bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Planning and Control Processes Across the Life Span: An Overview
Authors: Lachman Margie E. , Burack Orah R.
Published: March 2013

We present a brief overview of the areas of planning and control to provide a context for the individual papers in this special issue. For both topics we consider development across the life span, subgroup variations (e.g. by gender), and correlates (e.g. well-being). We then explore potential linkages between planning and control. Our attempt to integrate control and planning is meant to stimulate future work which considers these processes together from a life span perspective.
Investigating the Effects of Planning Aids on Adults' and Adolescents' Organisation of a Complex Task
Authors: Chalmers Denise , Lawrence Jeanette A.
Published: March 2013

Adolescents and adults planned a hypothetical unexpected party for a teenager, with and without planning aids in two studies. Errors were computed for subjects' planning of the given party task, and for their transformations of the task into one of their own. In Study 1, when planning aids were provided for all subjects, adolescents produced plans with no more errors than plans of working adults in the given party task, but made more errors than working adults when they transformed the task into one of their own.

In Study 2, retired adults, working adults, and adolescents were assigned to two conditions (with and without planning aids). Planning aids were effective for all age groups and planning efficiency was related to the experimental provision of planning aids, subjects' use of integrated or single-step planning strategies, and their retrospective evaluations of their plans. Adolescents did not make more errors than either group of adults, but retired adults made more errors than working adults regardless of whether plans were analysed as given or following subjects' own plans. Findings are interpreted in relation to their developmental implications and to the possibility of assisting older and younger planners to engage in effective organisation of complex tasks with the presentation of planning aids.
The Triad of Control: Concepts and Application to Caregiving
Authors: Blank Thomas O. , Levesque Maurice J. , Winter Georgie P.
Published: March 2013

Control extends through space and time, linking specific occurrences of control behaviour to perceptions of control and desire for control and to broader contexts, such as domain variations and developmental changes. A triadic conception explicitly including perceptions of control, desire for control, and capacity for actual control and focusing on balance and imbalance in the relationships of these forms the basis for better understanding of control at both individual and interpersonal levels. In the caregiving relationship of frail parent and child, control is characterised by restructuring of each person's triad of control within a context of asymmetry and dependency. Changing patterns of intra-individual and inter-individual aspects of control have impact on each individual and the nature of the relationship. Assumptions about perception of and desire for control and involvement in decisions about allocation of control become particularly crucial.
Cognitive Self-efficacy in Relation to Personal Mastery and Goal Setting across the Life Span
Authors: Berry Jane M. , West Robin L.
Published: March 2013

This article is an integrative review of empirical studies of cognitive self-efficacy from childhood through old age. Issues of definition and measurement are addressed and the relation of self-efficacy to personal mastery is evaluated. Research on academic achievement in children and adolescents, complex decision-making in young adults, and memory and intellectual functioning in older adults supports a variety of theoretically driven hypotheses regarding the sources and effects of self-efficacy. Percepts of self-efficacy are based on a variety of sources of information, including personal mastery and perceived control beliefs. Self-efficacy has predictable effects on a variety of task engagement variables (e.g. persistence, effort, goal setting, strategy usage, chioce) that mediate the relationship between self-efficacy and performance. Generalisations regarding the applicability of self-efficacy to understanding cognitive development across the life span are discussed in terms of age-relevant domains and it is argued that a life span treatment of self-efficacy development is particularly compelling because both life span theory and self-efficacy theory emphasise domain specificity.
The Acquisition of Socio-cognitive Competence by Nso Children in the Bamenda Grassfields of Northwest Cameroon
Authors: Nsamenang A. Bame , Lamb Michael E.
Published: March 2013

Among the Nso of Northwest Cameroon, the primary purpose of socialisation is the development of social intelligence and a sense of social responsibility. This process is dependent on and shaped more by "tacit lessions" built into children's apprenticeship in routine tasks and interpersonal encounters with both peers and adults than on role instruction. Nso children are co-participants in their own "hands-on" socialisation. The traditional niche is now in total flux. In order to compare the ideas and values of different parental cohorts inherent in the tension of continuity and change, we interviewed 389 Nso men and women using the Lamnso Parent Interview Guide. The results revealed both similarities and differences in the values of various parental cohorts. Although traditional values were widely endorsed, mothers, parents, and urban respondents tended to manifest less indigenous viewpoints than fathers, grandparents, and rural subjects, perhaps because of their greater exposure to alien modifiers of cultural knowledge and values.
The Social-emotional Orientation of Mother-child Communication in African American Families
Authors: Blake Ira Kincade
Published: March 2013

