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Investigates the motor control and coordination of the hand and fingers among young children. Relationship between the manipulation of scissors and chronological age; Determination of sex, individual and personality differences; Methods for scoring graded papers for accuracy.

In Piagetian theory, transition to the stage of concrete operations is characterized by a cognitive structure wherin the 4 logical groupings associated with simple and multiple classification and simple and multiple seriation become operational at roughly the same time. The evidence for the emergence of the ability for classification and simple seriation in Western children at about age 7 is overwhelming. That for multiple seriation is unimpressive at least in quantity. This paper investigates the development of the ability for double seriation in children aged 5-8 years and finds that there is a developmental lag between the emergence of the ability for cross-classification and that for double seriation. This results is considered to have implications beyond that of revising age norms. An attempt is made to relate it to the differences existing between the Geneva ad Harvard approaches to interpreting cognitive growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internal-external control (JE) expectancies of disadvantaged preschool children in Head Start classes were compared with those of middle-class children in 1 Montessori and 2 parent cooperative nursery schools using the Stephens-Delys Reinforcement Contingency Interview (SDRCI) IE measure. There were 55 Head Start (1 white group and 1 black group), 16 Montessori, and 34 parent cooperative nursery school children. The middle-class groups had significantly higher internal control scores than did the Head Start groups but did not differ from each other, and the black and white Head Start groups did not differ significantly from one another. The external control expectancies of both black and white disadvantaged children do, then, precede their school attendance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Determines the use of Wetzel developmental age in determining height and weight in children. Mathematical formulation of weight; Implications of weight-height relation for child health; Pattern of statural growth.

Interracial marriage and divorce in Hawaii involve disproportionate numbers of couples in which the man is much older than the woman or the woman is older than the man. Divorce rates present a U-shaped pattern for unmixed couples, low for those in which the male was the same ace as the woman or 1 to 9 years older, but high for other age differences. Among interracial couples, however, the divorce ratio for couples with much older husbands was about the same as for those of similar ages. It was high only where the wife was older than her husband. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The visual preferences of 20 full-term, 4-month-old infants were compared with those of 20 premature infants whose age at testing was 4 months corrected for the amount of prematurity. Both groups demonstrated a preference for complex stimuli, and no differences in the strength of preferences were found. The male prematures and full-term infants differed in total attention to face-like stimuli. Preference for novel stimuli following a habituation procedure was shown by the full-term infants but not by the premature infants. In summary, cognitive development, as indexed by visual preferences, varied between hill-term and premature infants of the same conceptional age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was conducted to assess the ability of children of 6, 9, 12, and 15 years of age to detect various types of linguistic ambiguity. The results suggested that the ability to detect linguistic ambiguity develops at different rates depending on the type of ambiguity. The ability to detect phonological ambiguity appeared first, with the largest improvement occurring between 6 and 9 years. Second to appear was the detections of lexical ambiguity, which exhibited a linear increase with age. Detection of surface- and deep-structure ambiguities did not occur until age 12. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study of the age of parents at the birth of the first child is a feasible approach to the problem of relating residence differentials in fertility to rural- urban variations in the age patterns of marriage. Employing data taken from Oldahoma birth certificates, comparisons are made between open country, village, and urban populations. The rural populations begin effective fertility a year or more sooner than the urban. Age differences between parents and correlations between mothers' and fathers' ages are also found to vary according to residence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The separate evolvement of the misstatement of age clause and of the incontestable clause are traced. The age clause is held to be a detriment and cause of loss to insureds and beneficiaries, a profitable benefit and source of income to insurers and agents, and the cause of debasement and uncertainty in settlement. Insurers use death certificates to justify settlements at < face value. Life insurance policies make three material misrepresentations by omitting essential information. Among major recommendations are: (1) insurers should extend the protection of the incontestable clause to age misstatements; (2) the age clause should be eliminated from life policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theoretical expectation of Max Weber, the refinement of that expectation by Glock and Stark, and the empirical findings of Glock, Ringer and Babble that social deprivation is related to religiosity in church-type religious institutions is further tested. Three indices of social deprivation (sex, age, and education) are combined into a composite index and correlated with indices of types of religiosity in a Roman Catholic parish. In addition, a composite religiosity index is correlated with each of the social deprivation variables: sex, age, and education. The findings substantiate the social deprivation model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the change with age in the resemblance of children having the same parents. Increase in the variability of physical characters; Factors responsible for the sudden changes in growth rates; Influence of birth on fraternal resemblance.

