In recent years, the American Academy of Pediatrics (1999) has urged parents to avoid exposure to screen media for children under 2 years of age. Despite this recommendation, producers of children's videos have begun to target younger audiences than ever before. One way that media may have a positive impact on very young children is by demonstrating and encouraging the types of parent-child interaction known to be beneficial to healthy cognitive, social, and emotional growth. The research described here examines the effectiveness of videos from two series for infants and toddlers, both claiming to promote parent-child interaction. In this study, parents and children were asked to watch two videos either from the Baby Einstein video series or the Sesame Beginnings video series for two weeks at home prior to visiting the laboratory. Home viewing was followed by two laboratory sessions, separated by approximately one week. Session 1 was 30 minutes with the television off, while Session 2 consisted of a 30-minute segment of video viewing followed by a 15-minute segment with the television off. Quality and type of parent-child interaction were assessed for both sessions. Results revealed that active involvement with the child was relatively high when the television was off. Only for the Sesame Beginnings group, however, did coviewing at home predict high-quality parent-child interaction in the laboratory. This suggests that familiarity with videos that specifically model appropriate parent-child interactions may improve the overall nature of such interactions. During video viewing, there was a decrease in amount of active parent-child engagement regardless of video condition. However, the amount of high-quality parent-child interaction during video viewing was substantial, with active involvement occurring almost half of the time the video was on. Thus, at least in a laboratory setting, video viewing was generally not used as a replacement for involvement with the child. In all, this study indicates that parents can capitalize on the opportunities that baby videos provide and use them as a basis for parent-child interaction. With repeated exposure, some content may even have a more general positive impact on the quality of interaction with the child.

The following study explores the factors associated with security of romantic attachment in Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOAs). ACOAs are more vulnerable to inconsistent parenting and consequently are more likely to develop negative internal models of self, a stable construct that affects romantic attachments (Bowlby, 1982; Ainsworth et al, 1989; Bartholomew, 1990). This study examined associations between parent, and peer relationships as possible resiliencies. It was hypothesized that ACOAs will report less secure attachments with their parents (as measured by the IPPA), less romantic attachment anxiety and avoidance (as measured by the ECR-R), and no significant difference in peer attachment (as measured by the IPPA) when compared to ACONAs. It was also hypothesized that there will be an association between peer attachments and romantic attachments for ACOAs and not for the ACONAS. One hundred forty-three undergraduate students participated in the study. An independent T-test showed no significance for the initial hypothesis. The second hypothesis was partially supported, an independent T-test showed significant findings unique to ACOAs. ACOAs with more positive peer attachments had more positive romantic attachments.

Complex conditions in the popular work place mechanism of Self-Directed Work Teams require many skills of team members. Adult Cognitive Development studies skills that deal with complex ideas and finds their development in some adults, always in predictable patterns. This naturalistic, exploratory research investigates the existence, characterization, development and importance of nine cognitive and intrapersonal skills found in both work place literature and adult cognitive development literature but not uniformly emphasized in training offered to team members. The skills include Systems Thinking, Integration and Synthesis, Taking the Perspective of Others, Analysis and Diagnosis, Recognizing, Identifying and Dealing with Feelings, Willingness to Disagree with Authority or Majority, Ability to be Flexible, Ability to Deal with Ambivalence, and Ability to Assess and Take Risks. This research investigates use of the nine skills through observations of team meetings in two distinctive work places. Observed uses of the skills were confirmed through interviews with team members which also explored skill development. Interviews with team leaders established their sense of importance of the skills. Major findings include: (1) Use of six of the skills is widespread. (2) Characteristics of 248 skill instances offered a basis for determination of sequence of skill development. (3) "Learning From Models" and "Reflection On Experiences" were credited by team members for development of their skills. School experience and training programs were not significant sources of development. (4) Most of the skills were considered important by the people responsible for the teams. Unexpected findings include: (1) Some team members without higher education evidenced skills at a level expected by Adult Cognitive Development theories only of those with higher education. (2) The team itself was cited by members as having positive developmental effects. (3) The interviews in which team members reflected upon their skills development proved developmental, strengthening the findings that reflective thought constitutes a significant pathway for development of the nine skills under consideration.

