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Theoretical and empirical bases are presented in this paper for considering the situation of parents during the period after the children leave the family of orientation as an emergent and identifiable phase of the family cycle. The post parental period is found to be generally a satisfactory one for marital partners although problems arise in role-taking and adult socialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the paper related to science teaching for young children, presented at the Council for Elementary Science International meeting held in April 22, 1960 in Cleveland, Ohio. The study discusses how children take learning seriously. It provides information on how to achieve clarity on the purposes and problems of science teaching. It discusses the crucial differences between the child when he enters school and the child when he has completed elementary school. Furthermore, it emphasizes the task of education and science teaching in guiding the child from magical to scientific teaching.

In an earlier study it was shown that the effects of father absence on children's cognitive performances varies with family size and sibling composi- tion. The present paper examined the effects of father night-shift work on the quantitative performances of 100 females. The results showed that children under the age of 9 were deleteriously affected. It followed that night-shift work can be considered as point on a father presence-absence continuum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

80 children of welfare mothers were administered a measure of self concept. The children were equally divided as to sex, race (Negro or white), and grade (first or fifth). The overall results show that girls are more negative in self concept than boys and fifth graders are more negative than first graders. No overall race difference was found. The results suggest that Negro children do not become increasingly more negative in their self concepts from first to fifth grade than do white children of equivalent social status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Piaget has recently reported results indicating that children's memories of a patterned array of sticks improve over a 6-month period. Results reported here first of all confirm this finding, though not to the full extent Piaget found. Second, the improvement is apparently not due to a particular feature of the experimental procedure: E's focusing attention upon the size of the sticks during an intermediary session. Third, the improvement seems linked to the fact that the array is ordered and patterned. Several possible explanations of the phenomenon are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents comments of the author to the article "Problems in the Analysis of Patterns of Abilities. Child Development," by David Feldman. The author said that to be useful reanalyses should add either new data or some new insight to the interpretation of existing data. According to him, Feldman's reanalysis unfortunately does neither. He comments on two issues that seem to be most important. In defining group pattern, the author feels Feldman fails to distinguish two related but separable questions.

The recommended increase in the number of zero- and one-child families proposed as one means of reducing average family size in the United States does not satisfactorily confront such issues as cultural proscriptions concerning the only child, nor offer evidence that the types of families that would result are those in which positive psychological characteristics are most likely to emerge. The literature surveyed suggests that a negative stereotype concerning the only child does persist, but that the psychological characteristics assumed for the only child have not been reliably demonstrated. Neither is there irrefutable evidence concerning psychological characteristics associated with other family sizes and ordinal positions. Family size recommendations should reflect a greater understanding of the opposition to the only child and should be paralleled by intensive research activity directed at developing a more comprehensive body of knowledge concerning the psychological outcomes for children, adults, and the society which might be anticipated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the relationship between science and social policy. According to some social scientists, social policy should be based on science but in this article reflects the converse proposition, that, science needs social policy. It is needed, not to guide the organizational activities, but to provide people with two elements essential for any scientific endeavor, vitality and validity. There is a need to identify these elements, consolidate them and consider the implications of the emerging framework for the direction and design of future research in human development.

A comparative study was made of two samples of divorce cases, one in an urban county and the other in a largely rural county. Legal data, 1927- 1947, were used. Similarities: declining trend during the Depression, upward trend during World War II; percentage of minor children involved, of contested actions, of change of wife's name, and of community property holdings when husband was plaintiff; decrease in nonsupport and abandonment cases, increase in drunkenness cases; combinations of alleged grounds; importance of property settlement, financial aid, nonsupport, and adultery in deciding final outcome; proportion of applications ending in final decree. Differences: in the rural county, lower divorce rate; fewer objections to requests for financial aid, more husbands who were plaintiffs; and more abandonment cases, requests for financial aid, objections to custody of children, final decrees awarded to husbands, community property holdings, actions started by husbands ending in final decree, mobility of defendants and husbands alleging cruel treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on areas in the teaching of elementary science that needed research. The author suggests interest studies, for instance, studies of the current interests of children to be explored. Another area that the author recommends in which there is a need for guidance through research us the growth concepts, the difficulty of their comprehension, and their identification with childhood experiences. According to the author, further studies of the reading level of elementary science textbooks and supplementary reading materials are needed. The author says that one of the areas in which research is most needed is the education of teachers for competency in science and science teaching.

