Vulnerability to depression and non-response to Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) are associated with specific neurophysiological characteristics including greater right hemisphere (RH) relative to left hemisphere (LH) activity. The present study investigated the relationship between hemispheric specialization and processing of…

Taking into account teachers' lives inside and outside school, makes suggestions for staff development in four areas: (1) keeping healthy, (2) building self-esteem, (3) managing time, and (4) developing realistic options for change. Suggestions are based on a study in which most teachers described their experiences with staff development as…

Describes the operation of a parent support service provided by mental health staff and pediatricians who offer free telephone counseling, private consultations, parent education group meetings, and an early intervention program for parents concerned with their children's "negative" behavior. (RH)

A total of 46 teachers rated observable mild-to-moderate school-related problem behaviors in order to identify aspects of teacher tolerance specific to the elementary classroom. Findings indicated that behaviors least tolerated are other-directed or disruptive; self- or teacher-directed behaviors elicited less negative ratings. (RH)

Reports two experiments examining the abilities of normal children ages five to seven years and deaf-mute children ages 11 to 18 years in tasks demanding comprehension, production, and imitation of passive-voice and double-negative sentences. (Author/RH)

Results of this study of 96 sibling dyads demonstrated necessity of going beyond the examination of between-group differences in the study of divorce effects to look at the processes by which developmental outcomes for children are enhanced or undermined. Findings draw attention to the heightened vulnerability of dyads containing older boys in…

When 32 monolingual Korean and 24 English children were asked to respond "right" or "wrong" on a sentence-picture or sentence-knowledge verification task, members of both groups found true negatives the hardest sentences to verify. When 16 Korean speakers between 4 and 7 years of age were asked to deny statements, they produced…

Responds to Gordon's critique (in this issue) of Bohannon and Stanowicz (1988) by pointing out relevant and irrelevant aspects of discussions of learnability. Rates of feedback found in Bohannon and Stanowicz are shown to be sufficient to spur learning in many species. Evidence against the universality of negative evidence is discounted. (RH)

Infants whose mothers were supportive of their autonomy displayed greater task-oriented persistence and competence during play than did infants of more controlling mothers; securely attached and avoidant infants tended to exhibit greater persistence at tasks than anxious-ambivalent babies, and ambivalent babies were the most negative in affect.…

Treatment refusal was found to be associated with fear of "medical" people, intolerance for pain or discomfort, and difficulty in approaching novelty or adapting to change. In contrast to parents of controls, parents of treatment refusing children rated them as having greater difficulty in playing with unfamiliar children and negative in…

Three groups of macaque mother/infant dyads were observed while each lived in ecological settings that differed in level of foraging demand and, hence, the amount of work each mother was required to perform to obtain her daily rations. Findings suggest that in monkeys, as in humans, when mothers are psychologically unavailable to their infants,…

The relative advantage of the left (LH) over the right hemisphere (RH) in processing of verbal material for most individuals is well established. Nevertheless, several studies have reported the ability of positively and negatively valenced stimuli to enhance and reverse, respectively, the usual LH greater than RH asymmetry. These studies, however,…

The majority of studies have demonstrated a right hemisphere (RH) advantage for the perception of emotions. Other studies have found that the involvement of each hemisphere is valence specific, with the RH better at perceiving negative emotions and the LH better at perceiving positive emotions [Reuter-Lorenz, P., & Davidson, R.J. (1981)…

The article is addressed to nonmedical personnel working directly in the field of mental retardation. (CD)