The language abilities of African American children have been linked to their poor school performance for several decades. With limited descriptive evidence about their learning language as an integrated system, African American children are still viewed as somehow acquiring an inadequate language. Moreover, the recent work in language socialisation has not been able to alter the tendency to approach the language skills of minority children from a restricted use or production deficiency perspective. The present study addressed these issues through a longitudinal/observational examination of the form, content, and use in the language development of three African American children within a low-structured communicative setting with their mothers. Descriptive findings indicated that, similar to Euro-American children, these African American children's language developed in length and semantic-syntactic relations. However, differences in the group patterns of semantic-syntactic relations did occur and reflected a style of communication identified as a social-emotional orientation. This orientation was also found in the mothers' pattern of language use. The cultural basis of the social-emotional orientation and its role in language learning are discussed.
Children's Street Work in Urban Nigeria as Adaptation and Maladaptation to Changing Socioeconomic Circumstances
Authors: Oloko Beatrice Adenike
Published: March 2013

One fundamental value of the modern societies in which schools endogenously emerged is self-orientation. This contrasts with the familistic collectivism that has been identified as providing a basis for the social structure of traditional societies such as Nigeria. An important strategy of child socialisation in Nigeria and other West African countries is responsibility training. One of the objectives of the investigations reported in this article was to determine the extent to which an aspect of responsibility training, namely children's street-trading activities, typifies a collective orientation and the extent to which it was consonant with schooling, which largely promotes a self-orientation. The data consist of interviews with: (1) 2000 children from different parts of Nigeria, both traders and nontraders; (2) 100 of the children's teachers; (3) 224 women traders; and (4) 117 experts (such as doctors, social welfare officers, policemen, and religious leaders) who, in their professional roles, interact with young street traders. It is concluded that: (1) street trading had some value-compatibility with schooling in the early stages of the modernisation process in Nigeria, but that it has become maladaptive as a result of both changes in the conditions of trading and changes in the system of school assessment; and (2) early childhood working experience, as exemplified in street trading, may constitute one of the important mechanisms by which the traditional value of familistic collectivism is maintained and the self-orientation inculcated by prolonged schooling is reduced.
An Observational Study of 5-year-old South African Children in the Year Before School
Authors: Liddell Christine , Kvalsvig Jane , Strydom Nina , Qotyana Pumla , Shabalala Agnes
Published: March 2013

This paper presents data from an observational investigation of 80 African children growing up at home in the year before school. Data cover aspects of social interaction, language use, activity patterns, and object utilisation. Gender differences are examined, and results are compared with those from observational studies of Euro-American children of similar age. These data provide baseline data on black South African children, about whom relatively little has been published, and offers insight into the everyday lives of preschool-aged children from the developing world.
Measurement of Young Children's Close Friendship: A Comparison of Two Independent Assessment Systems and their Associations with Attachment Security
Authors: Youngblade Lise M. , Park Kathryn A. , Belsky Jay
Published: March 2013

The purpose of this study was to compare two independent dyadic assessments of children's close friendship and to examine the attachment correlates of both measures. A total of 73 5-year-olds, who had participated in a longitudinal study of child and family development with their parents and their close friend were observed in a 30 minute laboratory freeplay setting. Each friendship pair was: (1) rated every 30 seconds on eight dimensions of close relationships (e.g. connectedness, negativity, synchrony) using the Dyadic Coding System (DCS: Youngblade & Belsky, 1992); (2) sorted on seven similar dimensions of relationships (e.g. positive social orientation, harmony, cohesiveness) using the Dyadic Relationships Q-sort (DRQ: Park & Waters, 1989). Antecedent attachment data were collected at 12 (with mother) and 13 (with father) months in the Strange Situation; at this time each parent also completed the Attachment Q-sort (Waters & Deane, 1985). Each parent completed the Attachment Q-sort again at 36-37 months. The results revealed that both friendship measures captured similar variation in friendship quality. Analyses of the links between child-parent attachment and friendship suggested congruence between Q-sort attachment security and friendship quality measured with the DRQ, but only for the child-father relationship. Analyses using Strange Situation assessments of infant-father attachment revealed counterintuitive associations with friendship quality, as measured by both the DRQ and DCS. There were no statistically significant relations between child-mother attachment security and friendship quality. In general, the findings point to a number of complexities regarding the measurement and interpretation of links between social relationships.
The Development of Short-term Visual Memory in Young Children
Authors: Walker Peter , Hitch Graham J. , Doyle Alison , Porter Tracey
Published: March 2013

