This study examined the role of the coping process as a mediator of the long-term psychological adjustment of survivors of childhood sexual abuse, with a focus on three specific areas of coping: self-criticism, support seeking behavior, and disengaged coping. The study also addressed a limitation of the existing research in this area by controlling for the potentially confounding effects of depression through the use of a control sample that was matched for the level of depressive symptomatology. Fifty-one undergraduate women with a history of childhood sexual abuse and eighty-eight nonabused undergraduate women completed the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire, the Coping Strategies Inventory, the Beck Depression Inventory, the Symptom Checklist 90-Revised, and the Relationship Questionnaire. There were significant relationships between abuse-severity characteristics and elevated levels of self-criticism and differences in interpersonal functioning. Both self-criticism and avoidant coping predicted psychological symptomatology, but these associations were not specific to abuse victims. Hypothesized relationships between social support and adjustment were not confirmed; however, the findings suggest that attachment style is a particularly sensitive measure of interpersonal functioning within abuse victims.

Piaget (1953) believed object permanence emerges through a series of stages at approximately 18-months. Contemporary researchers have suggested infants achieve object permanence by 3.5-months. A series of studies by Baillargeon (1987) utilized a violation-of-expectation paradigm habituating infants to a paddle moving 180$\sp\circ$. During test trials, a block was positioned in the path of the paddle. During "possible" trials, the paddle moved 120$\sp\circ$, stopped at the block and returned. During the "impossible" trials, the paddle moved 180$\sp\circ$, seemingly through the block. Infants looked longer at the impossible events suggesting an understanding that one object cannot occupy the space of another object contiguously. Looking times could not be explained by detecting perceptual novelty because the impossible event was the more familiar of the test events. Hunter and Ames (1988) have demonstrated that infants look longer at familiar stimuli if they have not thoroughly encoded habituation stimuli. These researchers believed that habituation is a function of time, age, and task difficulty. The current research examines the possibility that infants look longer at impossible events because these events are perceptually familiar. To test whether infants had sufficient opportunity to encode habituation events using the moving paddle paradigm, the number of habituation trials and infants' age were manipulated. Four-month-olds who received 7-180$\sp\circ$ habituation trials looked longer at the 180$\sp\circ$ test event (a significant familiarity preference). Four-month-olds receiving 7-112$\sp\circ$ habituation trials looked longer at the 112$\sp\circ$ test event (a significant familiarity preference). Four-month-olds receiving 12-180$\sp\circ$ habituation events looked significantly longer at the 112$\sp\circ$ test event (a significant novelty preference). A group of 6-month-olds habituated to 7-180$\sp\circ$ trials showed no preterential looking during the test trials. For the four-month-olds, looking times during the test trials were a function of the type of familiarity event and whether there were enough trials to fully encode the habituation events. Looking time was not necessarily a function of an inferred violation of physics. Performance on the moving paddle paradigm might be more easily explained by perceptual mechanisms.

Although it has been hypothesized that children's attention is mediated by their comprehension (Anderson & Lorch, 1983), very little research has examined what toddlers actually understand of what they see on television, mostly due to their limited verbal abilities. Research on the comprehension of other symbolic media (i.e., pictures or scale models) indicates a rapid developmental change between two and three years of age in the realization that a symbol represents something other than itself. Two experiments were designed to non-verbally test whether 2- to 3-year-olds showed a similar developmental progression in understanding the correspondence between television and reality. In Study One, 2-, 2.5-, and 3-year-olds were shown a video of a toy being hidden in a room. Subsequently, they were asked to find the toy. Their performance was compared to that of children who saw the same event through a window. At all ages, children who watched through the window were able to find the toys. Three-year-olds who watched the events on TV were also able to find the toys. Two- and 2.5-year-olds who watched the events on TV were able to find the toy during their first trial but on subsequent trials frequently made an error of going to the location where the toy had previously been hidden. The 2.5-year-olds were able to correct such errors but 2-year-olds had difficulty doing so. In Study Two, 2-year-olds' ability to use televised information was examined with an easier task. They watched on video or through a window as a person placed a toy on a piece of furniture. They were subsequently asked to imitate the toy placement. Performance was again superior after watching presentations through a window than on TV. Two-year-olds performed better with this imitation task than they had with the searching task. Performance was better during the first 2 trials than during the latter 2 trials. The findings from this research indicate that toddlers have some sense of the correspondence between TV and reality. Nevertheless, there are considerable developmental advances in the stability of this understanding between two and three years of age. It was suggested that young toddlers' difficulty with using televised information was due to a weaker representation, requiring them to use alternative strategies. Understanding of the correspondence between television and reality appears to show a developmental progression similar to that seen with other symbol systems, suggesting that there are underlying cognitive changes that are necessary in order for children to be able to understand the representational function.