Preschool, third-, and sixth-grade children classified as socioeconomically disadvantaged or nondisadvantaged were subjects in a voluntary-delay-of-reinforcement paradigm. Following the first day's "work" session, subjects were given the option of selecting a toy costing 3 tokens then and paying the remaining 2 tokens when they had earned them or waiting until they had saved, up enough to buy the toy. Results indicated a shift from preference for immediate reinforcement in preschool to deferred selection in sixth grade for both socioeconomic groups. Relations between the present 1:1 value ratio and the ratio of <1 represented by traditional delay-of-gratification investigations are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

4- and 7-year-old children played a game with a peer and received more, fewer, or the same number of rewards as he (social comparison). For half of the children any reward discrepancy was attributed to the quality of his performance (contingent) and for half it was not. Social comparison affected the subsequent noncontingent self-reinforcement of younger children only. Younger children rewarded themselves more generously than did older children and valued the rewards less. Girls valued the rewards less than did boys. Social comparison affected the value of a reward similarly for children of each age. There was no effect of reward contingency. The results are discussed in the context of success and failure effects upon children's self-reinforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

2 free-classification procedures, 1 similar to that employed by Vygotsky and 1 similar to that employed by Inhelder and Piaget, were compared in children 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, and 16 years old. Neither Vygotsky's nor Inhelder and Piaget's results were replicated by the procedure that was meant to correspond to their own. Developmental stages such as those reported by Vygotsky and by Inhelder and Piaget were not obtained in the present study. A χ² yielded a significant relationship between age and type of response; with increasing age there was a decrease in the number of different types of responses given. A significant relationship was also found between procedure and type of response. This relationship was discussed as a possible result of differences in the S's perceived requirements of the 2 tasks because of differences in instructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children 3-6 years of age, when given an identification task where number was redundant to length or density, Solved the task on the basis of number. Surreptitious subtraction or addition elicited strong surprise as well as search behavior whereas displacements did not. Children who noticed the change in number or length and density gave unambiguous explanations of the nature of the intervening operations and were able to indicate how to reverse the effect. These findings are taken to show young children can treat small numbers as invariant. The results are discussed in terms of why children of the same age fail to conserve numbers in the standard conservation task and how complex number concepts might develop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

