Social contagion theories suggest that adolescents in relationships with same-age high school dropouts should be at a greater risk of dropping out themselves. Yet, few studies have examined this premise, and none have considered all potentially influential same-age intimates, focusing instead on only either friends or siblings. Moreover, a key…

This study investigated prospective relations between older siblings' support and academic engagement and younger siblings' academic adjustment from 7th to post-8th grade. The study was unique in that it incorporated a sample of both African American and European American adolescents. Also investigated was the extent to which the gender…

Home language experiences are important for children's development of language and literacy. However, the home language context is complex, especially for Spanish-speaking children in the United States. A child's use of Spanish or English likely ranges along a continuum, influenced by preferences of particular people involved, such as parents,…

This study examined how emergent bilingual children's English and Spanish proficiencies moderated the relationships between Spanish and English input at home (bilingual home language input [BHLI]) and children's oral language skills in each language. The sample comprised over 1,400 Spanish-dominant kindergartners in California and Texas. BHLI was…

Study goals were to assess: (a) the development of academic interests from middle childhood through late adolescence; (b) the degree to which junior high and high school transitions, parents' educational expectations, interests, and education were related to changes in academic interests; and (c) the longitudinal links between youths' academic…

Pairs of genetically unrelated children reared as same-age siblings offer a design for investigating genetic and environmental influences on behavior. Results with 21 pairs support an explanatory model of intelligence that includes genetic factors. Shared environment appeared to have a very small effect on intellectual development. (SLD)

The results of Seaver's (1973) quasi-experimental study of the effects of teacher expectancies on student achievement based on older sibling performance are reinterpreted as a regression artifact. That this rival explanation has not been recognized in the literature is probably due to the effects of researcher expectancies. (Author/BS)

The confluence model of cognitive development was tested on 7,060 children. Family size, sibling order within family sizes, and hypothesized age-dependent effects were tested. Findings indicated an inverse relationship between family size and the cognitive measures; age-dependent effects and other confluence variables were found to be…

Self-esteem of 350 seventh-grade students from open and traditional elementary schools was measured. The seven open and eight traditional classes represented significantly different treatment groups. No group differences in self-esteem were found, nor were effects found for socioeconomic status, IQ, or sibling position. Girls had higher…

Virtual twins are unrelated siblings of the same age who are reared together from early infancy (UST-SA). Study uses a sample of 90 UST-SA pairs to comparatively assess the similarity of IQ subtest profile correlations for UST-SAs and twin pairs. Findings support explanatory models of intelligence that include genetic factors, demonstrating that…

Psychometric evaluation of 58 reading-disabled children, matched controls, and their nuclear families was employed to identify familial patterns of impairment in cognitive abilities. Certain types of genetic transmission or a combination of causes may be responsible for reading disability. (Author/GDC)