Listening skills are important in social situations and in the classroom. A study investigated the relationship of birth order and listening. The Kentucky Comprehensive Listening Test was given to 189 undergraduates enrolled in lower division communication courses. Results showed that first-borns in two-sibling families ranked higher than…

A naturalistic study of 112 families in two parks examined proximity and touching between family members as a function of age and sex of child, sex of parent, and family composition variables. Mothers and fathers were strikingly similar in their behavior. Distance from parent increased and touching decreased as age of child increased from the…

Changes in the behavior of the siblings of 27 treated predelinquents are reported. Parents of the referred predelinquents had been trained in social learning techniques of child management. Procedures taught to the parents were presumably applied to siblings as well for they also had significant reductions in rates of deviant behavior. (Author)

In the ongoing Sibling Adoption Study of sibling relationships, data gathered from three methods was used to assess the sibling relationship in the home. This report focuses on comparison of the information about the sibling relationship gathered from each method. Eighty-four middle-class families with younger siblings, aged four to six, and older…

Past studies linking schooling and career attainment to sibling position (family size, birth order, and spacing) are vulnerable to suspicions about omitted variables. Since they were based on cross sections of individuals from different families, they may have attributed to sibling position an influence belonging to unobserved parental attributes.…

To examine relationships between masculinity-femininity, presence of same or opposite sex sibling, and accuracy of cross-sex role-taking, 92 male and female undergraduates classified the 20 items comprising Smith's Masculinity-Femininity Scale according the sex-role characteristics. (Author)

A single subject ABAB design was used to investigate the effect on academic achievement of altering the sleeping arrangements of a low-achieving, 9-year-old third grade male student who slept in bunk beds with an older brother aged 14 years. The subject's diagnostic test performance on reading and math measures was assessed at the beginning of the…

Literature is reviewed on the effects on families of having a handicapped child, and a model of the interrelationship of effects is proposed. Topics covered in the discussion include the following: the meaning invested in handicap (labeling, the meaning to the parents, and the effects on the handicapped family member); caring for a handicapped…

To test effects of family constellation on children's acquisition of sex-role, the sex-role behavior of 175 children between the ages of 3 and one half and 6 years from one-child and two-child families was compared. Included in the design were five categories: only children, and four additional categories based on sex and relative age of siblings…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether maternal employment affects sex role differentiation in preschoolers, and whether this relationship varies as a function of the sex of the child, father's presence or absence, and/or the sex of the child's siblings. Three hundred ninety-eight children (198 females, 200 males), whose mean age was…

This paper deals with two sets of data-one that fails to find any long-term sex differences in adults, and another which seems to find such differences. The Berkeley Guidance Study offers longitudinal data in which no variables differentiate between the two sexes at all age levels. From these results, the authors conclude that the normal course of…

Evaluation of the Pyramid Reading Program, Title I, ESEA, of the Minneapolis Public Schools was carried out using sibling methodology. The reading readiness at entry of kindergarten students was compared with that of their older siblings at their time of first grade entry, and fourth grade reading achievements will also be compared. The first…