Two studies investigated three- and five-month-old infants' ability to discriminate and recognize different motions of rigid objects. Also explored was the nature of stimulus information which makes such discrimination and recognition possible. The results are discussed in terms of disruptions in the optic array. (Author/DST)

Three studies were designed to examine infants' bisensory responsiveness to temporally modulated stimulation by varying frequency while keeping intensity constant, by varying both frequency and intensity together, and by varying intensity while keeping temporal frequency constant. Findings indicate that sound influences visual preferences via…

Infants were tested for unimanual handedness at weekly intervals for a 14-week period beginning with the week of onset of duplicated syllable babbling. Group analyses indicating effects of sex and/or birth order on fluctuations and date review for individual infants suggested considerable variability across infants in occurrence and/or timing of…

Purposes of study were (1) to explore differences in quality of child-child and adult-child interactions and (2) to examine preschool children's reasoning about their own compliant behaviors. Data are discussed in support of theorists' assertions regarding difference in peer and adult interaction and literature on children's reasoning and…

Influence of motive-outcome valence matching and outcome foreseeability on perception of intentionality and moral judgments were compared. Preschool children and adult subjects were asked directly to make attributions of intentionality to and a moral judgment of the 21 story characters. Findings suggest that outcome foreseeability significantly…

Examined influence of nondiscrepance and discrepance between situational and expressive cues on children's emotion recognition. Videotaped episodes in which actors portrayed emotions were presented to four- to eight-year-old girls. Girls' responses to questions regarding the perceived cues reflected a developmental trend from centration to…

Two experiments were conducted to describe effects of age and task difficulty on referential cohesion of story retellings. It was hypothesized that increased task difficulty would lead to higher error rates for all subject groups: preschoolers, first graders, and adults. Results indicated higher incidence of errors with videotape than with verbal…

Recent empirical findings have challenged Vygotsky's theory regarding the self-regulatory functions of children's private speech. This study hypothesized that semantic tasks and instructions to talk out loud would maximize private speech production. Results supported Vygotsky's notion that private speech does not disappear with age but "goes…

Demonstrates frequent occurrence of self-initiated repairs in speech of kindergarten and second grade children. Speech during "Show and Tell" sessions was scored for spontaneous occurrence of repetitions; corrections of word choice reference and syntax; postponements; and abandonments. Findings indicate most frequent communicative monitoring in…

Examined home-reared and institutionalized infants in Greece to find sex differences in social-vocal behaviors as assessed by Differential Vocal Responsiveness (DVR) to mother/caretaker versus stranger interactions. Results suggest that early differences in vocal-interactional patterns, and possibly cognitive processing, may be attributable to…

Parent/infant relationships were investigated among 50 biologically related families selected to provide a control group for an adoption study of rate differences in communicative development in infancy. In addition, a path analysis of genetic and environmental influences on communicative development is presented incorporating the overall sample.…

Discusses the influence of external environments on the functioning of families as contexts for child development. Describes studies on the interaction of genetics and environment, on relationships between the family and hospital care, day care, peers, schools, parental employment and support networks, the community, and major transition life…

Discusses a study of 403 White, middle-class college females and their fathers, who were given questionnaires assessing their own personalities and drug use. Results indicate that daughters who highly identified with their fathers had similar characteristics and suggest that paternal identificatory processes are as important for daughters as for…

Reports a study of interactions of middle-class parents from 27 Swedish families, designated as shared child care or traditional families, with their first-born infants, aged 8 to 12 months. Suggests that differential involvement in child care has significant effects on fathers' behavior. (DR)

Presents two studies that describe behavior of very young children in tasks requiring self-control. Behavior of 27 two-year-olds completing a task was observed and coded in Study 1 using a 10-category coding system. In the second study, 82 children 24 to 36 months old were observed in three delay tasks. Significant effects were found for age and…