This experiment examined the effects of instructions on the prosocial behavior (i.e., helping, sharing, teaching, and sympathy) of preschool children. Forty-eight individual children (X = 56.7 months) interacted with two adult women on two separate occasions, an initial session measuring baseline levels of prosocial behavior, and a second session several days later. In the second session, children received instructions in helping, sharing, and teaching, and an opportunity to rehearse, or practice, these prosocial behaviors. Children were given either power assertive instructions (i.e., instructions which directly told the child what to do), or inductive instructions (i.e., instructions which focused the child's attention on the needs of others). A control group received no instructions to behave prosocially. At the close of the second session, all children were given an immediate test to assess their level of helping, sharing, and teaching in the absence of instructions. An opportunity to display sympathy or comforting behavior was included to test for generalization of the instructional training to a new behavior. Approximately one week later a third session, where the child interacted with two new adult women who gave no instructions but presented opportunities for the child to help, share, teach, and sympathize, was included to test for internalization and long term generalization.

The present study was a systematic investigation of hierarchical skill sequences in the early social development domain. Recent research has suggested that social development may be conceptualized as a phenomena involving a hierarchical sequencing of competencies. In particular, social development may involve sequential changes in capability, reflecting successively higher levels of functioning within these competencies. The conceptual problem of this study focused on the construction and validation of a meaningful representation of ability in early social development. Ability was conceptualized as a composite of cognitive procedures governing the performance of specific tasks. The process for constructing skill sequences to reflect ability involved identifying task characteristics or demands which imposed various requirements on cognitive functioning. Hierarchical skill sequences were constructed to tap a variety of capabilities within the early social development domain. These skill sequences included understanding emotions, identifying and mediating needs, understanding friendships, and understanding fairness in decision making. Assessment items were developed to reflect each of these skill sequences based on the cognitive processes that are necessary for correct performance. This involved varying the task demands imposing various requirements on cognitive processing. The data were from 18,305 Head Start children ranging from 30 to 83 months of age. Latent trait models were constructed to reflect the hypothesized skill sequences by allowing the discrimination and difficulty parameters to be free to vary or by constraining them to be equal to other parameters. To arrive at a preferred model, each latent trait model was statistically compared against alternative latent trait models. In general, the results from the present investigation supported the hypothesis that the acquisition of social skills is a developmental phenomena involving a hierarchical sequencing of competencies. Moreover, the study supports the assumption that changes in capability can be defined by progress toward abstraction, complexity, stability, and the handling of increasing quantities of information. While the results provide a deeper understanding of early social development, future research is needed to extend the developmental structure to higher levels of ability. Moreover, research is needed to determine how the information gleaned from developmental assessment can be utilized in planning learning experiences to enhance development.

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The current investigation provides a preliminary investigation of the "imposed networks" (adults with whom youth interact, but were not necessarily chosen) of youth aged 8 to 12. Also evaluated was the relative influence of parents and teachers on youths' feelings of self-efficacy. Youth reported on levels of warmth, psychological control and decisionmaking at home and at school. Self-efficacy was assessed by both youth and parent report. Results indicated that the emotional climate provided by parents was more influential on girls' feelings of self-efficacy than boys, and that higher warmth was negatively associated with boys' feelings of self-efficacy. Teacher psychological control was consistently negatively related to youths' feelings of self-efficacy. No evidence was found for either additive or interactive effects of home and school environments. Instead, the pattern of results suggested that youth benefit from moderate to high levels of parental warmth, when teachers provide levels of warmth that are either equally high or lower than parents.

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Explicitly rewarding the imitation of actions demonstrated by a model provides a method for training new behaviour in mentally retarded children. After such training even initially nonimitative children will often copy further novel actions even though such imitations are not rewarded (generalized imitation). A review of the literature on this topic suggested that many aspects of this phenomenon had not been adequately investigated. The research for this thesis therefore studied a number of practical aspects of imitation training in a total of fourteen initially nonimitative subnormal children. Five experiments were performed using a discrete trial paradigm. Experiment 1 compared two methods of training generalized imitation in initially nonimitative children. The first method involved varying the actions demonstrated for imitation from trial to trial (a 'Cumulative' method). In the second method, imitation of each action was trained to criterion performance in isolation (a 'Serial' method). Both methods successfully trained imitation and generalized imitation, but the results suggested that the 'Cumulative' method was the more efficient. Experiment 2 investigated the maintenance of imitation by intermittent reinforcement. The 'imitations' of one group of subjects were reinforced on a variable-ratio schedule and those of the other on a continuous reinforcement schedule. Both reinforcement conditions maintained 'imitations' and 'generalized imitations' at high, stable levels, but the group maintained under variable-ratio reinforcement showed greater resistance to subsequent extinction (the Partial Reinforcement Effect). In Experiment 3, subjects who had been trained to reproduce the actions of a particular model in one setting were tested in different locations and with different models. Changes in both variables resulted in decrements in 'imitative' and 'generalized imitative' response performances. In Experiment 4, a discrimination was established with three subjects by training imitation in the presence of a large ball and non imitation in the presence of a small ball. Imitation was then tested for various other ball sizes. Levels of imitation decreased as the test stimuli increasingly differed in size from the large ball. "Generalized imitations" occurred at about the same level as 'imitations' for each test stimulus. In Experiment 5, all previously trained subjects were tested after an interval of three months with no formal imitation training. Some children then demonstrated decrements in imitative responding but rapidly recovered former levels of performance upon brief refresher retraining. The results suggested that, for clinical purposes, the "imitations" and "generalized imitations" of retarded children may be expected to show some characteristics of a single functional response class. However, some parts of the present results as well as other published data indicate such an account does not completely explain all aspects of the phenomenon.

