Compared cognitive functioning of infants--at 8 and 18 months--with varying levels of prenatal cocaine exposure. Found that, with risk and polydrug exposure controlled, exposure groups did not differ at 8 months on Bayley Scales or recovery to a novel stimulus. Infants with heavy exposure or high environmental risk declined in mental development…

Two studies investigated 4- to 7-year-olds' understanding that trait can be causal mechanisms based on desires or mere summaries of behavioral regularities. Results suggested that children change from viewing traits as behavioral regularities to understanding them as internal mediators and that advances in understanding desire underlie this…

Examined relations between characterological versus behavioral self-blaming attributions for victimization and maladjustment in middle school students. Found that self-perceived victimization was associated with characterological self-blame, loneliness, anxiety, and low self-worth. Peer-perceived victimization was related to peer acceptance and…

Three studies examined naturalistic concepts of moral maturity in young through older adults to develop a more comprehensive understanding of moral excellence than in dominant theories. Findings indicated that naturalistic notions of moral excellence contained themes of principled reasoning, also referenced aspects of moral character and virtue…

Argues that experts in philosophical and psychological paradigms can and do contribute to revisions of theories of moral excellence and that the study of prototypes has limited value for resolving some important theoretical issues. Describes research topics that can be informed by the investigation of prototypes of moral excellence, such as social…

Argues that the field of moral psychology is theoretically skewed and lacks a comprehensive model of moral functioning and a compelling conception of moral excellence. Contends that common language understandings of moral maturity are inherently interesting because they affect everyday moral functioning. Concludes that disjunctions between…

Four studies examined the influence of essentialist information such as internal properties and perceptual similarity on 3-, 4-, and 5-year olds' interpretations of labels. Results suggested that children have essentialist beliefs about animals, but not about artifacts, and that these beliefs interact with children's assumptions about word meaning…

Two experiments examined visual attention in 5- to 13-year olds who were hearing or deaf with or without cochlear implants. Findings indicated that visual selective attention changes occurred around 8 years for all groups, with deaf children without cochlear implants performing less well than others. Differences between deaf children with and…

Used cross-sectional life span data from normative sample for Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery to examine independence of age-related cognitive changes in childhood and adulthood. Found that majority of age-related differences were shared across different cognitive variables and were well predicted by individual differences in…

Three experiments examined the role of representations in adolescents' deductive reasoning. Findings indicated that, with age, conditional reasoning improved on tasks containing permission conditional relations; reasoning fallacies increased on tasks containing causal conditional relations. Valid conditional inferences were more common on problems…

Examined the relationship between 6- to 8-year olds' conceptual understanding of additive composition, commutativity, and associativity principles and addition problem-solving procedures. Results revealed that conceptual understanding was related to using order-indifferent, decomposition, and retrieval strategies and speed and accuracy in solving…

Examined levels of self-reported "voice" (authentic self expression) with various persons among high school students. Found no gender differences nor evidence that voice declines in female adolescents. Perceived support for voice predicted level of voice. Feminine girls reported lower levels of voice than androgynous girls in public relational…

Examined hypothesis that even before children have identified themselves as members of national groups, they will have been exposed to considerable positive information about their own national group, which will encourage group-serving judgments. Found that significant preferences emerged for the in-group on two of three measures. Findings suggest…

Used a longitudinal sample to examine the relation of 8- to 10-year olds' teacher-reported dispositional sympathy to regulation and emotionality. Found that sympathy correlated with adults' reports of regulation and low negative emotionality contemporaneously and, to some degree, two and four years prior. The pattern of correlations changed little…

Examined the mediating role of maternal sensitivity for the association between maternal attachment representations and the quality of infant-mother attachment. Found that autonomous mothers and mothers in secure relationships were more sensitive at home than nonautonomous mothers and mothers in nonsecure relationships, respectively. Infants in…