Infants less than 8 months old appear to lack the concept of object permanence because they fail to search for hidden objects. However, when looking rather than reaching is assessed, infants appear to have object permanence long before 8 months. One explanation for the discrepancy is that young infants lack the means-end motor skill to retrieve objects hidden by covers. The present research tested the object permanence deficit hypothesis against the means-end deficit hypothesis. Direct-reach search tasks were used, which should result in increased search by young infants if the means-end deficit hypothesis is correct. In Experiment 1, 6- and 10-month-old infants were presented with an object visible in water, partly visible in milk hidden in milk, or hidden under a cloth. As predicted by the object permanence deficit hypothesis, 6-month-old infants were less likely to search when the object was hidden than when it was visible or partly visible, but there were no differences at 10 months. The means-end deficit hypothesis prediction that younger infants would be less likely to search when the object was hidden by a cloth than when it was hidden by milk was not confirmed. In Experiment 2, 6- and 10-month-old infants were presented with an object visible behind a transparent curtain, partly visible through a hole in an opaque curtain, partly visible (fit flashlight) under a cloth, and hidden behind a completely opaque curtain. As predicted by the object permanence deficit hypothesis, 6-month-old infants were less likely to search when the object was hidden than when it was visible or partly visible, but there were almost no differences at 10 months. Unexpectedly, measures of locomotor ability were not reliably related to infants' search at 6 months. In a comparison of the cloth event of Experiment 1 and the flashlight event of Experiment 2, half the results indicated that 6-month-old infants were more likely to search in the partly visible event. The results are more consistent with the object permanence deficit hypothesis than with the means-end deficit hypothesis.

This thesis explores the acquisition of dependent tenses. More specifically, it focuses on Sequence of Tense. This refers to the ability in some languages to report on an utterance with a direct speech in which a present tense is used (“I am happy”) with an indirect speech report in which a past tense is used (“John said he was happy”). Complementation plays crucial role in making the embedded tense depended on the matrix one. Therefore, the child first has to acquire complementation, i.e., the link between a main clause and a complement. If the child hasn't acquired complementation yet, he or she will not have independent tenses in this case. This thesis shows this hypothesis experimentally for three languages: English, Dutch and Japanese. The findings are that there is a stage, up to 4 years in which the child allows more readings, than adults. He or she can have “future” oriented readings, such as forward shifted readings as long as they occur before the utterance time of the sentence. They are explained by the child's lack of knowledge of complementation. Moreover, the linguistic phenomenon of Sequence of Tense is compared with a cognitive phenomenon, the development of a Theory of Mind. This phenomenon refers to the ability of expressing someone else's beliefs or thoughts without committing oneself to that belief or thought. A form of complementation is crucial in both phenomena. This thesis argues that complementation is acquired through the understanding of the difference in point of view between direct and indirect speech is what the child has to acquire. For instance, first person pronouns refer to the speaker of a sentence in indirect speech, but to the main clause subject in direct speech. Finally, this thesis extends the idea of the importance of point of view differences to the domain of wh-extraction in direct speech.

One of the most commonly reported findings in the epidemiology of psychological disorders is the 2:1 ratio of women to men who suffer from depression, a difference in prevalence rates that first emerges during the adolescent years. Although aspects of the feminine gender role have been identified as risk factors for depressive symptoms, the analysis of interpersonal interaction is rarely used to assess how these constructs may be behaviorally enacted. In this dissertation, interactions between mothers and adolescents were analyzed to identify specific sequences of behavior associated with adolescents' depressive symptoms, with the aim of clarifying reasons for the dramatic increase in depression among adolescent girls. A community sample of 79 adolescents & their families participated over a 3-year period. Thirty-two consecutive segments of a videotaped problem-solving interaction task were viewed by participants and coded on the dimensions of support, conflict, giving-in, humor, misunderstanding , and sarcasm. Using sequential analyses and multiple linear regression, I assessed the extent to which sequences consistent with the feminine gender role (conflict paired with giving-in ) predicted concurrent and future depressive symptoms. Additional exploratory analyses examined maternal reactions to adolescent conflict. Results indicate that the pairing of conflict with giving-in during problem-solving interactions is predictive of future depressive symptoms, and that adolescent sex and history of depressive symptoms moderate this relation. As expected, the behavioral combination of conflict with giving-in was a riskier one for girls and for adolescents with a history of depressive symptoms. Maternal responses to adolescent conflict did not differ when mother-son dyads were compared to mother-daughter dyads.