The objectives of the study were based on constructs which were originally described and studied by Piaget and some of which were studied subsequently by other authors with contradictory results. The four major objectives of the study were: 1. to reexamine the development of children's concepts of life, and, in particular to systematically investigate the relationship between children's errors in classifying items as alive or not alive and their use of different justifications for those classifications , 2. to attempt to elicit precausal explanations from children in response to demonstration items (Piaget ; originally studied precausality in terms of natural objects and events and subsequent experimenters failed to find the precausal forms for demonstrations). 3. to test the hypothesis that children who give pre- causal explanations will have difficulty in learning a causal relationship, even in the face of repeated experience. 4. to test the hypothesis that children who classify inanimate objects as alive (and are hence, animistic) will be the children who also give the greatest number of precausal explanations for demonstrations. 5. to attempt to relate systematic animism and pre- causality to a standardized measure of cognitive development.' In order to study these constructs and the relationships in between them, 96 children between the ages of four and ten years were individually administered a test battery consisting of (1) an animistic questionnaire, consisting of 21 plant, object, and animal items to be classified as alive or not alive; (2) eight demonstrations about which the children were questioned in order to obtain their explanations for what took place; (3) a causal learning task, requiring the children to isolate a particular cause for the outcome of an event, given a number of trials and some directly relevant, extra experience and (4) the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. The major findings were: 1. that reduction of animism in children is associated with the identification of life with animals' and their characteristics. This association leads children to classify plants as well as objects as not alive, since plants have none of the more obvious characteristics of animals (locomotion, sensation, vocalization), and, it is only at some later stage, when life is identified with more general characteristics (need for air, water, food; death, birth, reproduction), that plants are again classified as alive. 2. Young children do indeed give precausal, non-mechanical explanations for demonstrations. The study suggests that Piaget's particular categories of precausal thought may not have universal validity for all kinds of events or for all children, but that the general characteristics of these explanations which he described (lack of attention to details of how things happen, lack of understanding of temporal sequences of events, and the lack of understanding of the need for spatial contact for the transfer of energy and motion) are found in the explanations of many young children, even for demonstration and mechanical events. 3. Children who gave precausal explanations for the causal learning task did fail to learn the correct cause-effect relationship. 4. There was no support for Piaget's theory that animism, or the attribution of life to objects, has a direct relationship to precausal explanations. In the present study, animistic children were not more likely to use precausal explanations than were non-animistic children. / This thesis was digitized as part of a project begun in 2014 to increase the number of Duke psychology theses available online. The digitization project was spearheaded by Ciara Healy.

The Association for Play Therapy (2009) promotes play therapists’ awareness of personal cultural identity, obtaining continuous cultural knowledge, and displaying culturally appropriate practices. Play therapy research includes studies on working with specific culturally diverse populations. Founding play therapists, such as Virginia Axline, have made suggestions for toys that should be included in the therapist’s playroom. This exploratory survey inquired about play therapists’ perceptions of culturally sensitive play therapy, materials used, and perceived barriers to implementing culturally sensitive play therapy. Members of the Association of Play Therapy with at least master’s degree (n=385) reported on their ability to incorporate culturally sensitive materials into their playroom, most commonly arts and crafts materials. Participants noted less often the use of culturally sensitive board games and culturally sensitive dress up clothes, making them the least commonly used. Play therapists reported encountering barriers to implementing culturally sensitive materials, such as costs, availability, and space. Having space, specifically a designed play therapy room, was significantly related to the use or availability of culturally sensitive items, such as dramatic play materials, dollhouse and/or materials, and sand tray materials. Additionally, an individual’s status as a registered play therapist was related to the use of a dollhouse and/or materials. Some play therapists were able to overcome barriers through education, personally purchasing materials, and networking. Overall, the play therapist’s ethnicity, education and licensure type did not relate to their use of culturally sensitive play therapy materials. Play therapists could benefit from training on how to locate, incorporate, and use costs effective culturally sensitive materials. It was clear that play therapists valued continuing education and kept current on play therapy recommendations, indicating that those forums would be the most beneficial avenue to offer information on culturally sensitive material.