A probed memory task was used to investigate children's short-term visual memory for an object's spatial location or colour. In Experiment 1, 5-yearolds recognised the location of one of three coloured shapes that had appeared in a random spatio-temporal order. Two aspects of the children's performance confirmed their reliance on visual memory. First, performance was impaired when the shapes were visually similar. Secondly, the serial position curve was characteristic of visual memory, with a final-item recency effect and no primacy effect. Experiment 2 assessed 5and 7-year-old children's memory for a shape's colour or its spatial location. Although there was developmental improvement in memory for spatial location, that was confined to pre-recency items, there was no effect of age with regard to the recall of colour. The results go against Hasher and Zacks' (1979) proposal that, in contrast to colour, spatial location would not show developmental improvement because it is remembered automatically. The concept of an object file, that was devised specifically to explain how different visual features of an object are represented (Kahneman & Treisman, 1984), is considered as a potential explanation of both the serial position curve and the distinctive behaviour of different visual features. It is suggested that although 5-year-olds are as adept as 7-year-olds at creating and immediately accessing an object file, they are less able to access information about the visual features of objects whose files are no longer current.
The Relationship between Memory Span and Measures of Imitative and Spontaneous Language Complexity in Preschool Children
Authors: Blake Joanna , Austin Wendy , Cannon Marsha , Lisus Amanda , Vaughan Annabel
Published: March 2013

Preschool children, aged 2 to 5 years, were given a memory task that required them to repeat a list of animal names and a sentence imitation task. A sample of their spontaneous speech was also recorded. Word span was found to predict sentence imitation scores across the whole preschool age range. Word span and chronological age (CA), together, also predicted the mean length of utterance in spontaneous speech in younger preschool children. In a replication with children aged 2 to 3 years, word span predicted mean length or utterance (MLU) better than both CA and mental age (MA). These results extend previous findings regarding the relationship between word span and language imitation to younger preschool children. They also support the notion of a memory constraint on early spontaneous language. Increasing mastery of linguistic rules appears to obviate a memory constraint on spontaneous language, at least with these measures.
Behavioural Problems and Competences in 4-year-olds: Dimensions and Relationships
Authors: Hagekull Bent , Bohlin Gunilla
Published: March 2013

The study explored the dimensionality of parental ratings of positive and negative aspects of behaviour in a sample of 4-year-olds (n = 377). The children were described using the Preschool Behaviour Questionnaire (PBQ) with items added to include ego strength/effectance and social competence. Factor analytic results showed a 2-factor structure in the PBQ behaviour problem area: factor 1 describing externalised conduct behaviour problems; and factor 2 encompassing the internalised anxious-fearful problems. Factor analysis of both positive and negative behavioural aspects yielded a 3-factor structure with externalised problem behaviours as the first factor, a second broad social inhibition factor, and an ego strength/effectance factor. Correlations showed a low positive relationship between the two problem areas; a stronger relationship was found between the positive aspects, peer competence, and ego strength/effectance. There was a weak significant negative correlation between peer competence behaviours and outgoing conduct problems. Peer competence was more strongly negatively related to anxiousfearful behaviour problems. Conceptual and methodological aspects were discussed and the results were related to the inhibition-disinhibition construct in temperament research.
Authoritarian Child Rearing, Parental Locus of Control, and the Child's Behaviour Style
Authors: Janssens Jan M.A.M.
Published: March 2013

In this project, we examined the relationships among child rearing, parental locus of control about child rearing, and the child's behaviour style as perceived by parents. Both father and mother of 120 children (9-12 years old) participated. We discriminated among two types of behaviour styles, externalising (undercontrol of impulses) and internalising behaviour (overcontrol of emotions). Parents who perceived their child as an internaliser or as an externaliser, had a weak internal locus of control. Parents with a weak internal locus of control are more authoritarian, especially when they were more inclined to perceive their child as an internaliser or as an externaliser. Also, the child's behaviour style was related to child rearing. Perceived externalising child behaviour was positively related to authoritarian parental behaviour, especially for parents with a weak internal locus of control. Parents of internalising children were less authoritarian, especially when their locus of control was internal.
The Socialisation of Pride in Young Children
Authors: Reissland Nadja
Published: March 2013

A total of 40 target children, ranging in age from 10 months to 4 years 10 months (mean age 31 months) and their mothers, took part in a study, involving a game of "feeding fish" with different sized marbles in order to test the relation between maternal praise and performance in children. The mothers and children were videotaped in their homes.

