Discusses social and didactic dimensions of caregiver behaviors during children's play and changes in caregivers' behaviors as children develop. Compares children's solitary play to play with a caregiver. Addresses the relationship of individual differences in caregiver behaviors to child play, and the effects of parental behavior on children's…

Found that, in unstructured building sessions, kindergartners were more likely to observe, imitate, and consult their second- or third-grade siblings than their older peers. Older siblings were also more likely to provide additional explanations and positive feedback than older peers when instructing younger children. (MDM)

Examined whether preschool children focus on a small number of attributes or attend to whole exemplars in learning basic categories for fictitious animals. Found little evidence that children employed rules, but found strong evidence that children encoded exemplars as integrated wholes during category training. Discusses implications for theories…

This paper describes the Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities Test and recommends its use to assess discrimination acquisition or learning-to-learn skills of persons with severe and profound disabilities. (DB)

Advocates an ideology stressing survival of the planet. Discusses major changes in the concept of war since the advent of nuclear warfare. Considers three stages for the development of peace: negative peace, nonviolence or conflict resolution, and positive peace. Reviews research on young children's capacity for understanding peace concepts. (AC)

Examined the effects of prenatal drug exposure on adopted children's behavior, temperament, health, and school adjustment by comparing the experiences of 3 cohorts of children: (1) 320 drug-exposed children; (2) 456 children who were not drug exposed; and (3) 620 children whose drug exposure was unknown. Two years after placement no significant…

Infants who were in darkness were presented with objects that made sounds. Objects were within reach and out of reach. Infants reached into the target area more often when the object was in reach than when the object was beyond reach. Infants reached correctly in the dark for objects placed off midline. (BC)

A model of critical thinking is developed, encompassing problem solving and creative thinking. The central role of critical thinking in adult education is explored, concluding that development of the concept and how to teach it need attention. (SK)

Considers practical and theoretical issues in the integration of the arts in the foreign language curriculum to address both cognitive and affective variables, as well as improve students' awareness of civilization, instill appreciation of cultural differences, and develop creative and critical thinking skills. (23 references) (CB)

The paper examines competing models for the thinking processes of gifted students, including the Piagetian model, the Triarchic theory of R. Sternberg, and the varieties of intelligence proposed by H. Gardner. The paper offers a meta-analysis and a six realm domain for the understanding of cognitive processing propensities in gifted students. (DB)

Adolescents with mental retardation viewed a story enacted with props and were asked questions about the knowledge and beliefs of the characters. Subjects performed worse than did nondisabled children matched for mental age. Subjects did better on questions requiring first-order reasoning than on those involving second-order reasoning. (Author/JDD)

A critical evaluation of the use of stochastic independence in psychological research is provided, considering (1) confirming the null hypothesis; (2) power of the statistical test; (3) Simpson's paradox; and (4) between-subjects and within-subject correlations. The importance of formal models in studying (in)dependence is emphasized. (SLD)

Investigated age differences from early childhood to adulthood in the capacity to understand--in a psychologically meaningful way--traits in stories wherein main characters perform actions based on a positive, negative, or incidental motive that result in an emotional consequence for another character. Found that even 5- to 6-year-olds made trait…

Examined preschool children's inferences about the likely appearance of a target figure based on information about the figure's occupation or personality traits. Without explicit gender-category information, girls' performance on gender-consistent and gender-inconsistent trials was equivalent; boys performed better on same-sex attributes. With…

Examines the nature of prior mathematical knowledge that facilitates the construction of useful problem representations in the domain of geometry. Indicates that high achievers build schemas that are qualitatively more sophisticated than low achievers, which in turn helps them construct representations that are conducive to understanding the…