The author defines development, or growth, as the ethically desirable direction of change. Is there a principle which can express what all developmental changes have in common, and what makes them desirable? The orthogenetic principle defines development as change towards increasing integration with complementary differentiation of people with respect to their environment. Heinz Werner and Bernard Kaplan first articulated this idea. It characterizes the portrayal of development by Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, and John Dewey. None of these authors, however, justify orthogenesis as an ethical definition of development across a global range of experience. The author attempts this here, giving educators a tool for criticizing or justifying education having development as its aim. The author analyzes integration and differentiation into three aspects: co-ordination of distinguished elements in the environment; autonomous choice from a de-centered or objective perspective; immunity from environmental vicissitudes alongside an opening of and openness to the environment. Advancing these qualities is justified as ethically desirable in two ways. It overcomes the problem of egocentrism and habit-attachment which gives meaning to the notion of development across human experience. It also meets formal ethical criteria of universalizability, universality, and prescriptivity. Educators can use the orthogenetic principle to examine assumptions about development within psychological theories to see how these might themselves influence development. This enables educators to make eclectic use of psychologies within an ethical framework. The principle is also used to generate guidelines for thorough and objective inquiry into what is most growthful for a particular person at a particular time. The author argues that the principle cannot prescribe any educational course in advance of such inquiry into unique situations.

The goals of this study were to explore and describe the process of late adolescent development in women. Twenty-four females, ages 18 to 24, were interviewed about their perceptions of themselves and their relationships, and how these perceptions had changed during their late adolescence. Subjects also completed a two-part demographic measure. Four significant themes of change emerged: Independence and Connection, Time Orientation, Response to Diversity, and Self-Esteem. Two modes of organizing experience, Splitting and Differentiation, emerged as salient developmental processes during this time. Late adolescent development was found to be a three phase process, characterized by interactions among and changes in the six factors. These three phases were termed Separation and Discovery, Use of Transitional Objects, and Integration and Reconnection. Transition from late adolescence to young adulthood was found to be mediated by the use of transitional objects, which were created by the adolescent for the purpose of facilitating development and were discarded when they were no longer needed. Transitional objects were found to play an important role in the process of internalization. The three-phase process is then presented as a model for life-span development.

Depressive affect and depressive disorders have been shown to increase in the transition from childhood to early adolescence. Furthermore, although Major Depression is classified as an affective disorder and many have asserted the importance that knowledge about emotions holds for understanding the organization, etiology, neurobiology, and treatment of depression, empirical investigation has been lacking. This is particularly true as regards adolescence. The current study explored the subjective experience of emotions, with attention also to emotional expression, associated with depression in groups of 39 psychiatric inpatients and 22 non-clinical control young adolescents. Measures included a self-report measure of depressive symptomatology, the Childhood Depression Inventory (CDI), and a self-report measure of the frequency of experience of individual emotions, the Differential Emotions Scale-IV (DES-IV). Two new emotions scales, Loved and Detached, were added to the DES-IV. There also was a video mood induction procedure accompanied by verbal report of immediate emotional state and detailed analysis of emotional facial expressions using the AFFEX system. Results were analyzed considering differences in depression level and gender. Depressed subjects scored significantly higher on a Dysphoria factor, most saliently comprised of Inward Hostility and Shame but also including Shyness, Fear and Sadness, and significantly lower on a Joy/Loved factor. The depressed subjects also reported being more aware of their emotions. Regarding emotional expression, depressed subjects showed a higher frequency of negative emotions (anger, sadness, disgust) and a lower frequency of joy than their non-depressed counterparts. There were no depression-related differences in self-report of emotional state in response to the video mood induction procedure, though males reported being happier than females. The relationship between emotional experience and emotional expression was stable over all depression level by gender groupings with the exception of highly depressed males. Overall, there were large gender-related differences in the organization of emotions associated with depression, with relationships for males characterized as fragmented. Study results are discussed in reference to research on emotions and depression in children and adults, normal adolescent emotional development, and adolescent development in other domains, most notably the self-concept.

This study is concerned with a cross-cultural investigation of adolescent perceptions of popularity. In contrast to previous approaches, this study was designed to uncover factors determined by adolescents themselves. Using unconstrained methods of analyzing and interpreting data, we are allowed to increase the possibility of new findings. The purpose of this study was to identify naturally emerging categories used by adolescents in describing popular peers and to explore for possible dimensions that underlie the categories. Nineteen categories were identified. Some of these were similar to categories surfaced by previous research; others, like group-benefitted attributes, and qualities of social interaction, were previously unknown. The dimensions of adolescent popularity were suggested as Relational Orientation versus Appearance and Status and Ascribed versus Achieved. Cross-cultural comparisons were made through the use of sorting procedures, chi-square analysis, cluster analysis, and multidimensional scaling (ALSCAL & INDSCAL). By conceptualizing culture itself as a theoretical variable, interpretations were based on two lines: cultural-developmental tasks and the cultural dimension of collectivism versus individualism.

