The present study analysed individual differences in and interactional correlates with 3-year-olds' understandings of others' desires, feelings and beliefs. 51 children and their mothers were observed at home in pretend play and reading together. We examined their talks about internal states, and then tested children on tasks about desire, affect-labeling, perspective-taking, and false-beliefs. Individual differences in each aspect of social cognition were recorded : children performed well on understanding of feelings understanding, but few could understand others' beliefs. Understanding of desires was associated with maternal references to mental states in reading, and with responsive talks about internal states during pretend play. Children's understanding of beliefs was associated with maternal responsive talk about internal states during pretend play, repeating statements about internal states during reading, and references to mental states in both settings. The results support the view that discourses about the social world, especially when suited to the contexts of the mother-child interaction, mediate key development in the social cognition of 3-year-olds.

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This research examined the relationship between parents' concepts of work, children and paternal participation in child care. A factor analysis of questionnaire responses by 416 pairs of fathers and mothers of young children yielded 4 factors for conceptualizations of work : "fulfilment/self-actualization", "constraint/burden", "work-centeredness", and "economicmeans/obligation". There were also 5 factors for conceptualizations of children : "fulfilment/pleasure", "constraint/burden", "social-existence", "value in life" and "indifference/low-worth". An examination of the vanables predicting father's involvement in child care showed that concepts of "work-centeredness" and child rearing "indifference/low-worth" and working hours were all most related to paternal participation. Social aspects such as occupational and financial condition also influenced parents' values and concepts. The results suggest that it's import to consider subjective aspects of how parents evaluate working and parenting, as well as social factors, to understsand their child care.

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The goals of this research were to assess how and when children form relationships during the transition to preschool, and to determine whether or not prior friends and acquaintances affected their social networks. Mutual interactions were observed during free play and scored for continuously showing-up times and the time duration of interactions. Relationship measures were collected for eight 4 year-old children between April (beginning of school year) and October. The first three months after the transition to preschool appeared to be the key period for predicting whether a newly-enrolled preschooler would have reciprocal relationships. The influence on social network formation of prior friends lasted longer than that of prior acquaintances, but both types of prior relationships affected the children's social networks initially in the transition to preschool.

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This research examined the conditions necessary for students with developmental disabilities to establish self-management skills. In Study 1, self-management was studied as involving 4 behavioral components : (1) choosing the task and instructing oneself with a verbalization, (2) performing the chosen task, (3) choosing the subsequent task, and (4) reporting the completion of the tasks to a listener. Using methods of total task presentation and time-delay, self-management skills were established with minimal instruction from adults, and generalized across types and amounts of tasks, listeners and to home-based settings. In Study 2, the behavior of looking up words and writing a correct answer, which for participants had been impossible previously, was established and incorporated through a self-management behavior chain. Using prompt-fading and timedelay techniques, a behavior chain was established for all participants. They learned the correct reading or writing of previously unknown words by consulting a dictionary when the dictionary was placed away from the students. These behaviors were then also observed in home settings. The preceding results were discussed in terms of the generalization of self-management skills.

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This study examined how children adjust their speech to the preceding words of partners, to maintain conversations. Fifty 3-and 4-year old children were observed during pair-play. Children's utterances during an 8- minute pair-play were transcribed and classified into 8 categories : 4 speech functions (offer, command, statement, and question) and the replies to each of them. All utterances were further assessed as to whether they were followed by related responses or unrelated responses. The results showed that the numbe rof related responses to "statement" developmentally increased and dominated over that of unrelated responses. Similarly responses related to "reply to statement" also showed an increase with age. Analysis of two-turn speech sequences begun by a "statement" showed greater frequency with age only for the "statement-reply-reply" sequence. This type of sequence occurred when a "statement" was replied to with new information Our results indicated that children acquire their ability to maintain longer dialogue by increasing related utterances not merely relying to their partner's words but also providing new information which elicits partner's further responses.

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