Psychosocial characteristics of preschool siblings of handicapped and nonhandicapped children

This project examined psychosocial characteristics of 24 preschool-aged siblings of handicapped children in relation to a control group of 22 siblings of nonhandicapped children. Subjects were matched on family size and income, sibling age, birth order, sex, age spacing, and marital status of their parents. Results indicated no statistically significant differences between groups of children on measures of perceived self-competence and acceptance, understanding of developmental disabilities, empathy, and child care responsibility. Significant group differences were found where brothers of handicapped children were rated by their mothers as being more depressed and aggressive than brothers of nonhandicapped control children. Sisters of handicapped children were rated by mothers as being more aggressive than sisters of nonhandicapped children. Sisters of handicapped children and brothers of nonhandicapped children had significantly fewer privileges and more restrictions on their home activities than other groups. Results are discussed in relation to previous research on older silbings of handicapped children and the general literature on family stress and childhood disability and disease. The importance of examining sibling functioning via multiple measures of child behavior is stressed.The authors are grateful to the children and families who participated in the project. The assistance of Dr. Ricardo Barrera, Christine DiBlasio, Lisa Kaye, Paola Bellabarba, Jeanne Logozzo, Donna Motley, Jennifer Harter, and Tina Meisell is also gratefully acknowleged. This project was funded by Grant Number G008300345 from the U.S. Department of Education.     

Factors influencing the desire for children

187 college students (139 women; 175 between the ages of 18 to 25 years) were asked to report how many children they desired. Participants' desire for children was unrelated to skin color, socioeconomic status, and the need for postbaccalaureate education. Conversely, sex, value orientation, and religious orientation were significantly associated with a desire for children.     

Differences in the memory-based searching of delayed and normally developing young children

The memory-based searching of developmentally delayed and normal 2-year-old children was compared. The results of the study confirmed the hypothesis that individual differences would be minimal in a relatively noneffortful memory task, but that substantial individual differences would occur when more cognitive effort was required. The performance of the delayed and normal children was very good and quite similar in the basic memory task, which simply involved remembering the location of a toy hidden in a distinctive, natural location in a room. Substantial individual differences were found, however, in the children's ability to draw inferences about plausible locations for a missing toy based on their memory for where it had been hidden. When they discovered that their toy was not where they remembered it had been hidden (it had been surreptitiously moved by the experimenter), a group of normal children searched for the toy in places that were nearby or otherwise related to the original location of the toy. They used their memory for where the toy had been hidden to generate plausible alternative locations to search. In contrast, delayed children, who discovered their toy to be unaccountably missing from a location, persevered in repeatedly searching that same place. Unlike the normal children, they did not try something new. An important aspect of the data reported is that they reveal an important difference-not just a delay-in the cognitive functioning of young delayed children.     

Play behaviors of handicapped preschool children in the presence and absence of nonhandicapped peers

Sixteen minimally handicapped children and 18 nonhandicapped children were observed playing as separate classes and as a combined group on their preschool playground. Play behaviors directed toward self, toys, teachers, and peers were recorded using a time sampling procedure. Repeated measures analyses revealed that: (1) handicapped children engaged in less peer-directed and more teacher-directed behaviors than the similar chronological age but developmentally more advanced normal children; (2) a comparison between a subsample of normal and handicapped children who were approximately equivalent on developmental age suggested that the normal children only vocalized more often; (3) when integrated with the normal children, handicapped children engaged in more peer-directed and less teacher-directed behaviors than when playing in the non-integrated situation; (4) during the combined group play situation, normal children directed more behaviors to their own classmates while handicapped children directed approximately equal amounts of behavior to their own classmates and to their normal peers. These results suggest that the normal children were not negatively affected and the handicapped children were positively affected by the integrated play situation.     

Acquisition of arbitrary conditional discriminations by young normally developing children

Three experiments investigated conditions designed to facilitate acquisition of arbitrary conditional discriminations in 3- to 6-year-old normally developing children. In Experiment 1, 6 subjects failed to master the arbitrary match-to-sample task under conditions of differential reinforcement alone, but 7 subjects did so when instructions or instructions and sample naming were added. In Experiment 2, sample naming introduced in a blocked-trial arrangement resulted in acquisition, but only when the sample name was a nonsense syllable provided by the experimenter (5 of 7 subjects) and not when the sample name was generated by the subject (0 of 5 subjects). Experiment 3 demonstrated the effectiveness of a training sequence involving thematically related stimuli as an intermediate step facilitating the transition from identity to novel arbitrary relations. The difficulties in mastering arbitrary conditional discriminations shown here imply that further analyses with young children will be particularly important in efforts to investigate the development of theoretically important stimulus relations.     