This study investigates the possible effects of divorce upon the behavior of adolescent children. A large sample of parents (N = 1,566) completed usable questionnaires; the sample was then divided into the independent variables of family type and social class and the dependent variables of adolescent characteristics and school social relationships. Nonsignificant differences were found for the majority of relationships tested pertaining to the detrimental effects of divorce upon children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parents of elementary' school children responded to videotaped sequences portraying either an overactive, an underactive, or an average-active child. Ss selected a disciplinary practice and recorded affect toward the children at 10 points during the sequences, 5 of which occurred after S viewed a brief incident of aggression by the child. The experimental hypotheses were that overactive children would be punished more severely than the other children; that the label "emotionally disturbed" would influence adult responses; and that affect and choice of discipline would be correlated. Analysis of variance generally supported these hypotheses, although there were interactions among aggression, activity level, and labeling for choice of discipline. Moreover, the underactive child evoked more severe punishment under some conditions than the average-active child. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reported research examined social-class differences in speech as produced under 3 conditions varying from highly structured to a more natural linguistic setting. The sample was composed of 18 lower-class and 16 middle-class 5-year-old kindergarten children. The condition requiring subjects to describe an abstract event, as compared with conditions requiring the description of pictured, concrete stimuli, most highlighted differences between the speech of lower- and middle-class subjects. Under the former condition, the speech of lower-class subjects contained shorter communication units, showed less subordination and generated context-bound meanings. Across the three speech conditions, middle-class subjects paused less frequently and had a shorter mean pause duration than lower-class subjects. This finding calls into question the relevance of hesitation phenomena for cognitive or verbal planning activity accompanying speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Verbalization was used to modulate fixed foreperiod reaction time (RT) of 5- and 8-year-olds. Whole body movements, eye blinks, eye movements, speech muscle tension and visual orienting responses were recorded along with RT and errors of anticipation from 96 Ss. All children who counted or repeated a nonsense word aloud during the foreperiod remained constant in RT and made fewer errors. Whispering, however, slowed RT and elevated activity levels for all but 5-year-old males, for whom the opposite was found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

