Describes how the jokes of Johnny Carson, David Letterman, and Joan Rivers explore, support, and disrupt different elements of the American social experience. Argues that joking is one strategy for encouraging and sustaining resistance to ideological control. (NKA)

Preschool, third-grade and sixth-grade children, and adults were shown vignettes depicting eight types of experiences and asked for their own (for children) or the children's (for adults) expected emotional reactions. Overall, adults showed an absence of developmental considerations in their implicit theories of children's emotional…

The Youth Services Training Program in Westport, Connecticut, eases handicapped youngsters through the sometimes anguishing step from school to job. (Editor)

Provides examples of observed behavior to support the claim that television viewing is an interactive phenomenon, a social experience in which young children actively participate with parents, siblings, and others. Contends that the view of a passive receiver underestimates the abilities of the child to understand and shape experiences. (PD)

In this theoretical discussion, still photography is viewed as a tool which can be used in the creation of meaning and as a medium for social inquiry. Three specific functions of photographic inquiry are explored: the anthropological, the normative, and the intuitive. (Author/SJL)

Advocates the use of recess meetings to help children succeed socially. Describes case studies of use of recess meetings in a first- and third-grade class, showing how teachers got to know each child better, and detailing how children were better able to express ideas, share experiences, voice concerns, solve problems, and laugh. (Author/SD)

A total of 69 male and 132 female undergraduate students rated the extent of their experience in a variety of child-rearing activities that involved routine physical care and play. Males reported lower levels of experience than did females. The discrepancy was greater with care activities than with play activities. (RJC)

A survey of 49 hearing-impaired undergraduate students found that graduates of residential high-school programs described their social experiences more positively than graduates of mainstream programs. Discussed are reasons for positive and negative feelings in both residential and mainstream programs and programs with or without supportive…

Investigated the causal explanations children use to account for common experiences. In the study, 60 preschoolers watched videotaped puppet shows designed to elicit causal attributions. Most children predominantly used internal, unstable, and specific attributions. (CB)

Discusses the importance of studying non-Western cultures through the humanities and the advantages such study seems to offer in helping students learn about other peoples and how to deal with cultural differences. Believes that above all the humanities provide avenues to developing understanding and empathy for peoples of other cultures. (CMK)

The Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera mobilizes recollections of childhood not only as an event in his adult life, but as a way of articulating a longing for new forms of social consciousness. Childhood itself is recalled both as narrative and source of narrative. As such it is a place and time of memory. It is not just a construct of writing,…

Qualitative research describing and theorizing about the emerging civic identities of diverse youth is scarce. This study provides a textured view of how civic identity is constructed and negotiated by racially and socioeconomically diverse adolescents, based on interviews and in-class discussions conducted with students in four public secondary…

Investigated the accuracy with which subjects of different ages can encode several kinds of cues commonly found in social interactions. Mean ages for the four groups of subjects were 5.5, 7.4, 9.5 and 20.5 years. (Author/SDH)

Baby talk, also known as motherese or child-directed speech, refers to a set of speech modifications commonly found in the language adults use to address young children. The same functional motivations underlying adult speech to other adults also shape adult speech to children. These include pedagogy, control, affection, social exchange, and…