This study measured the prevalence of depression among 191 tenth and eleventh grade students, and investigated its relationship to gender, sex-role, ego identity achievement, and concerns about the future. Ninety-one males and 100 females completed the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BEM), Ego Identity Scale (EIS), and Future Concerns Scale (FCS). Twenty-five percent were found to be depressed. Ego identity achievement was significantly correlated with depression, and a Stepwise Multiple Regression Analysis indicated that ego identity achievement predicted 44 percent of the variance in depression scores. Results of a Two-Way Multivariate ANOVA indicated that females were significantly more depressed than males, but found no significant effect for gender on ego identity. Both Feminine and Undifferentiated subjects had significantly higher depression scores and significantly lower ego identity scores than either Masculine or Androgynous subjects. Results support the observation that it is not the presence of feminine characteristics, but the absence of masculine characteristics, that is associated with more deleterious outcomes. A post-hoc analysis of the FCS illuminated both gender and sex-role differences in the issues associated with depression among this group. Other correlates of depression were also examined. The interrelationship of sex-role and ego identity achievement is discussed, and implications for clinicians and educators are considered.

This study compared the rate of behavioral inhibition among children of parents with panic disorder to the one exhibited by children whose parents have no identified psychiatric disorder. Two groups of 20 White children aged two, three or four years old were matched for age, sex, socioeconomic level and ordinal position. Group assignment depended on the parent's diagnosis. In the clinical sample, at least one parent was suffering from panic disorder with or without agoraphobia. Neither parent of the children in the comparison group had ever met the requirements for psychiatric disorder. The Psychiatric Diagnostic Interview-Revised was used for the parent's assessment. The assessment of behavioral inhibition was made from scoring obtained in two play situations. In the first one, involving physically mildly challenging stimuli, three variables were considered: proportion of time the child remained proximal to the parent, number of tasks initiated and imitated. The second experimental situation involved play with an unfamiliar child of the same age and sex. The scoring elements included: latencies to first comment, to touch toys and to approach the other child as well as proportion of time proximal to the parent, staring at the other child and vocalizing. No significant difference was found between the two groups. There was a trend for children whose mother had panic disorder to be more inhibited than children whose father was symptomatic and for girls to be more inhibited than boys. The parents of the most inhibited youngsters in the clinical sample had all been severely symptomatic during the child's lifetime. Rather than rejecting outright the hypothesis of an increased rate of behavioral inhibition among children of parents with panic disorder, the author suggests some modifications. How acutely symptomatic the parent was during the child's lifetime would be a modulating factor as well as the gender of the child and of the symptomatic parent. More specifically, daughters of symptomatic mothers may be more at risk for behavioral inhibition. These qualifications suggest pathways for environmental influence on the course of behavioral inhibition in families where one of the parents is affected by panic disorder.

This study explored whether there were enduring memory and attention deficits in a nonclinical group of undergraduate women who had experienced child sexual abuse (CSA). Thirty-five women who were severely (n=18) or moderately (n=17) sexually abused and eighteen control subjects volunteered for the study. Subjects were matched on race, age, and grade point average. Measures of implicit and explicit memory as well as two measures of attention were administered under both no-threat and threat conditions. The threat paradigm employed was the use of words judged by 7 independent clinicians as either "threatening" or "very threatening" to adult survivors of child sexual abuse. Measures of depression and dissociation were also administered. It was hypothesized that there would be no baseline memory and/or attention deficits in the CSA population but that the experience of either internally or externally generated CSA-related threat would have an intermittent negative effect on these cognitive functions effecting attentional and memory disruptions in ongoing tasks. It was further hypothesized that the severely abused subjects would experience more disruption in the threat condition than the moderately abused subjects. Depression and dissociation scores were analyzed to ascertain both their presence in the three groups and their relationship to performance on the memory and attention tests. Under the no-threat condition, the severely abused subjects showed significantly poorer implicit memory than the controls in a between-groups univariate analysis of variance. An analysis of covariance with depression and dissociation as covariates showed this deficit could be attributed to the severe group's significantly greater depression. Under the threat condition, between-groups ultivariate analyses of variance showed there were no significant findings of memory or attention deficits in the CSA subjects although within-group univariate analyses showed trends in the hypothesized direction for both implicit memory and attention. These findings suggest that while some women who were sexually abused as children have enduring implicit memory and attention deficits as sequelae, the experience of the abuse, itself, is not a sufficient predictor of these deficits.