectivity involved in identifying children as hyperactive, and outlines various forms of hyperactivity: the child who is in constant movement, the child who manages control in school but exhibits whirlwind…

Teachers have the paradoxical dual responsibility of fostering children's personal autonomy while ensuring that the children follow necessary rules affecting their health, safety, and educational development. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to determine when children should be allowed freedom and when they need regulation, and on occasion…

Self-schemas are knowledge-structures that organize information relevant to the "self." Research has demonstrated that persons who are schematic (versus aschematic) for a particular trait process self-relevant information on that dimension more efficiently. To determine whether individual self-schemas are organized into relatively…

This paper discusses the concept of stress by drawing from social-psychological, occupational, family, and medical perspectives. A model of stress based on an integration of these perspectives is developed and then applied to the family relationship over time. The components of the model consist of: (1) a stressor stimulus, any situation that may…

One means of making undergraduate instruction more relevant to students' needs and interests has been to use popular media to illustrate concepts in psychology courses. College students (N=54) in a theories of personality course wrote brief essays explaining the behavior of television characters in terms of theories taught in the course. The…

Much of the concern with juvenile delinquency has been based on the premise that delinquent behavior leads to adult crime. Police and court records of three cohorts comprised of 6,127 persons were analyzed. The most prevalent pattern of delinquent behavior was one of declining seriousness and discontinuation after the teenage period. With few…

Social science perspectives on black maternal childrearing practices have traditionally ignored the cultural-historical, socio-political, and economic realities. Interviews were conducted with 62 black mothers to study their perceptions of racism and its effects on their childrearing practices. Results indicated that educational status alone did…

Sexual harassment is widespread on college campuses across the United States and is a subject that merits sensitive and sensible discussion. Once they acknowledge the problem, speech communication professionals can become better informed about sexual harassment and ways of dealing with it, and commit themselves to responsible communicative action.…