Reviews the research on (1) developmental stages of play among young children; (2) solitary play as a separate continuum with its own developmental stages; and (3) benefits of solitary play on the child's whole development. (BB)

Mothers' ways of structuring conversations about past events are related to children's abilities to structure personal narratives. When mothers provided temporally complex and informationally dense narratives about the past to their 2 1/2-year olds, the children recounted similar accounts a year later. (Author/BB)

Reviews three aspects of literature on parental and nonparental child care pertaining to socioemotional development during infancy, preschool, and school-age years: (1) determinants of parenting and factors influencing parental behavior and parent-child interactions; (2) link between parent-child interactions and child development; and (3) effects…

Argues for expanding the present discourse on developmental appropriateness on the grounds that this discourse assumes consensus about child development; is premised on a suspect notion of broad, universal stages; and ignores alternative perspectives on learning and development and the relationship between the two. (LB)

Studied the transactional relationship between parental support and the development of competence in children. Results indicated a strong effect of parental support on a child's competence in infancy, a gender-differentiated stability of competence from infancy to the end of elementary school, and a relationship between the competence of a child…

Presents answers to 12 questions parents might have about reading aloud to young children (e.g., why, how, when to begin, teaching reading, building a love of books, choosing books, and the whole-language approach). The article discusses the educational advantage reading aloud gives to children in their early years. (SM)

Educators (n=84) were randomly assigned to one of two groups reading either an ecological assessment report or a developmental assessment report written for the same student with severe disabilities. Analysis indicated that educators reading the ecological assessment had significantly higher expectations for student accomplishment than those…

The validity of the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), and its relation to toddlers' social and emotional adaptation, were investigated. The AAI and the Parental Bonding Instrument were related, but only the AAI yielded classifications that corresponded to the quality of infant-parent attachment. (Author/LB)

Longitudinal data on conversations recorded from 1 child between 18 and 27 months of age and 3 children between 27 and 62 months were analyzed to chart acquisition of the word "if" and of conditional inference. Within six months of speaking their first "if," children produced "ifs" at the same rate and forms as…

Sources of continuity among nine measures of infant cognitive processing and later childhood intelligence quotient were examined through developmental structural equation models applied to a sample of 208 twin pairs measured from 7 to 36 months. Skills assessed appear related to general cognitive ability in a relatively unstable manner. (SLD)

Examines gender differences in social network (SN) development from early to middle childhood and the relation of network characteristics to school competence through mothers' reports of the SNs of 38 sons and 37 daughters. For girls, SN characteristics correspond to teacher ratings of social competence in school. (SLD)

Eighteen cases of disintegrative psychosis (DP) were compared with 52 cases of infantile autism (IA) with speech loss and 145 IA cases without speech loss. DP cases showed clearer regression after more satisfactory development than the IA cases with speech loss, and by age seven were more severely retarded but similar in autistic symptomatology to…

Mothers of 23 infants with disabilities predicted their child's performance on developmental measures with accuracy levels comparable to those of parents of preschool children without disabilities. Mothers were more accurate in predicting motor performance than cognitive performance. There was a negative relationship between initial maternal…

It is argued that reading aloud to children in school is an important vehicle for developing a child's feelings and their correlative values. In response to possible charges of indoctrination, the author draws a parallel between first-language learning and the learning of a repertoire of feeling. (seven references) (Author/LB)

This study examined 510 case records of psychological services provided by Denver (Colorado) Head Start. The study focused on average child age at referral for services, referral questions most frequently posed, similarities and differences in concerns of the family and Head Start staff, psychological service actions initiated, and goals and…