In a sample of non-patient late adolescent women (N=110), this study investigated associations between pubertal timing, interpersonal conflict, and HPA-Axis dysregulation. Primary focus was on the interactional nature of pubertal timing as a risk factor, and the potential mediating role of specific coping behaviors. At high levels of perceived conflict, earlier pubertal timing was associated with both high stress in anticipation of interpersonal negotiation and low physiological recovery following the interaction. At low levels of perceived conflict, later pubertal timing was associated with both high stress in anticipation of interpersonal interaction and low physiological recovery following the interaction. Results suggest further investigation of behaviors which mediate between pubertal timing and girls' physiological response to stress.

Kindergarten, first grade, and second grade students' knowledge of fractions and whole numbers was tested using a number line consisting of whole circles. After a brief training session, students placed displays consisting of circles and pieces of circles on a number line. Kindergarten students did not complete the task correctly. First and second grade students performed better than kindergarten students; however, their performance was related to the training procedure they received. Training with a number line consisting of fractional quantities increased first and second grade students' performance. The findings fail to support the belief that elementary students treat fractions as whole numbers. Instead, the findings provide tentative evidence that task related issues, such as the type of number line used during training, may underlie students' performance on similar number line tasks.

Throughout development, infants are continually adding new skills to their behavioral, cognitive and perceptual repertoire. During the period in which these skills are new, they require some degree of controlled processing, and present the potential to reduce resources available for other cognitive or motor activities. The current study examined the function of attention in managing concurrent demands of cognitive and perceptual-motor processes in 24 month-old children. A primary cognitive task (nonspatial working memory search) was combined with one of three secondary action tasks (requiring high, reduced, or minimal levels of controlled processing), in order to tax attentional resources to the point that performance on the primary search task would suffer. Significant disruptions in search performance were observed with the introduction of a secondary task, but the expected differential interference effects based on level of controlled processing were largely absent. Those conditions which required controlled processing showed no added interference compared to conditions with lessened or no controlled processing requirements. The primary costs to search performance seem to be incurred as children encounter a new task and shift their focus away from the initial task. If children experience any differential effects due to cognition-action resource conflicts, they appear to be masked by the significant effects of disengaging and reengaging with the primary search task.

This short-term longitudinal study investigated changes in newborn infant behavior over the first month of life and changes in mothers' mental representations of their infants and of themselves as parents, during the first month postpartum. There is evidence to suggest that maternal representations and newborn infants' behavior play an important role in the evolving infant-mother relationship, and that a newborn infants' developmental progress is dependent upon the quality of that relationship. While there is some research on neonatal behavioral development in Puerto Rican infants, there are no data on the development of maternal representations in Puerto Rican mothers. The study's sample consisted of 20 newborn infants and their mothers. Infants were examined on the Clinical Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (CLNBAS)(Nugent, 2001), during the first 48 hours of life and at one month postpartum. Mothers' representations were examined using the Maternal Representation Questionnaire (MRQ)(Stern & Stern-Brushwieler, 1999). This is the first study to use the CLNBAS and the MRQ for data collection during the first month. Results showed that newborn infant behavioral patterns of Puerto Rican infants changed in a positive direction during the first month postpartum. More specifically, significant positive developmental changes in the areas of autonomic, motor, and social interactions were found, while there were no changes in state organization, as measured by the CLNBAS. Results also revealed that mental representations of Puerto Rican mothers were positive and stable during the first month postpartum. Puerto Rican mothers' mental representations during the first month barely changed, were very positive, and also consistent with the positive newborn developmental changes as assessed by the CLNBAS during the first month of their infant's life. Mothers' knowledge of their infants' capacities increased over the course of the first month and they felt they became more effective and comfortable in their role as new mothers. Mothers also reported feeling well supported by family and friends during their transition to motherhood. In summary, this study contributes to the understanding of newborn behavioral changes and maternal representations early in the development of the mother-infant relationship in the context of Puerto Rican families.