Describes features and benefits of the person-centered approach to studying personality, identifies unanswered questions, and suggests research directions. Benefits noted include focus on intraindividual structure, descriptive efficiency, use of types as moderator variables, predictive validity, and conceptual clarity and intuitive appeal.…

Explores the academic environment of a total information system for school libraries based on the idea of a digital intranet. Discusses safety; customization; the core library collection; curriculum-specific collections; access to short-term resources; Internet access; personalized features; search engines; equity issues; and staffing. (LRW)

Reviews volume on social contexts' influence on individual adolescent development. Describes book's four sections: (1) pathways in adolescence and processes that enhance or inhibit developmental continuity; (2) how social contexts specifically affect African American adolescents; (3) effects of interrelations among contexts; and (4) intervention…

Examined 3-year-old boys' pride and shame reactions to success and failure on a "rigged" achievement situation. Found that pride and shame were related to task difficulty and success versus failure but unrelated to temperament after one year. Children whose parents were more positive in previous parenting displayed less pride and…

This article considers whether Asperger syndrome (AS) should necessarily be viewed as a disability or as a difference. It concludes that "difference" is a more neutral and fair description. A model (the emphasizing-systemizing model) is summarized that attempts to define in what way individuals with AS are different. (Contains references.)…

Discusses the main language policies that have been implemented in the Peoples' Republic of China since 1949 and presents the learning experiences of six learners differing in age and language backgrounds. Suggests individual learning histories reflect the policy changes. (Author/VWL)

Presents the results from an Australian study where secondary school students (n=290) completed questionnaires that focused on motivational goals, metacognitive awareness, need for affiliation, social anxiety, and feelings towards group work. States that the results were discussed in the context of group-based learning. (CMK)

Examined developmental and individual differences in tendencies to favor analytic over heuristic responses in three tasks (inductive reasoning, deduction under belief bias conditions, probabilistic reasoning) in children varying in age and cognitive ability. Found significant increases in analytic responding with development on first two tasks.…

The article identifies areas of critical knowledge (i.e., conceptual, content, practical, and metacognitive) and skill competencies (diagnostic, teaching and managing atypical learners, setting academic and behavior standards, and motivating students) needed by general educators to effectively address individual differences. (Author/DB)

Results are reported from a study of the learning styles of 306 high school students. The study examined learning style characteristics (abstraction, concreteness, reflection, activity); comparisons between adolescent and adult learning styles; and differences between freshmen and seniors, males and females, and slow-track and fast-track learners.…

A validation study of five checklists for assessing two-year-olds' word production revealed that the lists produced comparable mean production scores, reflected age differences, and preserved individual differences in total production and in production of linguistic categories such as nouns, verbs, open class items, and closed class items.…

There is probably no widespread educational practice as thoroughly discredited as retention in grade. If the research undercutting this practice is sound, the task is to uproot outdated misconceptions appealing to educators'"common sense" wisdom. An Arizona study's influence on the attitudes of community leaders, local teachers, and…

Examined potential central processing strategy differences among subgroups of children on a series of elaborative encoding tasks. Children in lower verbal and learning ability subgroups differed from those in higher ability groups in how they shared, discriminated, and selectively allocated resources between recall tasks. (RH)

Examined the role of individual differences in working memory and lexical access in age- and reading skill-related differences in performance on phonological synthesis tasks. The performance of 28 kindergarten, first-, and second-grade students with normal reading skills, and that of 28 reading-disabled second graders, was compared under four…

Investigates the relationship between early interactional patterns and later cognitive performance in 29 infant-mother pairs. Results indicate that cognitive milestones are relatively uniform in the first two years of life. Socio-emotional development showed a variety of profiles. (RJC)