72 children at 7, 10, and 13 years of age made autokinetie judgments. Groups of 3 Ss of the same age and sex were required to judge the magnitude of movement and to indicate when movement was first noted. During the first 15 trials, all Ss recorded their judgments privately. On the next 30 trials, the groups in the control condition continued to answer privately, while the groups in the social-influence condition answered publicly. The principal con, clusions were: (1) that the experimental Ss conformed (e.g., agreed in their judgments) more than the control Ss; (2) that age 7 Ss conformed less than either age 10 or 13 Ss; (3) that females conformed more than males; (4) that the increase in conformity with age was greater for males than for females; and (5) that conformity increased as a function of trials only for the age 7 Ss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared with nonverbal control groups, naming positive stimuli after discriminative responses enhanced performance and naming a mixed set of positive and negative stimuli depressed performance at all age levels tested. Naming negative stimuli depressed performance at the first- and the third- but not at the sixth-grade level. These results were congruent with a mnemonic interpretation developed for data from adults in the same task, but the high percentage of Ss (32 percent) who performed near chance level throughout the task suggested that a complete explanation of children's performance in this task must take S's strategy into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guided by an informational analysis of imitation, an examination was made of the effects of incentive for nonimitation and the model's alleged prior experience on children's adoption of a modeled self-reward standard while playing a bowling game. As predicted, the presence of incentive significantly reduced subjected adoption of the standard. Moreover, as anticipated, effects of the model's alleged experience and incentive tended to be inversely additive, although experience significantly reduced self-reward only for the highest substandard score on the game. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children learn noun pairs more readily when they are presented in a nounverb-noun (NVN) sequence than in a noun-conjunction-noun (NCN) sequence. This effect of connective form class holds even when such sequences are constituents of more complex sentences: Noun-verb-noun-conjunctionpronoun versus noun-conjunction-noun-verb-pronoun (NVNCP vs. NCNVP). The purpose of the present study was to replicate the latter phenomenon with children, while controlling for the sentence position of the conjunctions (compound subject vs. compound object) and to assess its generality to college students. For children, the relative superiority of NVN sequences survived replication in all conditions; for college Ss, the effect appeared in none of the conditions. Conjunction position was irrelevant in both samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an experiment employing a 2-choice picture discrimination task with 90 boys of grades 1 through 6, a comparison was made among the effects of 3 verbal reinforcement combinations (Right-Wrong, Nothing-Wrong, Right-Nothing) and between the effects of intrapair conceptual similarity. The Right-Wrong combination led to best learning, followed by the Nothing-Wrong and Right-Nothing combination, independent of S's age. In retention no differences were found among the reinforcement treatments. Pair similarity had a consistent effect: the dissimilar pairs were learned more quickly and were recalled better than the similar pairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Equated groups of 54 retarded readers and 54 controls from, the 6 primary school grades were administered the WISC, educational tests, and tests of finger agnosia, lateral dominance, and reversal tendencies in reading and writing. A factor analysis revealed 2 orthogonal factors of reading disability: 1 relating to perceptual and perceptual-motor distortions and the other apparently to formal verbal learning difficulties. Mixed lateral dominance, crossed hand-eye dominance, and finger agnosia were not related to either of these factors. No evidence for a relation between finger agnosia and constructional and arithmetical difficulties was found. Sequence reversals in writing were not related to other types of reversals or to finger agnosia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between reflection-impulsivity, as assessed by Kagan's Matching Familiar Figures test, and verbal control of motor behavior was examined with 30 kindergarten children. The verbal control of the words "faster" and "slower" on a finger tapping response and "push and "don't push" on a Luria depression task was examined under overt and covert self-instructional conditions. Under covert self-instructions impulsive children on the depression task evidenced significantly less verbal control of inhibitory motor behavior and greater magnitude of errors than reflective children. The only difference revealed on the tapping task was that impulsive children were more likely to use self-instructions in a motoric manner, whereas reflective children relied more on the semantic content of their speech. Sex differences, the differential effectiveness of overt versus covert self-instructions, and the relationship with performance on the Primary Mental Abilities test were also examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relations between level of manifest anxiety, as measured by the CMAS, and other variables were predicted on the basis of previous findings and theoretical expectations and were tested on a sample of 9- and 10-year-old children. The Negro-white variable and grade level, but not sex, were found to be reliably related to A score. Some support was obtained for a negative correlation between A score and intelligence, and weak support for a negative correlation between A score and social standing. The present data provide no evidence for a relation between manifest anxiety and learning task performance. The findings are compared with those from other relevant investigations and are interpreted in the light of procedural and theoretical considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects on film-mediated aggression of a co-observes positive, negative, or nonsanctions and his subsequent presence or absence during performance opportunities were investigated. It was found that positive and negative sanctions produced corresponding disinhibition and inhibition effects only when the experimenter remained with the children during a postexposure test of imitative performance. The results seem related to social-learning theory in that the children's expectancies for receiving various consequences appeared to determine the amount of initiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

