Examines main and interactional effects of paternal identification on a son's personality and drug use. As in another study by Brook et al., included in this issue, questionnaires were completed by White college students and their fathers. Sons who identified with fathers having positive traits were more likely to possess these traits themselves.…

Studies the aggressiveness of over 600 subjects, their parents, and their children over a 22-year period. Subjects who were more aggressive 8-year-olds were more aggressive 30-year-olds, exhibiting serious antisocial behavior as adults. The stability of aggression across generations within a family was also high. (Author/CB)

Challenges previous studies concluding that masculinity and femininity fluctuate as a function of the individual's family life stage. Findings from 582 Australian survey respondents showed that involvement in work and study has a greater impact on masculinity and femininity scores than does the presence of children. (Author/CB)

Investigates stability and change in four social motives (achievement, affiliation, fear of weakness, hope of power) over the adult life cycle. Motives were assessed in 1957 and 1976 by coding thematic apperceptive content in stories told about six pictures. Some age differences and cohort stability were evident for both sexes. (Author/CB)

Explores Gibbs's (1977, 1979) hypothesis that mature levels of moral reasoning are related to affirmative coping with human needs while conventional reasoning is related to abortive coping. In one study of 28 women and another of 70 adults, an interview questionnaire was used to assess ability to deal with Fromm's existential needs. (Author/CB)

Tests the applicability of the physical attractiveness stereotype to perceptions of the elderly. In the first study, college-age and elderly observers rated the attractiveness of faces of elderly people. In the second study, subjects rated faces at three levels of attractiveness on personality, success in life experiences, and occupational…

Investigates (1) whether the semantic processing deficit in the aged can be attributed to age differences in attentional capacity usage during encoding and (2) age differences in terms of the interaction between encoding and retrieval operations. Subjects engaged in both primary (semantic, rhyme, arithmetic questions) and secondary…

Investigates the hypothesis that older adults remember prose less well than young adults because they are less sensitive to the structure of prose passages. Results of studies using stories, essays, and essay summaries suggest that the old are as sensitive to passage structure as the young but recall less information. (Author/CB)

Examines age-related predictive relationships among an array of psychometric intellectual ability markers and text recall performance. Women from three age groups (ranging from 21 to 78 years) read and recalled four narratives at three delay intervals and completed a battery of intellectual ability tests. (Author/CB)

Examines evidence for the automatic processing of information about presentation modality in older adults. Younger and older adults learned a list of nouns through auditory and visual presentation modes, recalled target words, and identified the presentation modality of each word. Results suggested automatic processing for modality memory and some…

Evaluated the validity of Kohlberg's model and measure in a cross-cultural context and assessed the cultural uniqueness of social-moral reasoning among 92 Israeli kibbutz adolescents. Developmental findings strongly supported validity of Kohlberg's structural-developmental understanding of moral judgment. Stage change was found to be upward,…

Preschool children reasoned and made judgments about stories that varied in dimensions previously found to be associated with judgments in two social-cognitive domains, moral and conventional, to examine types of information that produce differentiated judgments in young children. (Author/DST)

Evaluated developmental trends in social perception by examining accuracy and consistency using a novel nonverbal trait-inference task at four age levels (5-6, 7-8, 9-11, and 19-22 years) in male subjects. This general paradigm may prove useful in future investigations of social perceptual development, particularly when consistency as well as…

Assessed possibility that developmental difference in social values is associated with development of information processing capabilities. Three- to 10-year-old children completed an individualized regression assessment of social values, a central-incidental memory measure, and a free-recall word list task. Results indicated age, sex, and memory…

Interrelationship of different categories of prosocial behavior different assessment procedures, and role of empathy and perspective taking were examined. Prosocial behavior in preschool children was assessed using three different approaches: naturalistic observation, structured measures, and teacher ratings. Results indicated preschool children…