Examined the impact of object boundaries on 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds' quantitative reasoning. Asked subjects to choose between alternative collections that differed in number and size of cookies and in aggregate amount. Found that children were influenced by size of individual cookies at 3 years but were generally unsuccessful in aggregating size…

Examined visual search for compound patterns in 6-, 8-, 10-, and 22-year-olds. Found large improvements with age in search rate for long-range targets; search rate for short-range targets was fairly constant across age. This pattern held regardless of ease of perceptual access to target, supporting the hypothesis of different processes involved at…

Two experiments examined 8- to 11-year-olds' ability to distinguish between logical and nonlogical argument forms. Findings indicated that a significant number could recognize the necessity of logical forms and indeterminacy of nonlogical forms, and that this competence must be distinguished from tendency to fail to attend to structural…

Examined relationships between severity, chronicity, and timing of maternal depressive symptoms and child outcomes for 4,953 children. Found that severity and chronicity of maternal depressive symptoms were related to more behavior problems and lower vocabulary scores. Interaction of severity and chronicity related to higher levels of behavior…

Examined role of toddlers' attention deployment strategies in predicting 5-year-olds' delay-of-gratification strategies. Found that toddlers' use of effective attention deployment strategies to cope with separation from mother and with maternal behavior (controlling or noncontrolling) predicted effective delay-of-gratification strategies at age 5,…

Three experiments examined kindergartners' and second graders' retention in the context of two distinctiveness manipulations, the von Restorff and bizarre imagery paradigms. Results showed that: older children retained more information from lists of pictures or interactive images over 3 weeks than younger; younger children failed to benefit from…

Examined analytic methods for describing children's social risk. Found that the individual-risk-variables approach provided better overall prediction of developmental outcomes at a particular age. The risk-factor approach provided good prediction of developmental trajectories with moderate to large sample sizes. The risk-index was useful for…

Investigated 4- and 7-month-olds' perception of transparency, using computer-generated achromatic or color displays depicting a semitransparent box occluding the center of a rod. Found that 4-month-olds indicated perception of transparency in color but not in achromatic displays. Seven-month-olds showed some evidence of transparency perception in…

Two experiments used first-letter naming to investigate the role of phonology in printed word perception among children with and without dyslexia. Findings indicated that all children showed faster first-letter-naming times in a congruent condition than in an incongruent condition, suggesting that phonology is a fundamental constraint in the…

Analyzes the logical basis of testing developmental order hypotheses with categorical measures. Argues that depending on whether saltatory or continuous developmental changes are being assessed, the observed relationship between categorical measures yields different types of information about developmental ordering. Maintains that when change is…

Assessed the association of parental discipline and monitoring with early conduct problems of 123 children in a highly disadvantaged, African American sample. Analyses indicated that, after earlier conduct problems were controlled for, coercive parent discipline and poor parental monitoring at age 4.5 predicted age 6 conduct problems. Associations…

Assessed sleep patterns, sleep disruptions, and sleepiness of second-, fourth-, and sixth-graders. Found that older children had more delayed sleep onset times and increased reported daytime sleepiness than younger; girls spent more time in sleep than boys and had increased percentage of motionless sleep; and 18 percent of children had fragmented…

Examined Chinese sixth-graders' sociability and prosocial orientation and adjustment at age 12 and 2 years later. Found that: (1) prosocial orientation predicted social and school adjustment and externalizing problems; (2) sociability uniquely predicted internalizing problems and emotional adjustment; and (3) prosocial orientation and sociability…

Examined individual, ethnic, and age differences in structure of mother-adolescent conversations. Found Latin American mothers dominated conversations more than European Americans; mothers dominated conversations about sexuality/AIDS more than conversations about conflicts; older adolescents reported less satisfaction, less openness, and more…

Examined relation between friendship and social competence in Head Start preschoolers. Suggested that number of reciprocated friendships was associated with social competence. Found having nonreciprocated friendships was not a liability; there was a trend toward participating in reciprocated friendships from age 3 to 4; and number of reciprocated…