Studies conducted to investigate the psychometric qualities of the Health Support Index suggest that the index is internally consistent, stable and, potentially useful in identifying those individuals who do or do not have adequate support from their social environment to make successful changes in health-related behavior. (CB)

First-graders' responses to a battery assessing phonemic awareness, syntactic awareness, receptive vocabulary, word decoding ability, and reading comprehension ability revealed strong zero-order correlations among all the variables, although analysis revealed that metalinguistic ability did not contribute to the prediction of early reading…

Reviews "Risk-Taking Behavior in Youth: A Psychological Approach to Accidents" (Jean-Pascal Assailly). Notes that childhood accidental deaths have been overlooked as an outcome of early childhood problems. Notes factors associated with accidents that are identical to predictors of juvenile delinquency. Highlights the book's strong…

Examined child protective services (CPS) screening practices in 12 sites from 5 states to identify factors predictive of the decision to investigate a report. Found that only 66% of all reports making specific allegations of maltreatment were investigated, while only 70% of all reports making specific allegations of injury were investigated. (MDM)

Argues that Gottlieb rejects population sampling and statistical analyses of distributions as he proposes that his experimental brand of mechanistic science is the only legitimate approach to developmental research. Maintains that Gottlieb exaggerates developmental uncertainty, based on his own research with extreme environmental manipulations.…

When children produce regularizations like "comed," not all verbs are equally liked to be regularized. It is argued that one predictor is which vowels are present in the base form vs. the past tense form, and that regularizations are likely when the base vowel is dominant and unlikely when the past tense vowel is dominant. (Contains 25…

Investigated contributions to individual differences in preschoolers' identification of basic emotional expressions and situations, emotion language, and self-generated causes for basic emotions. The contribution of socialization predictors to emotion understanding was moderated by gender only for negative emotional responsiveness, and children…

Examined the relationship between variation in 840 children's cognitive activities and child-care quality, interaction with teachers, and children's play activities and attachment security with their child-care teachers. In 7 of the 8 subsamples, 15 to 30% of the variability in cognitive activities could be predicted from positive social…

Discusses teachers' use of systematic instructional design practices; describes fundamental components of instructional design; explains a teacher planning inventory; and reports on a study of junior and senior high school teachers that examined their use of instructional design practices in their planning routines. (Contains 21 references.) (LRW)

This study examined the relationship of previously determined predictors of general delinquency to violent behavior of African American and Caucasian males in a sample of 3,761. With the exception of family structure, predictors of violence are similar to predictors of general delinquency. (SLD)

Demonstrates that 11-year-old children's scientific thinking in formal operational terms can be significantly developed through training in the cognitive style of field independence determined by the Group Embedded Figures Test. Suggests students could perform formal operationally if they had the skill of identifying the variables to be…

Changes in functioning related to aging were examined over a 3- to 4-year period in 34 adults (ages 22-56) with Down syndrome. Changes related to aging were minimal; neither effects of age at entry nor change over time were significant. IQ at entry significantly affected performance on neuropsychological and behavioral measures. (Author/SW)

Examines the implications of incorporating user-centered design within information systems design practices. Highlights include a definition of user-centered design based on human-computer interface; questions asked about users, including outcome, process, and task variables; and three criteria for when to use this approach in information systems…

Analytical solutions for point and variance estimators of the mediated effect, the ratio of mediated to direct effect, and the proportion of the total effect mediated were determined through simulation for different samples. The sample sizes needed for accuracy and stability are discussed with implications for mediated effects estimates. (SLD)

Reports on research studying student teachers that finds five major categories of characteristics (motivation, priorities, effort, self-concept, and personal effectiveness) that may help predict the success of teacher education students. (SR)