Findings confirmed the hypothesis that children would exhibit a higher percentage of mature play categories relative to other forms of play during longer play periods than during shorter ones. Subjects engaged in significantly higher percentages of group play, constructive play, and group-dramatic play in longer periods. (RH)

Investigated representational and social pretend play behaviors of 52 preschoolers as a function of age and sex. Play behaviors differed depending on the age and sex of the pretenders. Children did not significantly alter their style of play from one playmate or group to another. (RJC)

Examines patterns of social interactions and their relationship to quality of attachment to mother in 33 children of 2 and 5 years. Balanced patterns in interactions with mothers reduced opportunities for interaction with peers. Insecure attachment to mothers predicted decreased responsiveness to mothers and peers at 2 years. (RJC)

Studies 174 mother-infant dyads to determine the relation between 3-month-old infant, mother, and mother-infant interaction behavior and later attachment behavior. Individual infant differences in sociability at 3 months were found to be related to avoidant behavior and A-type attachment. (RJC)

Comparison of the social behaviors of intellectually gifted and typical three-to five-year-olds in a university laboratory school found no difference in the two groups on a social development scale, but found that gifted children exhibited cooperative play to a much greater extent. (MSE)

Examines personal relevance in relation to the ability of 48 5- to 10-year-old children to describe others in terms of psychological characteristics. Results suggest that verbal inferencing skills of young children have been underestimated and that they may be more oriented toward affective goals than older children when anticipating interaction…

Examined emotional comparison theory and utility theory in an analysis of effects of stress on affiliation in a laboratory setting. Two intense fear situations concerning the administration of painful electrical shocks were added to Schachter's (1959) original fear manipulation. Results showed that two new fear conditions resulted in marked…

Identifies theoretical assumptions underlying the "commonsense view" that social behaviors, such as joint attention, social referencing, and protocommunication acts, which emerge toward the end of the first year of life, have been taken as evidence of considerable social understanding, even an "implicit" theory of mind. Argues…

Aggressive and cooperative behaviors of 70 preschool children were measured during game conditions and subsequent free-play periods. Cooperative behavior increased and aggression decreased during cooperative games and free play; conversely, competitive games were followed by increases in aggressive behavior and decreases in cooperative behavior.…

Describes study in which three children with autism were trained to initiate social interactions with normally developing peers. The findings offer evidence that children with autism can learn to initiate and maintain a social interaction with their peers and that these skills will generalize to novel settings and people. (LKS)

A cognitive, nonintrusive method of controlling head-rocking behavior in an 11-year-old blind subject involved having the boy place his hand on his cheek or chin when prompted that he was rocking his head. The subject demonstrated significant decreases in head rocking during intervention and generalization during followup. (Author/JDD)

Uses ethnomethodological perspectives to translate the language of Flower and Hayes's cognitive theory of writing into a more thoroughly social vocabulary as a way of articulating the role of social context and social structure in individual acts of writing. (SR)

This essay provides a rationale for including social competence as a prominent feature in the understanding of mental retardation, outlines efforts to describe socially competent behavior, and considers factors that underlie social competence. The essay introduces the papers in this special issue on social skills in individuals with mental…

Gives an overview of the 10 research articles in this issue. Notes that all studies in this issue examine child behavior from a perspective that views behavior as mediated by social context, challenging the logical positivism of conventional experimentation. (MM)

Studied 50 Native American and 50 white preschoolers. White preschoolers exhibited social skills more frequently according to the ratings of their teachers and parents than did Native Americans. Parents and teachers showed moderate agreement in ratings of frequency of expression of social skills by Native American preschoolers and in ratings of…