Responds to a commentary in this issue by Kempen on an experiment by Frazier and others involving Dutch-language lexical processing. Postulates that it is unclear control items were open to complex verbal analysis; more research is needed to determine how the verb "hebben" is interpreted in context; and Kempen's account of the results is…

Through analyses of text corpora, sentence completion, and self-paced reading, examined role of structurally defined parsing principles, local information (lexically specific biases), and contextual information (referential pragmatics) in resolving syntactic ambiguities. Subjects were 32 undergraduate native English speakers. Found that local and…

Illustrates the role of the family in linking sociopolitical changes to adolescent development by outlining some differences in structures of families of East and West Germany. Synthesizes survey data on this topic. Areas discussed include family formation, unmarried couples and parents, maternal employment, public child care, divorce and…

Interviewed 1,708 East and West German adolescents to study similarities and differences in their psychosocial transitions. Found that females generally underwent transitions earlier than males. East German youths conceived of the transition to work and displayed autonomy earlier than West German youth, but the overall timetable of transitions…

Used psychological tests to examine the effects of early childhood experiences on interaction patterns that have resulted from East and West German children growing up in different social contexts. Subjects were 140 East and West German adolescents. Found that West German adolescents showed more prosocial tendencies and had stronger emotion-based…

Examined whether the former East Germany has produced authoritarian personalities and whether there is age and gender variation on authoritarianism regardless of culture. Subjects were 552 West German, 320 East German, and 619 American adolescents. Found that all three cultures have similar proclivities to exhibit an authoritarian character…

Examined the social factors that influence adolescent aggression and antiforeigner sentiment. Subjects were 158 East German and 138 West German youths. Found that for subjects from both regions, aggressive and antiforeigner attitudes are linked to stressful experiences in school and family but also to societal conditions as perceived by the…

Synthesizes the theoretical implications of the studies presented in this issue on social repercussions of a unified Germany, highlighting the effects of economic and political change on women, families, and youth, and their relevance for cultural-historical theories of human development. (JW)

Four- and five-year olds and adults looked at cards depicting five identical objects named with plural or collective nouns, and then looked at cards depicting one or five objects and chose one of the cards in response to the collective noun. Children were able, but less so than adults, to choose the card depicting the five objects. (BC)

Examined whether false belief recall in three-year olds is inaccessible without cues, and whether cue-aided recall is accompanied by insight. Six experiments varied a core procedure involving cues and child reports of and about their beliefs. Found that the ability to recall one's own false belief was attained around 3.5 years of age. (BC)

Five experiments examined children's expectations about what might be inside animals and machines. Found that children had abstract expectations that guide their search for differences between animals and machines, and that 8-year olds had more concrete expectations than preschoolers. These results are consistent with an abstract-to-concrete model…

In a visual habituation experiment, infants watched a circle (the "agent") move toward another circle by jumping over a barrier or jumping without a barrier present, and then watched a circle move straight to another circle. Found that infants were able to identify the agent's spatial goal and to interpret the agent's actions causally in relation…

Videotaped four deaf preschoolers and their mothers during free play at home and coded the preschoolers' and mothers' gestures according to handshapes. Found that all children produced gestures characterized by combinations of handshapes and motions, and that children's gestures did not correspond to their mothers' gestures. (BC)

Critiques models of children's acquisition of the English past tense. Discusses the sequence of language development in a child and as predicted by a model, the purported U-shaped sequence of the development of children's past-tense usage, and children's overregularization and irregularization errors in past-tense usage. (BC)

Eighth-grade students in bilingual classrooms explored the geometric concepts of reflection and rotation within a computer-based, dynamic, instructional environment. With initial differences controlled, treatment groups performed significantly better on concept formation and spatial visualization than did control groups receiving conventional…