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OBJECTIVE. A cross-sectional survey was conducted to determine which personal and environmental characteristics influenced diversity of participation in activities outside school for typically developing children and adolescents. METHOD. Four hundred twenty-two (215 boys) typically developing Australian children (mean = 11.0 yr) completed the Children's Assessment of Participation and Enjoyment (CAPE) and the Preferences for Activity of Children to describe their participation on five activity types: Recreational, Active Physical, Social, Self-Improvement, and Skill-Based. Linear regression analyses were conducted. RESULTS. Predictors of participation diversity were age and preference for Recreational (aR² = .44); preference for Active Physical (aR² = .19); gender, school type, and preference for Social (aR² = .19); preference for Skill-Based (aR² = .25); and gender, school style, socioeconomic score, and preference for Self-Improvement (aR² = .24). CONCLUSION. Preference plays a key role in determining the diversity of participation in activities outside school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ciencias Psicológicas is the property of Universidad Catolica del Uruguay Damaso Antonio Larranaga and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Given existing gendered stereotypic assumptions regarding shyness and children's school competencies, this study explored relations among socioemotional competencies, self-perceptions, and receptive vocabulary in shy children. Ninety-one Canadian children (52 girls, 39 boys; 5-8 years) were classified as shy (n = 26) based on teachers' behavioural ratings (n = 8), and completed selfperception and vocabulary measures. Compared to their non-shy peers, shy children reported lower levels of self-worth, and were rated by their teachers as more aggressive. Shy girls scored the lowest on the vocabulary task, and received the highest teacher emotional competence ratings. Shy boys scored the highest on the vocabulary task, and received the lowest emotionally competence ratings. Gender-role stereotypes and shyness and their educational implications are discussed [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Arquivos Brasileiros de Oftalmologia is the property of Arquivos Brasileiros de Oftalmologia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista de Orientación Educacional is the property of Universidad de Playa Ancha de Ciencias de la Educacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Alberta Journal of Educational Research is the property of Alberta Journal of Educational Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article offers information on the early childhood education model International Curriculum for Languages and Creative Arts (ICLCA). It states that ICLCA focuses mainly on languages and communication skills, creativity and confidence. According to Birgit A. Ertl, founder and director of the Children's Garden (TCG) pre-schools at which the ICLCA is being developed, the ICLCA really works because people now place far more importance on personality and enthusiasm than on paper qualifications. It notes that promoting the three key qualities in children which are creativity, confidence and communication skills is what defines successful early childhood education.

Copyright of Cagdas Egitim Dergisi is the property of Cagdas Egitim Dergisi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Arquivos Brasileiros de Oftalmologia is the property of Arquivos Brasileiros de Oftalmologia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper suggests to teachers some instructional practices which may motivate students to engage in writing. These suggestions are based on the assumption that motivation to write is basically an attitude toward writing, which includes two main components: the student's sense of competence in writing, and his or her view of the role and relevance of writing as a subject. Suggestions to teachers regard three main and closely connected aspects. First, the writing tasks: examples of meaningful writing activities are presented. Second, the writer: the importance of fostering the student's sense of competence in writing is underlined. Last, an unstrained writing environment as the condition for fruitful individual and collaborative writing is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a discussion of the psychological outcomes in children ages six to twelve. The article cites the four stages of human development and mentions that at the end of the four periods, the individual personality is thought of as developed and complete in regard to the aspects that permit the individual to be part of a society, venture into a career, life's work, or mission. The contributions of a Montessori environment to children who are included in the second plane of development, are also discussed. The focus, as implied, should be placed on self-discipline and character. Social, cognitive, emotional, and moral developments in children in the second stage are also presented.

