Older and younger adults' abilities to use context information rapidly during ambiguity resolution were investigated. In Experiments 1 and 2, younger and older adults heard ambiguous words (e.g., fires) in sentences where the preceding context supported either the less frequent or more frequent meaning of the word. Both age groups showed good…

To see if trait anxiety and suicidality interfered with the ability to respond to suicidal crisis calls, 279 undergraduates completed measures of trait anxiety and suicidality in the past week, and the revised Suicide Intervention Response Inventory (SIRI-2). Unexpectedly, trait anxiety (but not suicidality) correlated with better SIRI-2 scores.…

BSW and MSW students randomly completed one of two vignettes that were identical with the exception of the age of the vignette's subject. Following the vignette, respondents responded to 16 bio-psycho-social assessment and intervention items relating to health, illness, aging, and death. The multivariate analysis of variance was significant…

Emerging adulthood involves a number of developmental changes, including in the areas of interpersonal relations, religious views, and sexuality. The current study examined individuals' perceptions of changes in these areas as a result of the transition to university. Participants (N = 205, 61% female, age range 18 to 25) responded to open-ended…

Wellness scores of 1,249 traditional and 318 nontraditional undergraduate college students revealed low levels of wellness in multiple areas in comparison with non-student adults and within-group differences according to demographic variables. Profiles of wellness for traditional- and nontraditional-age students revealed significant differences on…

The study assessed the effectiveness of a musical programme at reducing anti-dark-skinned stereotyping among light-skinned Portuguese children aged 7-10 years, as measured through the Preschool Racial Attitude Measure II (Williams et al., 1975). The programme consisted of introducing a sub-series of Cape Verdean songs into the series of regular…

At Waite End Primary School in Waterlooville, Hampshire, the authors are involved in a research project with the University of Winchester and the pharmaceutical company Astra- Zeneca called "Teachers and young children exploring their worlds together". The project focuses around their belief that "the younger a child is the more…

The aim of this article is to introduce readers to an alternative way of applying U-shaped functions to understand development, especially cognitive development. In classical developmental applications, age is the abscissa; that is, in the fundamental equation B = f(A), some behavioral variable (B) plots as a U-shaped or inverted U-shaped function…

The late teens is an important transitional period as adolescents move into new social worlds which support or challenge their smoking. This paper draws on research with 99 Scottish 16- to 19-year olds which explored their understanding of their smoking and attitudes towards quitting and cessation support. The study involved qualitative interviews…

Background: The frequently reported decline in the "overall" frequency and intensity of fears during late childhood and adolescence may mask different developmental patterns for two broad subclasses of fears: fears concerning physical danger and fears concerning social evaluation. It was investigated if physical fears decrease between…

This article examines levels of involvement of weekly church attenders in Catholic parishes in Australia, New Zealand and the United States through an analysis of data from the International Congregational Life Survey. Factor analysis was used to identify four questionnaire items related to parish involvement which were then combined to produce a…

The public school superintendency is the most powerful position in U.S. schools. Yet research has shown that women who hold the position have difficulty talking about power (Brunner, 2000). I designed a mixed methods study to investigate how women school superintendents viewed their uses of power. A survey was sent to all women superintendents…

In the present study, the authors investigated age differences in children's understanding (a) that a person's behavior may contribute to the formation of a shared opinion within the peer group and (b) that origins of a reputation can be direct or indirect. The authors read stories in which a target character engaged in either prosocial or…

With 101 healthy aging adult participants, the authors investigated whether executive functions are a unitary concept. The authors established the factor structure of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST; E. A. Berg, 1948), the Stroop color and word test (C. J. Golden, 1978), verbal fluency using the Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT;…

The types of non-maternal child care received by more than 1000 U.S. children were examined from birth to 54 months and related to family selection factors and to child outcomes. Individual children tended to experience a variety of different types of care and not to fit into clear patterns of either stable care types or progressive patterns of…