Considers the increase in research on adolescence, with attention to its transitional aspects during the adolescent period and as a bridge between childhood and adulthood. In addition, discusses the effort to examine interactional processes between parent and child and between environment and genes, with respect to the articles of this special…

Comments on the special theme issue examining the roles of socialization, biology, and culture as they affect adaptive and maladaptive developmental outcomes. Proposes a theory-guided research approach, based on four assumptive components of contemporary developmental theories: systematic change and relative plasticity; relationism and…

Comments on problems raised in this special issue, focusing on the distinctive aspects of the risk research reported. Highlights issues like sample characteristics, measurement strategies, specificity of risk factors, and risk mechanisms. Discusses the challenges of integrating alternative models of risk, with special references to research into…

Comments on research problems raised in this special issue. Suggests that recent research highlights the nature of the multiple processes underlying variability in child and adolescent adjustment. Views variability as a function of covarying influences from multiple domains, operating on specific developmental outcomes across a background of time…

Two studies examined whether the unusual accessibility of phonological information from written Korean affected the word recognition processes of second, third, and sixth graders. Semantic priming was found for sixth but not second graders, the opposite of the pattern seen in children reading English, whereas younger children tended to show…

Nonword span (nonwords conforming to English phonology) was used to measure phonological memory and was found to be generally predictive of the number of trials needed for acquiring certain English (second-language) new words for 84 Hong Kong seventh graders. This relationship, however, was preserved only in those students whose English vocabulary…

Examined whether the characteristics in perception of speech sounds found in preverbal hearing infants might extend to the perception of signed language in infants with congenital deafness. Seventeen Japanese mother-infant dyads participated in the study. Found that infants with deafness showed greater attentional and affective responsiveness to…

Examined effects on duration of gaze of infant- and adult-directed (ID and AD) speech signalling presentation of adult faces. Found that, when ID speech segments signaled presentation of a smiling, sad, fearful, or angry face, significant and comparable conditioning occurred with the smiling and sad faces, whereas nonsignificant and more variable…

Three studies explored the connection between attachment and peer-related representations among children from preschool age through grade five. Found that children secure in their attachment to their parents had more positive peer feelings than did insecure children, and greater perceived rejection by both mothers and fathers was associated with…

Examined the antecedents of infant-father attachment among 136 father-son dyads using the Ainsworth and Wittig Strange Situation procedure and questionnaires. Found that fathers of secure infants were more extroverted and agreeable than fathers of insecure infants, tended to have more positive marriages, and experienced more positive emotional…

Compared 34 infants of very low birth weight (VLBW) and 40 full-term infants, using Ainsworth's Strange Situation procedure and Waters' Attachment Q-Set. Found that, at 14 months, VLBW infants were more likely than full-term infants to be insecurely attached when rated using the Q-Set but not when using the Strange Situation. (MDM)

Examined the stability of infant-parent attachment security in samples of 90 infant-mother and 120 infant-father dyads who completed the Ainsworth and Wittig Strange Situation procedure at 6- to 7-month intervals. Significant stability was not discerned in attachment security, with rates of stability ranging from 46% to 55%. (MDM)

Ninety-eight participants from 5 age groups with mean ages of 6, 8, 10, 22, and 72 years were tested in a series of speeded number discriminations. Found that response time slope as a function of number size decreased with age for numbers in the 1-4 range. (MDM)

Children 3.5 to 5 years old were asked to judge which of several possible sets of parts matched a configured target form and to copy the target forms. Found a significant association between age and performance on the perception task and consistency across the two tasks. (MDM)

Four experiments examined the ability of infants to form categorical representations for the spatial relations "above" and "below." Found that three- and four-month-olds could form categorical representations for above and below when a diamond-shape was presented above or below a horizontal bar but could not do so when a number of discriminably…