It was established that children improved their performance on the task as they grew older, that at a mean age of 35.1 months they smiled selectively more often when performing at their higher levels of capability and that mothers praised the highest level of performance relatively more often than lower levels of performance. Furthermore, mothers praise directed to younger children included reference to the person and the performance of the actor. Praise directed toward older children, however, included only reference to the performance of the child. The implications of these observations for the socialisation of pride are discussed.
Concepts about Interrelations among Duration, Distance, and Speed in Young Children
Authors: Matsuda Fumiko
Published: March 2013

The main purpose of the present study was to clarify the developmental processes of the awareness of relations between duration, distance, and speed relative to linear movement, using a set of equivalent tasks for the three concepts. The participants were 84 children aged from 4 years 0 months to 6 years 11 months. In the initial phase, children were approaching awareness of the direct relations between duration and distance, and distance and speed. Subsequent to this initial phase, children began to be aware of the inverse relation between duration and speed. However, this developmental direction was not completely monotonic. That is: (1) a completely correct grasp of the two direct relations seemed to strengthen an incorrect grasp of the relation between duration and speed as direct; and (2) incorrect answers regarding the two relations as inverse seemed to appear a little more often when the inverse relation between duration and speed began to be sometimes correctly grasped. Finally, children were almost fully aware of the two direct relations and the one inverse relation. However, even in this state, children seemed to judge intuitively and not based on the duration-distance-speed system but based on the co-ordination of two by two relations.
Effect of Activating Conditional Knowledge on Self-efficacy and Comprehension Monitoring
Authors: Bouffard-Bouchard Therese
Published: March 2013

The objective of the study was to determine whether activating conditional knowledge about appropriate strategies for studying a text would enhance self-efficacy and comprehension monitoring. Seventy-six college students were assigned to one of two conditions, with inference ability across conditions. In the activation condition, subjects were given the opportunity to reflect on the importance of taking into account time constraints, relevant features of the task, and the nature of the subsequent comprehension test, when selecting appropriate study strategies. Subjects in the control condition were not given the opportunity to reflect on their knowledge before processing the text. The results showed that subjects in the activation condition outperformed those in the control condition on reading comprehension monitoring and on performance on the comprehension test, but not on self-efficacy. Yet, self-efficacy was related to comprehension performance in the control group but was not in the activation group. This result suggests that a procedure which focuses subjects' attention on their own conditional strategic repertoire before they proceed with a task may act upon the mechanisms through which operates self-efficacy.
Coping with The Consequences of Living in Danger: The Case of Palestinian Children and Youth
Authors: Kostelny Kathleen , Garbarino James
Published: March 2013

Since the beginning of the Palestinian Uprising in December 1987, experiences with violence have become a chronic condition for many Palestinian children and youth living in the Israeli-occupied territories. Interviews were conducted with 20 Palestinian mothers with children aged 5-8 and 20 mothers with children aged 12-15 living in the West Bank. These semi-structured interviews explored: (1) mothers' perceptions of danger for their children; (2) children's experiences with violence; and (3) behavioural and personality changes of their children. The Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist was also administered to the mothers to assess behavioural and developmental problems among their children. The results reveal that younger children suffer more personality and behavioural changes than older children and youth. The adherence to ideology appeared to buffer experiences of violence for adolescents.
Age Differences in Understanding Peace, War, and Conflict Resolution
Authors: Covell Katherine , Rose-Krasnor Linda , Fletcher Kitty
Published: March 2013

Children's and adolescents' understanding of conflict and strategies for peace were assessed in response to concerns raised during the Gulf War. The sample comprised 156 schoolchildren aged 7-18 years. Major findings included a unilinear developmental progression in understanding the concept of war and peace. There was a tendency for the younger children to have concepts of war which broadly incorporated many negative aspects and to cite government rather than individuals as having responsibility for ensuring peace. The older children were more likely than the younger children to express the belief that there should be no intervention in others' conflicts. Age differences in strategies for resolving conflict and establishing peace between individuals were found to be greater than developmental differences in strategies for conflict and peace between countries. There was little evidence for assuming that children develop a strategy for resolving conflicts which is generalised across interpersonal and international domains. Across ages, the concept of peace was specified less well than the concept of war, although the overall patterns of findings suggest that most children understand peace.
Boys' Disruptive Behaviour, School Adjustment, and Delinquency: The Montreal Prevention Experiment
Authors: McCord Joan , Tremblay Richard E. , Vitaro Frank , Desmarais-Gervais Lyse
Published: March 2013

The authors discuss interim goals for prevention programmes designed to reduce antisocial behaviour. They describe effects of one such programme in which kindergarten teachers identified their most disruptive boys, some of whom were randomly allocated to a two-year treatment programme. The programme provided assistance in family management to the parents and in social skills to the boys, who were between the ages of 7 and 9 years during the treatment programme. By the age of 12, as compared with their peers who were not assigned to the treatment group, boys in the treatment group were doing better in school and evidencing less antisocial behaviour.
The Effects of Domestic Violence on Children's Perceptions of their Perpetrating and Nonperpetrating Parents
Authors: Sternberg Kathleen J. , Lamb Michael E. , Greenbaum Charles , Dawud Samia , Cortes Rosa Manela , Lorey Fanny
Published: March 2013

