Reviews family responsibility, youth's obligations, and the flows of moral and material capital from child to parents as well as parents to children. Suggests that children's competence in assisting others and ability to make civic contributions affect family survival and children's developmental transitions, social behavior, and cognitive…

Comments on Skinner, Zimmer-Gembeck and Connell's study (PS 528 522) which investigated the relationship between elementary school students' beliefs-performance cycles and their perceived control and classroom engagement. Notes methodological and theoretical issues and controversial issues raised by the study. Discusses the links to other…

Two longitudinal studies examined social-cognitive skill emergence in 9- to 15-month olds, mother-infant interaction regarding joint attentional engagement, and infant's communicative competence. Findings indicated a reliable pattern of social-cognitive skill emergence and that amount of time spent in joint engagement with mothers and mothers' use…

Proposes an amended timetable for the origins of joint visual attention and offers theoretical alternatives for the development of point. Includes discussions of the origins of intentionality, the emergence of joint attention, the transition to pointing comprehension, the signal cues of different joint-attention cues, pointing comprehension, the…

Maintains that Carpenter, Nagell, and Tomasello's (1998) data reveal little definitive information on cognitive processes involved in infants' social interactive behaviors. Evaluates support for Carpenter et al.'s claims for infant social cognition and discusses the nature of infant cognition. Maintains that what is needed is experimental evidence…

Explored how mothers convey information about category structure during naturalistic interactions. Videotaped reading-aloud sessions between mothers and toddlers; coded their interactions for explicit and implicit discussion of animal and artifact categories. Found that mothers provided a rich array of information beyond simple labeling routines,…

Comments on the findings of study of maternal input into children's category knowledge in this monograph. Discusses such aspects of maternal input as the child's role in guiding the parent's language, conceptual development, ways of imparting information about category types, parental speech patterns and how they help children learn optimally, and…

Examined age differences in the operation of beliefs-performance cycles and the effects of these cycles on the development of children's perceived control and classroom engagement from the third to the seventh grade. Found that children who experienced teachers as warm and contingent were more likely to develop optimal profiles of control. Beliefs…

Reviews literature on effects of early maladjustment on later behavior problems. Discusses development as transactional process in which risk and resilience are central, a cumulative risk model of behavior problems as resulting from a variety of factors, and longitudinal research that focuses on externalizing behaviors. Concludes predictive power…

Through seriation, verbal seriation, and conservation tasks, investigated blind, partially sighted, and sighted children's understanding of quantity. Subjects were 81 children equally dispersed through these 3 groups. Age range was 4 to 17 years. Found similarity in concept acquisition among three groups that extended beyond quantity conservation…

Examined effects of social interactions experienced by newborns on later speech ability. Subjects were 20 5-year olds and 20 6-year olds. Children were observed conducting a telephone communication task and also given the British Picture Vocabulary Test. Found that first-borns had larger vocabularies but less-developed conversation skills than…

Highlights Froebel's ideas on areas such as math, language, art, and science education, and provides a bibliography of his writings on the kindergarten movement and on teacher training. Discusses these ideas in the context of the controversial journal "Child Life." Provides a brief history of the journal. (JW)

Describes retraining of Russian teachers in Vygotskian perspectives as an educational innovation. Contextualizes movement toward Vygotsky in Russian education and begins assessing its implications for the Western context. Implications include rethinking the teacher's role in the classroom as socially constituted and reconsidering the nature of…

Presents case study of first congenitally deaf British infant to receive multichannel cochlear implant. Used video analysis of achievement of audio objectives to detail pre- and postimplantation phases. Results demonstrated the importance of gesture in transition to written language; benefit of early identification, amplification, and referral for…

Uses writings of Paulo Freire to discuss situation of British primary teachers required to teach science without specialized training. Cites interviews with teachers that point to cultural clashes between National Curriculum physics and primary practice. Conflicts exist between facilitating child-centered discovery learning and teaching, and…