Hypothesized that individual differences in 81 sixth-grade boys' self-restraint would serve as a mediator between family factors in preadolescence and sons' delinquent behavior 4 years later. General family functioning at preadolescence, independent of other scores, predicted boys' level of self-restraint four years later. (MDM)

Compared socialization, family, and mental health variables among 231 low socioeconomic status Hispanic and Anglo-American preadolescents and their mothers. Found that Anglo-American mothers, compared to Hispanic mothers, reported less rejection and inconsistent discipline, but also less cohesion. Anglo-American children reported less rejection,…

Compared the daily experiences of preadolescents whose mothers were employed full-time, part-time, or not at all. Found little difference in quantity and quality of time associated with maternal employment. Full-time maternal employment was associated with more time doing homework with mothers and less time in general leisure; part-time…

Examined the relationship between parental involvement in their children's schooling and children's motivation and academic achievement. Subjects were of 300 11- to 14-year-olds. Data from parent, student, and teacher evaluations suggest that parental involvement manifests itself in many ways. Children who are confident in school may actually push…

Examined the relationship between 48 4-year-olds' social competence with peers and differential aspects of their teacher child relationships over the preceding 3 years. Found that toddler security with a teacher was negatively associated with hostile aggression and was positively associated with complex peer play and gregarious, prosocial, and…

Examined mother and teacher correlates of social competence with familiar and unfamiliar peers in 84 children who had entered child care in 4 different waves. Found relationships with initial teachers and those at age four were related to social competence with peers. Maternal attachment relationships at 12 months and at 4 years did not predict…

Five studies examined the contributions of syllable-ordering and rhythmic properties of syllable strings to 6- and 9-month-old infants' speech segmentation. Results indicate that the capacity for integrating multiple sources of information in speech perception emerges between 6 and 9 months, in rough synchrony with the emergence of integration in…

Examined the ability of 1-year olds to remember the location of nonvisible targets. Found that infants were able to associate a nonvisible target with a direct landmark and to code its distance and direction with respect to themselves or the larger framework. Difficulty of coding with indirect landmarks was associated with cognitive complexity and…

Examined how the nature of spatial relations influences children's ability to remember relations between progressively larger landmarks and spatial regions. Found that when asked about the location of an object, children clearly understood that they should provide the landmark with which the object was positioned. However, referential…

Examined developmental changes in the use of distance-based and calendar-based approaches to estimate the recency of two events. Found that children's ability to discriminate temporal relationships between two events appears by four to five years of age. In contrast, use of calendar information and cognizance of annual patterns was found only in…

Examines preschool children's ability for advance planning and mishap prevention or remediation related to familiar events. Indicates that children three to five years old appear to use general event knowledge in constructing verbal plans. However, developmental differences in the quality of plans suggests that the ability of using general…

Two studies examined the progress in normally developing preschoolers' ability to produce actions with imagined objects (pantomimes). Found that young children not only had difficulty producing imaginary object representations in contrast to normal adults, they also had difficulty comprehending imaginary object representations and were better at…

Examined children's reasoning regarding the relation between mental representations and reality. Found that children perform better when reasoning about imagination in relation to reality than when reasoning about the relation between belief and reality. Results suggest that understanding that mental representations can differ from reality emerges…

Examines the use of tasks with backward false belief explanation as an effective technique in gaining a complete picture of the development of understanding of the representational mind. Argues that traditional prediction tests of false belief cannot tell whether children's wrong answers show misunderstanding about false belief or seduction by the…

Examined age-related changes in visual selective attention--ability to resist interference--in children 5 to 12 years old and adults. The interference effect on stimulus evaluation did not discriminate between age groups; however, the interference effect on correct response activation showed a pronounced age-related reduction, suggesting a…