The Family Relations Test was completed by 8 to 12-year-old children in order to assess the effects of various types of domestic violence on children's perceptions of their parents, all of whom were living with their children at the time of the study. Thirty-three of the children had been physically abused by their parents within the last 6 months, 16 had witnessed spouse abuse, 30 had been both victims and witnesses of domestic violence, and 31 of the children had experienced no known domestic violence. Groups were matched with respect to socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. Physically abused children more frequently reported negative perceptions of their perpetrating parents, but perceived nonabusive parents similarly to children in the comparison group. Children in the four groups did not differ with respect to the number of positive attributes assigned to their parents. In sum, children who experienced different types of domestic violence discriminated between positive and negative aspects of their relationships with their parents and had different perceptions of perpetrating and nonperpetrating parents.
Gender-related Behaviour, Attitudes, and Personality in Parents of Young Children in England and Hungary
Authors: Gervai Judit , Turner Patricia J. , Hinde Robert A.
Published: March 2013

This paper is concerned with the extent to which "traditionality" of parents' attitudes towards the other sex are related to sex-bias in expectations regarding children and to involvement in sex-typical household tasks. We also examine each of these in relation to how parents see themselves along dimensions of "masculinity" (instrumental traits) and "femininity" (expressive traits). To obtain a wide spectrum of cultural values, comparable data were collected on parents of preschool-aged children (n = 161) in Cambridge (England) and Budapest (Hungary). Parents' personalities, attitudes, and behaviour were assessed by self-report questionnaires. Parents with more traditional views on male-female adult relations had more sex-biased expectations of their children. Furthermore, with the exception of Budapest mothers, parents who had more traditional attitudes and expectations were more gender-stereotyped in their behaviour. Mothers' sex-role behaviour in Budapest was related to their husbands' attitudes. Comparing parents according to sex and location the following results emerge: fathers were more sex-biased in parenting expectations and more traditional in their attitudes to adult relations than mothers. Sex-typical household and child-care duties were more likely to be performed by the parent of the traditionally "appropriate" sex. Budapest parents were more sex-biased in their attitudes than Cambridge parents, but less gender-typed in their role-sharing behaviour. This difference in role-sharing was related to maternal employment.

These results further support the contention that the various gender-related phenomena-traits, attitudes, values, interests, preferences, and behaviour- are multifactorial. As a considerable variation has been found in parents' gender-related personality, behaviour, and attitudes, it remains to be seen whether this variation is reflected in any way in the behaviour of their preschool daughters and sons.
Variations in Adolescent Conflict and Social Interaction Associated with Maternal Employment and Family Structure
Authors: Laursen Brett
Published: March 2013

Adolescents' relationships with parents, siblings, and friends were examined as a function of family structure and maternal employment. High school subjects responded to questionnaires indicating, for each relationship, rate and affective intensity of conflicts from the previous day, as well as amount of social interaction. There were no differences between adolescents with full-time, part-time, and nonemployed mothers in reports of conflict or social interaction. Conflict affective intensity was unrelated to household structure, as were levels of social interaction. Subjects in single mother households indicated more conflict with mothers than those in two-parent families, although levels of conflict with single mothers were equivalent to the total number of disagreements that adolescents in two-parent families experienced with both parents. Adolescents in single mother households also reported higher rates of conflict with siblings, but not friends. The results do not support views that adolescents with single or employed mothers have more contentious or distant relationships than their peers.
Children's Empathic Responses to Emotional Complexity
Authors: Ricard Marcelle , Kamberk-Kilicci Mary
Published: March 2013

The aim of this study was to assess the empathic reactivity of children when confronted with two different emotions felt by the same character. A total of 90 girls, divided into three equal groups aged 4, 6, and 8 years, were asked to verbally respond to a series of fictitious stories illustrated by a picture where the character's face was left blank. Four of these episodes implied one simple emotion, and the remaining four were complex episodes where the situation potentially induced two opposite emotions within the character, either successively or simultaneously. Empathy was scored according to (a) the match between the emotion identified in the character and the one reported by the subject, and (b) the interpretation given for the subject's reaction. Both the quality of the match and the level of interpretation from self-to event-to character-centred justifications-were found to increase with age, for complex as well as for simple emotions. However, children of all three age-groups displayed less empathic capabilities when witnessing complex rather than simple episodes, given the more demanding task involved in recognising and sharing emotional complexity. Finally, successive emotions appeared more difficult to cope with than simultaneous emotions, but this decalage may be due to the content of the stimuli used in this study.
The Effects of Day Care Intervetion on Teacher's Ratings of the Elementary School Discourse Skills in Disadvantaged Children
Authors: Feagans Lynne V. , Fendt Kaye , Farrn Dale C.
Published: March 2013