The authors tested a mediation model in which childhood hostility and sociability were expected to influence the development of intentions to use alcohol in the future through the mediating mechanisms of developing attitudes and norms. Children in 1st through 5th grades (N=1,049) from a western Oregon community participated in a longitudinal study involving 4 annual assessments. Hostility and sociability were assessed by teachers' ratings at the 1st assessment, and attitudes, subjective norms, and intentions were assessed by self-report at all 4 assessments. For both genders, latent growth modeling demonstrated that sociability predicted an increase in intentions to use alcohol over time, whereas hostility predicted initial levels of these intentions. These personality effects were mediated by the development of attitudes and subjective norms, supporting a model wherein childhood personality traits exert their influence on the development of intentions to use alcohol through the development of these more proximal cognitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Personality disorders occur in a social context: individuals with these disorders face more adversities and receive less social support, frequently since childhood. This contribution reviews what factors in general determine the experiences that children have, the ways in which these experiences may have an impact on development and some of the pitfalls in interpreting research in this area, before considering current knowledge on the childhoods of adults with personality disorder. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article cites a study that seeks to explore social deprivation and performance at school in Great Britain. The study discusses an alternative approach of identifying children on the basis of three broad categories of social handicap. For the purpose of this study, an index has been devised and its validity has been tested by correlating degree of handicap with a series of psychological tests and behavior ratings. The study led to the conclusion that a measure of social handicap is not a direct measure of the cultural environment that are considered to have impacts on intellectual and personality development. The study concludes that some school had some adjustment problems although maladjustment of personality may be present only in a minority.

The article cites studies on the assessment of adaptive behavior of retarded and nonretarded public-school children from 7 to 13 years of age. The American Association on Mental Deficiency Adaptive Behavior Scale was employed in this study for accessing classroom behavior characteristics. Based on factor analyses, the dimensions of adaptive behavior in public-school populations were indicated as follows: Functional Autonomy, Interpersonal Adjustment, Social Responsibility, and Intrapersonal Adjustment. The implications for the assessment of adaptive behavior were discussed.

This article presents information on research papers published in this issue of the journal "Marriage and Family Living." One research paper "Social Class and Family Control of Television Viewing," examines class differences in parental policies governing the use of the family television set by the children and the whole family. The sample consisted of 102 white mothers having children between 2 and 18 years of age. Data were obtained by a pretested interview schedule consisting of 24 open-ended questions. In another research "Personality Characteristics of the Mothers of Aggressive and Unaggressive Children," The general hypothesis was that the tendency to develop aggressive techniques may be determined by inherited constitutional factors of introversion-extraversion and neuroticism. The participants were 48 mothers and their 108 children who were between 7-11 years of age. The children's aggressiveness was rated by two teachers and the mothers' extraversion and neuroticism was measured by the Maudsley Personality Inventory.

The plethora of research on the employed mother by social scientists during the past decade is a collective reaction to popular beliefs concerning the motivations and consequential effects of mothers' working outside of the home for remuneration. Defeminization, family instability, rejection of children, creation of juvenile delinquents, loss of intimate emotional relationships with children, distorted personality development of children, and poor school performance by children are a few examples of perceived consequences of a mother's working away from home. It is maintained that maternal employment is a basic social change in American society. A research question is a relationship of maternal employment to changes in other social systems. Another researchable problem is the relationship of child bearing and child rearing activities to the mother's adjustment regarding occupational discontinuity and continuity. The mother's working is no longer considered a deviant form of behavior in large segments of American society.

It is frequently asserted that maternal employment has a deleterious effect upon the development of children. The more sophisticated basis of this generalization rests upon the simple and deceptive generalization of results of studies of extreme maternal deprivation to situations involving the employment of mothers who have preschool and early school-age children. Inferences based on the anthropological data and the comparisons of the infants who had multiple-mothering experiences during infancy with a control group of children suggest that maternal employment per se should not be conceptualized as maternal deprivation and, hence, should not necessarily be a detrimental influence on the personality development of children. The five indices of maternal employment used in the present study included the number of months the mothers were employed during the time the children were: less than four years of age, four through six years of age, less than seven years of age, the 30 months preceding the time of data collection, and the lives of the children included in the sample. The conclusion of this study is that maternal employment per se is not the overwhelming influential factor in children's lives that some have thought it to be.

The article cites a study conducted to determine whether creative experiences in workshops of children's art are effective in helping children with learning difficulties improve their reading skills by eliminating the ill effects of deprivation on their personal development. It is reported that the staff of the Education Department of the Pasadena Art Museum in California conducted research regarding this between October 1963 and May 1964. The hypothesis, procedure and outcome of this investigation are reported. It states that the results justify further exploration of the use of creative art in modifying the personality of deprived children.

The article discusses various aspects of children's art. It describes the major factors that determine children's art. It also refers to a study conducted to develop and employ a scale for examining the changing features of child art. Most of the studies conducted in this field present different outcomes. Some of them reflect the influence of personality dispositions on the drawings by children; one puts emphasis on the level of conceptual maturity, while another explanation holds that the changes found in children's drawings are influenced by the child's ability to perceive visual differences. Certain other outcomes suggest the environment of upbringing as responsible for such changes.