4 simulates of child socialization were obtained by varying the extent to which a model verbally instructed and personally exhibited high or low standards of self-reward. Greatest adherence to a stringent norm occurred among children who were taught and who observed the model practice such a norm. Children who were exposed to a, self-indulgent model tended most to violate both stringent and lenient norms and to evidence ambivalent behaviors, while those who were exposed to a child-indulgent model violated the lenient norms least. While percept and precept were both powerfully influential for norm internalization, the latter was clearly the stronger determinant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

30 boys, observed in a research nursery school setting and systematically rated at age 2½, were followed up at age 6½ when a battery of cognitive measures was administered. Significant associations are reported between rating clusters of early social behavior and nonverbal intellectual functioning,, conceptual style, and field dependence-independence. These relations generally corroborate previous findings which have been reported from cross-sectional studies with somewhat older subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stimulus generalization was tested on a visual spatial dimension. 108 children, equally divided into 2 age groups of 6-7-year-olds and 10-11-yearolds, were subdivided into 3 groups that varied in the initial number of training trials (15, 30, 45). The resulting gradients were a function of spatial distance, age, and training trials. Increased training resulted in increased generalization for younger Ss but decreased generalization for older Ss. Older Ss had shorter response latencies. The results were interpreted as supporting an S-R unit and an S-R mediational hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The performances of retarded and normal children, matched for MA, were compared in a simple instrumental conditioning situation under conditions of continuous and alternating partial reward. Acquisition and extinction series were administered in an attempt to discern the relative effects of differential cues and schedules of reinforcement. Speed of response was used as a measure of learning. A significant difference between speeds on reinforced and nonreinforcced trials was demonstrated for both normals and retardates. Although absolute response speeds of retardates were significantly slower than those of normals, there appeared to be no difference in rate of acquisition. Both groups learned quickly to anticipate the reward schedule, and there was no difference in their rates of extinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First-grade children (79 boys and 76 girls) were administered tests to assess conceptual reflection-impulsivity and performance on three inductive reasoning tests. Impulsive children had faster response times and higher error scores on the inductive reasoning tests even when verbal ability was controlled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study had 2 aims: to clarify results obtained with schooled and unschooled children in Hong Kong, and to explore the effects of chronological and mental age upon Piaget's tasks. The Ss were several groups of U. S. schoolchildren, selected to allow a close matching for either MA or CA and to cover a wide range in IQ. The data, combined with Hong Kong data, gave 2 results: (1) lack of schooling does not upset the conservation of weight, volume, or surface but does upset a task of combinatorial reasoning; (2) among schoolchildren, all tasks show a close relation to MA. The interaction between task and schooling may reflect the greater reliance of unschooled children upon perceptually present material or upon action models for reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A research project undertaken by the Child Development Research Laboratories in 1955 had as its central objective the investigation of effects of home management house experience on the development of infants. This report describes the developmental status of subjects at the time they were first inducted into the project, prior to being subjected to experimental conditions under investigation. There are obvious practical justifications for making comparisons reported here and in addition there are possibly some theoretical implications which go beyond demands of this project.

The rationale of the present investigation was that complete understanding of the child and his articulatory problem comes only by means of an organismic study of the child in the light of his developmental, educational, psychological and speech attributes. Nonorganic, articulatory problems, involving sound substitutions, omissions, distortions and additions are the most common of all speech disorders. An articulation problem is a manifestation of a child's speech development is impaired and that his language progression is protracted.

The present study employs self concept and discrepancy measures in fourth, fifth and sixth grade children and is concerned primarily with the comparative reliabilities of the discrepancy scores and the self concept scores, the relationship of each of these two measures to scores and the relationship of each of these two measures to scores on children's form of manifest anxiety scale. Kinds of verbalizations people make to themselves perhaps particularly about themselves have long been of interest to personality theorists.

The article presents details of the effect of non-continuous mothering. There is some significant relationship between the development of the infant and the nature of his early mothering experiences would not appear to be open to serious question at this point. Negative effects of inadequate mothering in the case of the severely deprived infant have been repeatedly observed by a number of research workers. These findings stress that institutional children in a physically sterile setting are more susceptible to colds and epidemics of infectious diseases than are children who have the psychological support of a family atmosphere.

