Examined associations among parents' characteristics, prenatal expectations for and postpartum perceptions of infant temperament, and observers' ratings of temperament. Found that parents shared expectations for infant's emotional expressivity but differed in expectation for predictability and adaptability. Parent's postpartum ratings of…

Maternal treatment of sibling pairs with affectively ill and well mothers was examined in relation to child psychiatric status across childhood and early adolescence. Found that older siblings' symptoms were predicted by maternal bipolar or unipolar illness, whereas younger siblings' symptoms were predicted by lower maternal engagement and higher…

Individual differences in children's conceptual strategies at 3 years of age were predicted by aspects of children's behavior and language at 13 and 24 months. Production of pointing gestures at 13 months and nouns and attributive adjectives at 24 months were positively associated with the use of a taxonomic matching strategy at 3 years of age.…

Compares three models positing differing roles for values in predicting fairness judgments and support of affirmative action: Tetlock's (1986) value pluralism models, Lind's (1992) fairness heuristic hypothesis, and Jackman's (1978) model involving no role for values. Results support the fairness heuristic hypothesis, indicating that values play a…

Explores the extent of preschoolers' knowledge of mixed emotions, and whether difficulty in discerning mixed emotions stems from beliefs about how emotions are portrayed on the face. Found that both four- and five-year olds can identify mixed emotions. Only five-year olds (with appropriate scaffolding and with simple, clear stories) can…

Examined multiple measures of 82 young children's emotionality, regulation, and social functioning over a 2-year period, finding that social functioning was predicted by low negative emotionality and high levels of regulation. Also found that vagal tone was positively related to competent social functioning and emotionality/regulation for boys,…

Reports on a project which developed a measure of levels of difficulty of reference questions handled by the California Interlibrary Reference Referral Network, and identified indicative measures that would reliably stand for the concept of difficulty. Correlations of predictive difficulty and actual difficulty are discussed. (nine references)…

This paper reviews factors in the professional neglect of multiple personality disorder (MPD) and sexual abuse in childhood, as well as recent diagnostic developments in childhood dissociative disorders. The identification of subtle dissociative symptomatology in children is illustrated, and two case examples are presented. (Author)

Reviews research on impact assessment of libraries and considers potentially useful methodologies for measuring the impact of university libraries, i.e., how library use affects students' academic performance. Topics discussed include categories of library use, purposes of library use, and indicators of library impact. The user panel methodology…

Examined voting behavior among 370 low-income older African Americans by assessing impact of various predictors on electoral participation in 7 elections. Elders who were active in community, with strong sense of citizen duty, who identified as strong Democrats, and with higher levels of education were more likely to vote. (Author/NB)

A survey of 300 institutions of higher education found 9 factors associated with alumni giving participation rates. These included library volumes per student; average Scholastic Aptitude Test scores of entering first-year college students; percentage of faculty with doctorates; educational and general budget expenditures per student; endowment…

Finds that the Diagnostic Writing Skills Test, used as a diagnostic grammar pretest for students in a basic business communication course, shows positive correlations between the pretest and the final course grade, but does not predict that grade. (SR)

Multiple regression analysis is discussed as useful for studying the effect of a variable while controlling for the effects of others and for estimating the total effect of all predictor variables together. It is suggested that in English-as-a-Second-Language proficiency measurement, regression coefficients should not be the basis for judging…

A new statistical model based for identifying potential major donors was developed from a portion (n=53,276) of the Northwestern University (Illinois) alumni database. The model, utilizing logit analysis, found that the most critical measure was individuals' past giving records. Results indicate prospects with a low past giving level will rarely…

This editorial proposes that the dependent variables that predict childhood intelligence quotient (IQ) from habituation and recognition memory assessments made during infancy may primarily reflect individual differences in rate of information processing. Inhibition may be a stable thread in mental development. (Author/SLD)