West African (Kpelle) children served as subjects in 3 experiments designed to investigate the generality of the syntactic-paradigmatic shift phenomenon. Experiment I demonstrated that school attendance increases the proportion of paradigmatic associates. Experiment 2 demonstrated that there was a significant age effect independent of education, and the magnitude of the age effect was greater if the subjects had attended school. Experiment 3 found a small difference associated with language of testing (Kpelle and English). These studies establish the generality of the syntactic-paradigmatic shift for a language structurally different from languages studied in previous experiments and suggest that age and education both contribute to the developmental trends obtained in previously reported studies. However, the age at which significant amounts of paradigmatic responding occurred for verbs and adjectives was later than previously reported, and only high school-educated subjects showed levels of paradigmatic responding to verbs and adjectives comparable with European and U.S. samples reported previously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children 18-24 month of age were required to identify pictures represented concepts at 2 levels of language familiarity and 2 levels of perceptual definition. It was hypothesized that more familiar and more ambiguous concepts would be less readily named in their less detailed representations. The hypothesis was confirmed. Implications of the findings for a theory of concept differentiation were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resting cardiac rate and variability were obtained on a group of subjects seen first in the last trimester of prenatal life and then over the first year of postnatal life. Maternal cardiac rate and variability were also obtained. The data indicate no relationship between maternal and fetal or infant data. Moreover, there are clear developmental patterns of resting cardiac response over the first year of life, with rate and variability showing linear decreases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We studied hearing and deaf children's projection of visual images on two tasks requiring (a) adoption of 8 different perspectives of a 3-object scene and (b) prediction of the relative positions of a fixed to a variable square rotated in 8 positions. After initial testing Ss were shown some correct solutions and were then retested on all items. Younger children (CA 9) were consistently inferior to older children (CA 11); deafness failed to differentiate performance with the single exception of the retest on task (a). Results support Piaget's viewpoint on the dependence of mental imagery and general symbolic functioning on the growth of intelligence with respect to the preadolescent period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated the relationship of age, intelligence, and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to free-recall learning in children. Children at 1 of 3 age levels, 1 of 3 intelligence levels, and with 1 of 3 motivational orientations were tested on a 5-trial free-recall learning task. Results showed a positive relationship between age and learning which decreased in prominence as children got older. There was a positive relationship between intelligence and learning which was attributed to differences in recall only between subjects of low intelligence and those of superior intelligence. The motivational results yielded some evidence for an interfering effect of extrinsic motivation upon learning. The results were discussed in terms of previous research relating these independent variables to learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was designed to investigate developmental changes in demand for payoff in boys and girls. Within each grade-sex category, 84 third-grade boys, 64 fourth-grade boys, 100 third-grade girls, and 68 fourth-grade girls were randomly assigned to 4-person groups (tetrads). Each tetrad played 8 rounds of a negotiable, essential game defined by the power pattern 1-2-2-4. Results indicated consistently higher payoff demands when players held the high power weight "4," although there was wide variability among individuals at each weight level. Distribution of demands at power weight 4 suggests a progression away from accommodative behavior with third- and fourth-grade girls most accommodative. Third-grade boys were less accommodative, and fourth-grade boys were the least accommodative group. Possible explanations for these differences in payoff demand are discussed in terms of rule codification, cultural norms, evaluation of self-worth, and the concept of "fairness". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relation of Piagetian reversibility to intelligence and to creativity was investigated in 85 9-year-old Edmonton boys. Data were collected on Piagetian, Torrance, intelligence, age, and occupation variables. Factor analyses reduced the Piagetian and Torrance batteries to derived measures of reversibility and creativity, respectively. These were then combined with the other variables for statistical and further factor analysis. It was found that reversibility in the sample took 2 uncorrelated forms -- reversibility of classes (inversion) and reversibility of relations (reciprocity). Inversion appears to be related to creativity, while reciprocity is related to intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

5-, 7-, and 9-year-old children were tested in a simple motor task under 3 conditions which differed in the type and quantity of cues available to aid learning. The results support the hypothesis that 1 of the variables determining gradual or sudden learning is the availability and utilization of potentially mediating cues. The ability to utilize such cues greatly increased with age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deals with a study which investigated the effects of age differences on choice behavior. Background to the study; Method; Results and discussion.

The present experiment is designed to investigate some variables which might account for the seemingly contradictory data in the literature and to clarify the issue of constancy as a unitary process. Studies of constancy as a function of age have yielded inconsistent data. Although many investigators and theorists have dealt with the problem of perpetual constancy, an adequate understanding of the phenomenon is lacking. Much of the controversy has been concerned with the traditional problem of nativism versus empiricism.

Presents a study pertaining to growth changes of individuals in hip width. Relationship between hip width status and hip width increase; Use of normative materials in experimental research and clinical practice; Association of age, sex and individual differences in rate of growth.

The article features relevant and irrelevant issues in development. An illustration of the manner in which current behavior theories permit and encourage the introduction and investigation of developmental variables in the cognitive behavior of the child is discussed. The concept of development has been used to name those changes in behavior that normally occur with an increase in the chronological age of the child. The developmental changes to an increase in chronological age or to "growing older" are attributed to common sense. Students of child behavior sought explanations in physiological changes, in experience, and in genetically determined characters.

The article offers information on the reactions of children relative to the story of "Sally and the Baby and the Rampatan." In determining the reactions of children, several factors were considered. These include the mother's attitude towards the child's ambivalent emotions, the presence or absence of younger siblings, feelings about, age, sex, birth, and circumstances under which the story was read. It was established that children who have no younger siblings tends to react more on first reading to the Rampatan rather than the baby story.