The strength of the tendency of children (aged 4 1/2 to 7 1/2 years) to give phenomenist reading of neutral questions about object properties was investigated. Phenomenist answers decreased with age, and social dominance and conversational context affected answers. (SKC)

Measures of visual alertness, irritability, and activity based on repeated observations in equivalent situational contexts showed good intersession stabilities, which were consistently higher than measures based on lengthier over-all session observations, and substantially higher than stabilities typically reported for measures of newborn…

Preschoolers were accurate in identifying the situational determinants of others' real emotions. Their strategies for remediating negative affect in others were consistent with the type and attributional basis of the emotion to be altered. Further, they used contextual information in significantly different and meaningful ways across and within…

Involving children three and four years of age, studies examined the basis for the difficulty of discriminating between left-right orientations of a shape in standard two-choice task. It was concluded that difficulty of left-right judgments lies in the cognitive demands of the task and is to be understood in the same terms as other problems in…

In three experiments, the effect of additional "contextual" elements on the discrimination of the orientation of linear and curvilinear segments was investigated with four-month-old infants. Results suggest that, regarding certain stimuli and techniques of measurement, surrounding contextual segments can aid the discrimination of linear…

To examine the antecedents and consequences of social comparison exchanges of preschool children, this paper describes and analyzes several examples of such behavior. Data provide variegated descriptions of the social components of comparison behaviors in naturally occurring classroom contexts. (Author/RH)

Examines the issue of developmental consistencies between and within levels of moral reasoning, altruism, and perspective coordination. The relative contributions of perspective coordination and moral reasoning to altruistic behavior were examined in fifth grade. (Author/RH)

Examines various situations in which young children use social comparison to elicit understanding from a peer. Data are drawn from naturalistic observations of three- , four- , and five-year-olds. Children used social comparison to seek information, agreement, permission, compliance, verbal responsiveness, and attention. (Author/RH)

Examines the conditions under which children and adults use indexical words to refer to objects or to corefer with nouns in discourse. Subjects at three ages (6, 10, and adult) performed simple tasks and described their actions. (Author/AS)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of learning spelling words in context on 17 students in a third grade classroom. The students ranged from low to high ability in spelling. To investigate whether or not practicing spelling words in context has an effect on the learning of those words, students began the school year…

Facial responsiveness to pleasant and unpleasant odors was examined in 5- to 12-year-old children. Children failed to display reflex-like patterns, but exhibited facial configurations that varied according to odor and social condition. Results suggest that facial responsiveness to odors is flexible and able to reorganize and supports emotional and…

Three experiments involving 163 college students demonstrate that problem solvers use at least two sources of information to make operator selections in the building sticks task (adding and subtracting sticks to obtain a desired length): (1) information from their past history of using operators and (2) information from the problem's current…

Explores quantitative and Qualitative differences between context and word morphology as determinants of students' guesses of the meanings of novel kanji compounds. Japanese language learners interpreted unknown compounds consisting of familiar characters under three conditions. (Author/VWL)

Addresses the challenge of placing mathematics knowledge in context through a critical interpretation of math teaching and learning, discussion of what constitutes math knowledge, and examination of the effect of rural context. Presents principles for rural math education research, related to knowledge and context, the institution of schooling,…

This article discusses leadership contexts as they apply to school counseling. Outlines the activities and skills of each leadership context specific to school counseling, and provides an example of this holistic view of leadership as used by a school counselor. (Contains 39 references.) (GCP)