The article evaluates and describes the assessment of adaptive behavior in retarded, multiply handicapped, institutional infants through an automated operant behavior play device at an ordinary playpen. Significantly, the research aims to test the effectiveness of a new method for examining sensorimotor manifestations of attention, purposefulness, remote selectivity, and adaptive behavior. Furthermore, the method of behavior evaluation used consists of allowing infants and young children to play with automated toys that provide experimentally controlled programs of audio-visual stimulus feedback. The PLAYTEST Model 65-A which is a compact, portable instrument system for conducting studies of children's performance for audio-visual reinforcement in natural environments was used. The results were discussed in terms of Piaget's analysis of the sensorimotor period of intellectual development.

The article presents a study on personality traits of institutionalized mongoloid girls. The experimentation is aimed at developing statistically confirmable manifestations of the syndrome through using ratings and behavioral descriptions. Both the ratings and behavioral checklists provided quantitative evidence on personality characteristics among mongoloids.

The article discusses intra-group differences for the drawings by educationally subnormal children. The study showed that deviations in personality make-up are reflected in deviations from norms. Furthermore, the results have established definite differences in the execution of various features of the drawings. The author concludes that the demand to draw a person stimulates automatically the projective and identifying processes in the subject and he begins to draw what is most interesting to him, namely himself.

The article focuses on a study of frustration in the Brown Schools for Exceptional Children in Austin, Texas. The resident center chosen is composed of students whose intelligence quotients range from 35 to 119. Arrangement in the resident center depends on the variables of personality organization, chronological age, intellectual ability-potential, physical state and social adjustment, which would indicate that further development of an individual is attainable.

This article discusses the personality difficulties, emotional deficits, and discipline problems of deaf children with mental disabilities. Intellectual stimulation fitted to the child's special needs and lack of proper home training are factors in the success or failure of mentally deficient hearing impaired children.

It is contended that the Rorschach method is successful in analyzing the personality of children, that it permits an understanding of their "private worlds" and offers an insight into the underlying mechanisms of personality. In child deviates, it suggests therapeutic approaches; it gauges the effectiveness of treatment and the extent of recovery. In short, it works. Despite the subjectivity of the scoring, the sparsity of the norms, the reliance on clinical validation, the interpretation in terms of results from adult or psychiatric material, the method, from the pragmatic point of view, is valid for use with normal children. Because of such clinical and pragmatic evidence, it is justifiable perhaps to apply the Rorschach method in the clinical field, for there all methods and procedures available to the clinician, including the interview and personal and subjective judgments, are put to service. There can be no doubt that the Rorschach method in individual diagnosis of children can yield important information. But if the method is to be used as an instrument of research in studies of children, it must be established scientifically as a valid instrument. Thus the problem of the extent to which Rorschach results are valid for the normal child is of importance. In the present state of development, many results are inconclusive and invalid, and conclusions for younger children, especially, are of doubtful value. Results cannot be accepted as anything but tentative where the number of cases is small, the technique is not described, sexes are not differentiated, groups are casually compared, controls are not used, and standards of scoring and norms which are based on adult or psychiatric groups are applied. To be serviceable as an instrument of research, results must meet scientific requirements. Thus it may be said that studies based on the Rorschach method in the field of the normal child have been valuable in suggesting promising hypotheses and in pointing the... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Community-wide family life institute held recently in Florence, South Carolina, called forth a response of unusual proportions. Twelve hundred fifty persons enrolled in a one-week institute based on small-group discussions followed by a featured address on some aspect of family living. This article is a simple recording of the facts of what one community did to strengthen its family life, how the institute came about, the results, and what was learned from the experience. Concerns of those in early teens included questions about the art of dating, when to start, what to do, whether to permit a good-night kiss. Older girls asked more sophisticated questions, showing more concern with the depth of relationships and serious planning toward marriage. The parents of young children wanted to know how to respond to anxious, shy, fearful and insecure children and how to deal with such problems as rivalry, jealousy and temper tantrums. Senior adults were interested in what could be done about some of their typical problems of resisting change, becoming resentful, and tending to withdraw from social life.