The article discusses the standing height averages of eight-year-old children which are subgrouped in respect to the regional source of samples obtained from a world-wide research conducted in different countries in 1950-1960. It includes several tables that show the statistics of mean standing height of children of both sexes. Though there is a sex difference in the average of standing height, the concern of the monograph does not require a separate comparison for boys and girls. The study in Europe revealed that the children living in Italy and Norway were taller than those living in Sardinia. Vietnamese children were shorter compared to Japanese, Latvian and Polish children.

The article reports on the intercorrelated matrix of maternal and child variables. A study has correlated the mental scores of 13 age-level children with similarly behavioral ratings, as well as the mental scores of parental socioeconomic variables. An overview of the test methods used for the study and its hypothesis is offered. The research showed that the maternal's general behavior and attitudes affect the children's intellectual functioning. To illustrate, several figures and graphs are presented to show the correlations of maternal behavior with children's intelligence are presented.

This section focuses on the questionably normal and abnormal electroencephalographies (EEG) from normal children in a study. The precise proportion of such "abnormal normals" has varied in reports from different laboratories. In an extensive study of the inheritance of cerebral dysrhythmia, Lennox, Gibbs and Gibbs found that their control group of 100 normal adults showed 10 percent abnormal and 6 percent doubtful records. Jasper reports that about 5 percent of the normal eases in the McGill studies show "minor disorders," and to an equal degree some of the patients show normal records. P. Davis (8, p. 110) has indicated graphically that about 8 percent of 177 presumably normal cases and 11 percent of 139 "unknown," but also presumably normal cases, show "suspicious" records. Harty, Gibbs and Gibbs found 15 percent of abnormal records in a superior control group of medical students and hospital staff members and an "extraordinarily high" incidence (30 percent) of abnormal EEG in a group of 275 early candidates for military service.

The article examines the growing recognition on the importance of social influences in the behavior of children by research workers. Author E. Dewey cites the large gaps in infant behavior knowledge, and urges the study of the social environment as it affects the practice of developing skills. While K. Miles, summarizing the literature on sex differences, states that by nursery school age differential training of the sexes has begun. It is perceived that a group not merely exercises restrictive influence on the individual but presents him with opportunities for action.

The article examines several studies relating to social influences to child behavior. Ten types of studies that ranges from early long-range characterizations of environment and the companison of children from contrasting backgrounds to the controlled experiments and factorial analyses were considered. J. E. Anderson made a pioneer attempt to obtain a representative sampling of the entire preschool population of the United States. His study covers 4,000 young children in 3,000 families and reports size of family, type of home and education.

The article reports on the relation of other factors to the motor rhythm tests conducted for the study "Rhythmic Responses of Negro and White Children Two to Six," by Dorothy Van Alstyne and Emily Osborne. It discusses the rhythm tests in relation to intelligence, to teacher's ratings, color ratings and the musical background of the child. It is found that the rhythm performance has a small positive relation to intelligence in all the cases studied. A little relation exists between scores on the rhythm tests and the musical background questionnaire.

The article presents the history of the problem discussed in the study "Rhythmic Responses of Negro and White Children Two to Six," by Dorothy Van Alstyne and Emily Osborne. It discusses the setting up of the apparatus and comments on the testing device. It offers figures to show the general plan of the apparatus and describes the processes involved. It also presents a description of the testing method which involves the testing groups, the rhythm patterns which were used and the procedure used in the study.

The article discusses on the goals and activities of the Elementary Science Study Branch of Educational Services Inc. The creation of materials for the science learning of children are directs to the effort of the goal. The author mentions the two instances in cognitive research relevant to the development of the study. He states that the psychologists play a general role in teaching and evaluating the way children are learning from the materials provided.