Our culture enforces compliance and obedience in all its institutions and at every level. These institutions systematically discourage independent thought or unconventional action. Schools can play an important role in educating strong, independent thinkers. Teachers should act to reward creative disobedience and to discourage conformity. (JN)

Observation of infants and toddlers in a day care setting revealed that frequency of teacher-child interaction decreased and peer interaction increased with age. The increase in peer interaction appeared to be related to the toddlers' greater capacity for reciprocating social behaviors and increased use of vocal behavior in interactions. (JMB)

This essay attempts to describe how age relations are important to the social behavior of preschool children. Major behaviors examined are sociability, friendship, aggression, and dominance. Imitation, cognitive development, social cognition, nurturance, and prosocial behavior are also briefly considered. (Author/SJL)

Investigates how two traditional early childhood activity settings, the block and housekeeping areas, influence young children's play and social behaviors. (Author/MP)

Discusses children's television viewing, particulary their exposure to advertisements for proprietary drug products, and relates this to their views of the amount of sickness in society and the reliance on medicine. (JMF)

Summarizes rationale for early childhood educational intervention efforts and describes the Carolina Abcedarian Project: a longitudinal, early educational program providing supplemental preschool experiences designed to prevent the cumulative and progressive decline in intellectual and socially adaptive behavior shown by children from extreme…

A senior center activities program was made accessible to nursing home patients through a project called Centercare. Nursing home patients (N=144) from seven different institutions made 4370 senior center visits over a 33-month period. Project results indicate a senior center can successfully provide the institutionalized elderly with social and…

Differences in parent and teacher ratings of social-emotional behavior among 198 preschool-age children with developmental delays and 198 without significant developmental problems were examined. The children with developmental delays were rated by both groups as having significantly lower levels of social skills and significantly higher levels of…

Review of feminist scholarship on gender provides a tool for tracing gender concepts taken for granted in theoretical and applied aspects of experiential education. Examines the concept of gender as theorized in competing frameworks: as personality factor, structural category, or identity constituted in social relations. Suggests approaches to…

Presents a microanalysis of data from the Box Hill Nursery Project, an ethnolinguistic study carried out in the northeast of England, into children's language and social behavior during their first term in nursery school. Identifies characteristics of dense friendship networks. Concludes that understanding friendship networks can help teachers in…

This study conducted item reduction analyses on two measures of job-related social behavior for adolescents and young adults with emotional/behavioral disorders (Scale of Job-Related Social Skill Knowledge and Scale of Job-Related Social Skill Performance). The shortened measures contained 40 and 94 items, respectively. Reliability was…

This paper briefly reviews the research in social and behavioral interventions with autism in the past 30 years. Progress in the areas of decreased placement in highly restrictive environments, parent training, effective treatments, functional behavioral analysis, and emphasis on improved quality of life is noted. Research needs in the area of…

Examined the relationship of kindergartners' to second graders' dispositional sympathy to individual differences in emotionality, regulation, and social functioning. Found that sympathy was associated with relatively high levels of regulation, teacher-reported positive emotionality, and general emotional intensity; and, especially for boys, high…

Two studies found positive effects of peer modeling upon the play scripts of preschool children with specific language impairment (SLI). The first study involved dyadic play sessions in which children with SLI were paired with a normal language peer model. The second study compared dyads of either two SLI children or one SLI child and one normal…

The literature review discussed here located 56 studies examining 87 behaviors that predicted future health-related behaviors using the theory of planned behavior. About 41% of variance in intentions and 34% of variance in future behavior were explained by the theory. Perceived behavioral control explained 11.5% of variance in behavior above…