The aim of this study was to assess whether a day care intervention programme for children from impoverished backgrounds could affect teacher's ratings GI their language use in the classroom in early elementary school. 'Ihwr cere 32k experimental children (who had received a day care intervention programme) and 36 control children in the initial study. At school entry, a comparison child from the same classroom was selected for each of the experimental and control children. The children were followed for three years in school. Besides collecting IQ and achievement data, teachers were asked to fill out the Adaptive Language Inventory (ALI) which measured children's use of language in narrative and discourse situations in the classroom. The results indicated that although the comparison group was rated more highly than the experimental and control group, the experimental group was rated more favourably than the control group over all three years on three of the four major scales of the ALI. There was no indication of a decrease in the size of effects by year 3. Regression analyses generally indicated that the ALI was moderately related to verbal IQ and highly related to reading recognition and comprehension concurrently and over three years. The results suggest that an early intervention programme can be effective in changing and maintaining teachers' perceptions of the narrative and discourse skills of children through early elementary school. In addition, the study suggests that these narrative and discourse skills may be important for reading and other verbal abilities.
Adults' Abilities to Detect Children's Readiness to Learn
Authors: Perry Michelle , Woolley Jacqueline , lfcher John
Published: March 2013

Children are much more likely to benefit from instruction when they are ready to incorporate new knowledge into their existing knowledge base. But can we detect such readiness? In a series of studies, we investigated this critical component of the interactional nature of the learning process. In the first study, we assessed whether adults are able to identify children who are receptive to instruction. Adults were presented with video tapes of pairs of children solving mathematics problems and asked to identify the receptive child (i.e. the child who later actually learned) in each pair. Adults were able to determine which children were receptive. In a second study, we attempted to train adults to use previously established criteria of learning readiness to identify these children. Although the adults only relied on these criteria for about half of their decisions, when they used these criteria, they were highly successful at identifying which children were receptive to instruction. Finally, in a third study, we showed adults video tapes of different children and we obtained comparable results as in Studies 1 and 2. In conclusion, we found that adults can detect readiness to learn in children and thus can be in a position to deliver instruction at optimal times.
Self-concept and Coping with Developmental Demands in German and Polish Adolescents
Authors: Schonpflug Ute , Jansen Xander
Published: March 2013

Changes in development during adolescence may be understood as the result of the adolescent's active pursuit of developmental tasks. Various choices made by adolescents relating to specific developmental goals can be determined, among other factors, by personality dispositions such as control beliefs, self-esteem, and self-efficacy. In this study, these concepts were integrated into a single construct of self-as-agent belief, assessed by items derived from scales measuring the three factors.

It was predicted that adolescents holding strong self-as-agent beliefs (a) would persistently prefer active and self-reliant strategies to cope with developmental goals and (b) would show lower discrepancies between desired goal states and present developmental states in the three developmental domains of autonomy, preparation for professional life, and opposite-sex partnership, when compared with adolescents holding weak self-as-agent beliefs. Furthermore, it was hypothesised that (c) the persistently more active adolescents would also reveal less discrepancy between developmental goal and state.

Supportive evidence was found for all of the three hypotheses, but type of developmental task, gender, age, and culture were also relevant variables. Cross-cultural differences pertained to, for example, general demand level and preference of active approach to developmental goals (German higher than Polish adolescents), as well as timing of changes in demand level (Polish later than German adolescents).
Learning to Pretend: Preschoolers' use of Meta-communication in Sociodramatic Play
Authors: Halliday-Scher Kathy , Urberg Kathryn A. , Kaplan-Estrin Melissa
Published: March 2013

Children's ability to structure sociodramatic play may depend on their ability to communicate pretence transformations effectively. In order to investigate the relation of children's differential use of verbal meta-communication to play theme, player's age, and episode duration, the naturally occurring sociodramatic play of 30 preschoolers (ages 29 to 68 months) was observed in a university day care facility. We found that children's use of within-frame and out-of-frame meta-communication (Giffin, 1984) was unrelated to the duration of sociodramatic play. However, children's use of out-of-frame meta-communication was related to age: Older children used a greater percentage of out-of-frame meta-communication than younger children. Furthermore, although there was no main effect of theme, there was an interaction between age and theme. Older children used less within-frame meta-communication than younger children during adventure/fantastic episodes, but used an equivalent proportion during domestic/occupational episodes. The findings suggest that older children are more flexible in their use of meta-communication.
Assessing Quality Day Care: The Child Care Facility Schedule
Authors: Dragonas Thalia , Tsiantis John , Lambidi Anna
Published: March 2013

