This study was a replication and extension of the study done by Springer and Belk (1994) in which the proximity of a contaminant (bug) to juice was manipulated and children were asked whether someone would get sick from drinking the juice. The experimenter read the child three stories about a young boy who drinks a glass of orange juice. In their study, some preschoolers, and most 7 and 8 year olds recognized the need for physical contact between the bug and the juice to make the juice harmful. The purpose was to examine the development of children's theories, about contamination. The present study included 20 3-year-olds, 20 4-year-olds and 20 5-year-olds who were given each of Springer and Belk's three stories. Half of each age group received 10 prior training experiences in answering questions with correct “No” and “Yes” responses. The results showed further evidence of the developmental progression with 3 year olds showing little understanding of the concept that physical contact is necessary for contamination, however 50% of the 4 year olds and 75% of the 5 year olds demonstrated an understanding. The anti-yes-bias training had little impact on the performance of the 3 year olds and the 5 year olds, however the trained 4 year olds performed much better than the untrained 4 year olds. The reasons children gave in response to the questioning about their yes or no answers suggested an effect of training on 4 year olds, and not on 3 and 5 year olds.

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.

This study examines the relationship between developmental stage and psychological experience in the transition to motherhood. Kegan's constructive-developmental theory (1982) is used to divide new mothers into groups according to developmental position. The issues and themes that emerge as salient for women at different developmental positions are then contrasted. Constructive-developmental theory describes the evolution of stages of cognitive making meaning. The theory focuses on underlying structural change in subject-object balance, a balance which influences the manner in which individuals experience themself and their environments. Two semi-structured interviews provided data about women's experiences in the transition to motherhood. The content interview elicited information about the changes in a woman's identity, her relationships and the integration of motherhood into her life structure. The Subject-Object interview was conducted and scored for developmental position. Participants also completed a demographic questionnaire, a projective instrument and the MAACL-R. Twelve first time mothers between the ages of 25 and 33 with infants between the ages of 2 months and one year participated. The women in the sample are in the Interpersonal (3) balance in Kegan's model so that relationships are an important source of identity for them. The evolution through the constructive-developmental continuum is confirmed by the differentiation of two developmental groupings combining Imperial (2) and Institutional (4) structures with the Interpersonal (3). These groups vary in: their ability to take perspective, the source of their identity and the meaning of relationships in their lives. One woman for whom the Imperial (2) dominated is discussed separately. The results are discussed in terms of connections to previous research on motherhood, specifically (1) the ability to express anger; (2) the impact of motherhood on self-esteem; and (3) motherhood and employment. Implications of the study for providing services to new mothers are discussed. Also, the theoretical implications of Imperial (2) structures in normal adults and the application of constructive-developmental theory to women's lives are discussed.

The emphasis on groups in the workplace has increased rapidly creating a need for a substantial body of knowledge in the area of group development which has been formulated from research done on work groups. The purpose of this study was to add to that body of knowledge by examining the developmental life cycle of staff work groups at three resident youth camps. The information gained from this research provides a greater understanding of the way in which work groups develop. A study was conducted with staff members at three 4-H resident youth camps. Flanagan's (1954) Critical Incident Technique was used to collect the data. Questionnaires were completed by participants on a weekly basis and interviews were conducted by the researcher with selected staff at three different times over the eight week period. Critical incidents were collected and grouped in categories of themes which emerged from the data. The five themes which were identified were "Relationships", "Norms and Roles", "Fun", "Problem Solving and Decision Making", and "Leadership and Communication". The data were also analyzed for stage of group development using Lacoursiere's stages of Orientation, Dissatisfaction, Resolution, and Production. The staff work groups followed the general pattern of development described in the literature, however, recurrent issues resulted in additional movement between the Dissatisfaction and Resolution stages. Two groups experienced a second period of Dissatisfaction around the fifth or sixth week which could be attributed to staff burnout. Several recommendations were made for application of the results and the conclusions to the management of camps including the camp community, leadership and supervision, staff selection and retention, staff training and development, scheduling, and site and facilities. Recommendations for further research were made including replication in other types of camps or organizations, closer examination of staff development during the one week training period, the study of how dissatisfaction is related to staff burnout during the fifth and sixth weeks of the summer, and investigation of the relationship between Situational Leadership and staff group development at camps.

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.

The ability to give perceptual priority to an original sound source and ignore later-arriving echoes of that sound is termed the "law of the first wave-front", or the "precedence effect" (PE). Little attention has been paid to the influence that echoes exert on localization accuracy for the leading sound. The present study investigated localization precision of children and adults in the presence of a simulated echo, using the minimal audible angle (MAA) task, which indicates the smallest change in the location of a sound that can be reliably discriminated. Three age groups were tested: 18-months, 5-years, and adults. Each age group was tested with one single-source (SS) stimulus, and two precedence effect (PE) stimuli: LEAD, in which the original sound shifted from midline and the echo remained at midline, and LAG, where the reverse occurred. Subjects were tested using an adaptive, 2-down/1-up, psychophysical algorithm. For all age groups, MAA thresholds were smallest for SS, larger for LEAD and largest for LAG. For all three stimulus conditions, the 18-month-olds' thresholds were significantly larger than those of either 5-year-olds or adults. Five-year-olds' MAA thresholds for SS sounds were very near to those of adults. However, their thresholds for the PE stimuli were significantly higher than those of adults', and closer to those of 18-month-olds. When a lagging sound is inaudible as a separate auditory event, the auditory system presumably treats the leading and lagging sound as components of the same auditory percept, and uses both signals to compute the position of the sound source. The leading sound, which signals the onset of an auditory event, is assigned perceptual dominance thereby diminishing the nervous system's interaural sensitivity for the later-arriving echo. This and related work has raised important questions concerning the neural mechanisms involved in spatial hearing in adults and children, especially those aspects which involve an active suppression of superfluous signals.

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.

Numerous studies have examined the development of children's understanding of and attitudes towards commercials. Few, however, have investigated attentional responses while viewing advertising. One prior study specifically focused on this question. It found that attention to advertising declined with age, and that the difference between attention to ads and surrounding programs increased with age. A handful of laboratory studies, however, have observed higher attention to commercials by older children, and one study found that three-year-olds' (but not older children's) attention to commercials was elevated relative to programming. Thus, it is unclear how children's attention to commercials varies with age. The current study videotaped 32 two- to twelve-year-old children viewing television at home. Equal numbers of children (half male, half female) aged 2, 5, 7-8, and 11-12 years from different families were observed for 8 to 10 days. The onset and offset of every look at the TV, the beginning and end of every program and advertising block, and the exact timing of every exit from the viewing room were coded. In addition, each broadcast segment was coded as intended for children or adults. Advertising comprised an average 15.8% of time with television and did not vary significantly as a function of age. Percent attention and the number of exits per hour of programming and commercials were compared. Visual attention to both advertising and programming content increased with age. In both cases the most dramatic increase was between 2 and 5 years of age. Contrary to anecdotal reports, toddlers were no ore interested in commercials than in program content. The percent attention and exiting results both indicated that interest in advertising relative to programming declines with age. The results also indicate that children begin to time their exits to occur during advertising before they begin depressing their attention to it. Finally, attention is first depressed within the context of child-oriented content.