Describes the origins of the Assistants to Infancy Montessori program from 1947. Focuses on the role of Assistants in helping parents provide a beneficial environment for children during pregnancy and from birth to age three. (Author/KB)

Presents a study in which children (n=600), ages five to nine, completed Jean Piaget's horizontality task using a square water bottle. Finds a significant sex difference in the pretest performance of the horizontality task beginning with eight year olds. Includes references. (CMK)

Describes the use of handmade cloth dolls without facial features with 2- and 3-year-olds as a framework for an arts-based emergent curriculum related to body awareness. Shows how children's interests guided the project activities. Discusses the teachers' role in maintaining the content level and interest, and the importance of out-of-classroom…

Describes the threat social violence and abuse pose to the psychological and religious development of young people. Discusses strategies aimed at restoring young people's sense of safety and hope by citing seven themes for successful resilience, coping, and developmental assets that a community can control. (CMK)

Discusses research recently conducted by three Canadian researchers that involves professional practice, multicultural education, and media literacies. Details three very different studies focused on young children, providing evidence of the rich variety of research currently being undertaking in western Canada. (PM)

General and specific issues of the risk and resilience framework in the social development of children with learning disabilities include: (1) integrating current research with prior related studies; (2) measurement problems; (3) more differentiation regarding gender and severity of learning disabilities; (4) potential risk and protective factors;…

This response to a paper on risk and resilience models in learning disabilities research supports this framework for research and practice with regard to the social and emotional functioning of children with learning disabilities. Research is urged to address the effect of family functioning and parenting, peer victimization, and the interaction…

This paper urges researchers in learning disabilities not to embrace the risk/resilience framework without rigorous consideration of four issues: the meaning of risk and resilience factors; how to characterize learning disabilities as risk factors; just what the risk is; and how this framework may guide intervention efforts. (Contains references.)…

Challenges the notion evident in discourse about children and television that fantasy and make-believe are self-evidently appropriate genres for children and that children are more imaginative than adults. Draws from social psychology and anthropology theories to argue that fantasy and imagination are basic to the way that all humans organize…

Development of children's phonological and orthographic processing was studied from middle of grade 1 to end of grade 4. Signs of reliance on phonological processing were found on reading aloud, spelling, and silent reading tasks, even with indicators of reliance on orthographic processing. Phonological and orthographic processing appeared to be…

Discusses marginality and the variety of experiences that influenced this prominent developmental psychologist to forge a career in child advocacy. Recounts the professional journey to connect research about child and adolescent development to the formation of sound policies and programs that might contribute to increasing children's prospects for…

The Latino Consortium of the American Academy of Pediatrics Center for Child Health Research identified the most urgent priorities and answered questions on Latino child health. Discusses research and methodologic issues, disproportionate disease burden and associated risk factors, cultural and linguistic considerations, workforce issues, and…

Describes culture as being diverse and based on ways of life, outlining how developmental concepts are rooted in culture-concepts such as babyhood and adulthood. Proposes and illustrates four principles that would be among those required in a transformed developmental psychology: principle of social dominance; knowledge production; hierarchically…

Fourteen Mother-Infant pairs were studied at three, six, and nine months to determine whether mothers simplify speech during the second half of the infant's first year and whether speech adjustment influences later language acquisition by infants. A mother's mean length of utterance (MLU) was predictive of later language development by her infant.…

The study, with 47 mothers and their young children with handicaps, found that personal and family well-being, and to a lesser extent social support, were significantly related to child behavior characteristics, and that well-being and child behavior characteristics were significantly related to child progress. (Author/DB)