The Child Care Facility Schedule (CCFS) represents an effort to develop a measure to assess quality child care. Initially 80 criteria, covering 8 areas considered important for attaining quality, were defined. These were subsequently tested in three different cultural contexts: Athens (Greece), Manila (Philippines), and Ibadan (Nigeria). Reliability studies were conducted in Athens and Ibadan, and a validity study was carried out in Athens. Concurrent validity was established by comparing the CCFS scores with those obtained from an unstructured observation by an observer unfamiliar with the content of the Schedule. Criterion validity was examined by comparing the CCFS scores with those derived from another well-established measure. Factor and cluster analyses were used as a means for establishing construct validity. A general quality factor that tapped the contribution of the caretakers to quality was revealed, and a shorter 43-item version was recommended. The CCFS appears to identify differences among the various types of day care centres, and can be used for self-evaluation by the personnel of day care centres.
Co-operation and Competition: Contributions to an Evolutionary and Developmental Model
Authors: Charlesworth William R.
Published: March 2013

Combining co-operation with other behaviours is hypothesised as a successful strategy for competing for resources. Studies were conducted with 4- to 8-year-olds from India, Malaysia, South Africa, and the United States. Four children were given the opportunity to view a cartoon (the resource), providing two children helped make the cartoon available to a third child for viewing, thereby relegating the fourth child to a bystanding position. The children quickly learned to co-operate, however, viewing times varied significantly between them, suggesting that they were competing against each other even while co-operating. The inequitable outcomes appear due to individual differences in the ability to combine helping others with more competitive behaviours. Children from different cultures were very similar in their behaviour as well as in their production of inequitable outcomes. These findings suggest the presence of a culturally independent strategy that could be viewed as evolutionarily stable.
The Value of Evolutionary Perspectives on Social Relations among Children: A Commentary
Authors: Krebs Dennis L.
Published: March 2013

The theory of evolution focuses on the ultimately (i.e. genetically) self-serving nature of co-operative and competitive relations among children. The self-serving goals of co-operative relations are mediated by biases in social judgement largely ignored by developmental psychologists. Individual differences in heritable behavioural styles are viewed as resources of varying value in different social contexts. Limitations in the a-priori predictive power of evolutionary theory are discussed.
Japanese and Canadian Impressions of Vocalising Infants
Authors: Bloom Kathleen , Masataka Nobuo
Published: March 2013

Canadian adults use cues that are part of adult speech (voice quality and mouth movements) to create perceptions of prelinguistic, 3-month-old infants as communicative partners. To what degree do cultural differences modulate social attributions of infants? It is thought that Japanese pay less attention to the visual cues that accompany speech, and so we hypothesised that, compared with Canadians, Japanese adults would be less likely to use mouth movement cues, but equally likely to use voice cues, in forming social perceptions of infants. To test this hypothesis, a video tape of 3-month-old, vocalising infants was presented to three (n = 25) groups of adults in Japan and in Canada. The tape was constructed with dubbing so that all combinations of acoustic (syllabic/vocalic) and visual (mouth moving/not moving) conditions were represented. The conditions of tape presentation differed for the three groups in each nation: Audio/Video, Audio-only, Video-only. Infants were rated on characteristics of social favourability and communicative intent. In the absence of audio cues (Video-only group), adult ratings were influenced by the infant's mouth movements and by the adult's culture. Although both Canadians and Japanese gave higher ratings of social favourability and communicative intent to infants whose mouths moved, the preference for mouth movement was significantly weaker for Japanese. The fact that Japanese paid less attention to features of the mouth of the infant is consistent with past cross-cultural research and with the minor role of facial cues in Japanese Sign Language. Our research demonstrated that adults apply cultural rules of adult conversation when responding to preverbal infants.
A Cross-cultural Study of Preschoolers' Attachment: Security and Sensitivity in Japanese and US Dyads
Authors: Mizuta Ichiro , Zahn-Waxler Carolyn , Cole Pamela M. , Hiruma Noriko
Published: March 2013

Japanese and US 4- and 5-year-old children and their mothers were studied in situations designed to examine attachment-related behaviours, feelings, and representations. Separation and reunion behaviours, conversations about separation, and child-rearing patterns were examined in relation to culture, gender, and internalising symptoms. Japanese and US dyads did not differ in overall levels of security and sensitivity in separation and reunion behaviours, based on a rating system developed by Crowell, Feldman, and Ginsberg, (1988). However, Japanese children showed more amae (desire for bodily closeness) behaviour than US children. Amae was positively correlated with internalising symptoms for US children but not for Japanese children. Cultural differences in dyads' discussions of separation issues and in maternal child-rearing patterns also were identified.
Positive Parenting and Boys' and Girls' Misbehaviour during a Home Observation
Authors: Russell Alan , Russell Graeme
Published: March 2013

The study examined the relations between mother-child and father-child interaction and child misbehaviour during a naturalistic family observation in the home. The families were middle class and nonclinic, and the target child was an eldest boy or girl aged 6-7 years. The main focus was on positive parenting in the forms of warmth/affection and positive involvement with the child. These two forms of positive parenting were negatively correlated with child misbehaviour. Parental warmth/affection was most strongly associated with daughters' misbehaviour, and positive involvement with sons' misbehaviour. The links between parenting behaviours and child misbehaviour rates were similar for mothers and fathers. It was argued that co-operative child behaviour may be associated with positive emotional states arising from positive parenting behaviour. The characteristics of the sample were considered important when assessing the prominence of positive parenting behaviours.
Ideas about Parenting in Argentina, France, and the United States
Authors: Bornstein Marc H. , Tamis-LeMonda Catherine S. , Pascual Liliana , Haynes O. Maurice , Painter Kathleen M. , Galperĺn Celia Z. , Pêcheux Marie-Germaine
Published: March 2013

Central to a concept of culture is the expectation that different peoples possess different ideas and behave in different ways with respect to child rearing. In this study, we investigated ideas that Argentine, French, and US American mothers hold about their own and their husbands' actual child rearing, as well as what they consider to be ideal child rearing, in three parenting domains: social, didactic, and limit setting. For each domain, we analysed mothers' reports of their actual behaviours and of their husbands' actual behaviours; mothers' ideal expectations of their own and their husbands' behaviours; and mothers' dissonance with respect to parenting (i.e. the extent to which mothers' actual and their husbands' actual behaviours each agrees with mothers' ideal expectations for themselves and for their husbands). The results showed consistent parent, country, as well as parent-by-country effects, interpretable in terms of overarching cultural beliefs. The study of parents' ideas contributes to understanding why and how parents behave the way they do toward children, and provides insights into the broader social context of child development.
Intervention in Lower-class Surinam-Dutch Families: Effects on Mothers and Infants
Authors: Riksen-Walraven J. Marianne , Meij Johannes Th. , Hubbard Frans O. , Zevalkink Jolien
Published: March 2013

Thirty-seven Surinam-Dutch lower-class families with a one-year-old child participated in "Instapje", a parent-focused home-based intervention programme. The intervention was devised to improve quality of parental support to the child on four behavioural dimensions: supportive presence, respect for the child's autonomy, structure and limit setting, and quality of instruction. The programme was presented to the parents in 16 weekly home-visits, starting when the child was 13 months old. When the children were 18 months of age, intervention group parents were indeed significantly more supportive of their children than parents in a comparable control group of 38 Surinam-Dutch families. Moreover, intervention group children scored significantly higher on the Bayley Mental Scale of Infant Development than children in the control group. No intervention effects were found on quality of the parent-child relationship and on parents' sense of competence in child rearing.
What do Children Do when they Fail to Count Phonemes?
Authors: Gombert Jean Emile
Published: March 2013

An analysis of children's responses in phoneme counting tasks provides a way of accessing their conception of the smallest phonological unit. Thus, in order to understand the development of phonological awareness, the types of errors children make in these tasks were analysed. A group of 5to 6-year-olds (preliterate), a group of 6to 7-year-olds (grade 1), a group of 7to 8-year-olds (grade 2), and a group of 6to 7-year-olds who, after 4 months of learning to read, were unable to decode new words were presented a task that involved counting phonemes in words and nonwords. In addition to description of the emergence of the ability to focus on phonemic segments, our interest was in analysing the incorrect responses, including the possible types of segmentation as a function of the pronunciation of the items. Nonliterate subjects (preliterate children or nonreaders from grade 1) counted syllables; the beginning readers (grade 1) often failed to analyse the onset or the rime of the syllables into phonemes. Therefore, they appeared to be using an analysis that was intermediate between onset-rime segments and phonemes. The older children (grade 2) tended to count letters as opposed to phonemes, producing more than one tap for a digraph.