Social interactions among teachers, handicapped children, and nonhandicapped children in a mainstreamed preschool

The emotional tone and social integration of two mainstreamed preschool classes were studied to determine whether or not the findings of an earlier study would be repeated. Although most variables showed no differences between handicapped and nonhandicapped children's peer-directed and teacher-directed behaviors, result did suggest that, particularly in one class, nonhandicapped children tended to selectively interact with other nonhandicapped (as opposed to handicapped) children when engaging in more complex (associative) social play. Handicapped children did not show the same tendency to interact more within their own group. At the same time, handicapped children received more help and affection from peers, and were more effectionate towards peers, than nonhandicapped children. Teachers refused handicapped children's requests and corrected their behavior more often; however they also gave them more help and more affection than nonhandicapped children. The results were generally congruent with those of an earlier study but did show more segregation on the part of nonhandicapped children.     

Production of lexical categories in French children with SLI and in normally developing children matched for MLU

Free speech recording samples of two groups of French SLI children aged 48 and 62 months (matched for MLU, 1.70) and two groups of French normally developing children aged 26 and 36 month (matched for MLU, 3.2) were compared to determine whether they showed a difference in the use of lexical categories. A category-by-category comparison showed few significant differences. For low MLU children, SLI produced significantly fewer infinitives, past participles, copulas, and demonstrative pronouns. For high MLU children, the difference persisted only in past participles use. As for English SLI children, French SLI children were delayed in their acquisition of verbs. However, the differences in the syntactic structure of English and French ruled out a syntactic explanation of the deficit. Phonetic problems seem to decrease with age, so they cannot be the only explanation behind the difficulties of SLI children, which probably involve cognitive problems such as processing limitations.     

Behaviors and attitudes of normally developing children toward their intellectually disabled siblings

This study investigated behaviors of children who have normal development toward their siblings with intellectual disabilities. 9- to 17-year-old normally developing siblings (55 girls, 39 boys) of 94, 5- to 15-year-old mentally disabled children (51 girls, 43 boys) who were attending a special education and rehabilitation center were enrolled in the study. Data were gathered by using a general information form and the Schaeffer Sibling Behavior Rating Scale. Age of the disabled child did not have a significant effect on siblings' behaviors, while knowledge of family about the diagnosis and educational status of their child with intellectual disabilities affected sibling behaviors.     

The acquisition of complex predicates in japanese specifically language-impaired and normally developing children

Japanese exhibits two different types of morphological processes. Some morphologically complex predicates are generated within the domain of the lexicon, whereas others are generated outside the domain of the lexicon. An elicited production task involving both types of complex predicates was administered to six Japanese children with specific language impairment (JSLI) and six children with normal language development (JNLD). The JSLI children experienced significant difficulty forming the lexicon-external complex predicates but much less difficulty with the lexicon-internal complex predicates while the performance of the JNLD children exhibited no such asymmetry. These preliminary results suggest that the deficit of SLI affects the ability to construct implicit procedural rules for morphology that are generated outside the lexicon while their lexical operations for morphology that are generated within the domain of the lexicon remain relatively unimpaired.     

Multiple object tracking in people with Williams syndrome and in normally developing children

Multiple object tracking is hypothesized to utilize visual indexes, which may provide rapid, parallel access to a limited number of visual objects, thereby supporting a variety of spatial tasks. We examined whether faulty indexing might play a role in the severe visuospatial deficits found in Williams syndrome. We asked observers to track from one to four targets in a display of eight identical objects. Objects remained stationary (static condition) or moved randomly and independently (moving condition) for 6 s, after which observers pointed to the objects they thought were targets. People with Williams syndrome were impaired in the moving condition, but not the static condition, compared with mental-age-matched control participants. Normal children who were younger than the mental-age-matched control children did not show the same profile as individuals with Williams syndrome, which suggests that the difference between the tasks in Williams syndrome did not reflect simple developmental immaturity. Error analysis revealed that all groups had "slippery" indexes, falsely identifying target neighbors, and further suggested that people with Williams syndrome deploy fewer indexes than do people without this disorder.     

Test sample selection by preschool children: Honoring diversity

In a test of an inductive inference, preschool children's selection of objects was examined. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds selected diverse objects first in sequential selections; in Experiment 2, adults and 4-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, made similar selections under the same conditions. A defective object led subjects in all age groups to test a similar object. In Experiment 3, 4-year-olds chose to test a pair of dissimilar objects rather than a pair of similar objects, but 3-year-olds did not. Three-year-olds' selections were independent of diversity. In Experiment 4, we attempted to emphasize the diversity of objects for 3-year-olds. Their first task was to select an object that was the same as or different from a target object. The subjects responded correctly in this task but did not prefer to test diverse objects. Experiment 5 showed that neither 3- nor 4-year-olds have a bias to select nondiverse objects in a nontest context. The findings indicate that children as young as 4 years old value diverse evidence in induction.     

Comprehension of reversible relative clauses in specifically language impaired and normally developing Greek children

This paper aims to investigate the syntactic comprehension of reversible relative clauses in a group of eight Greek children with specific language impairment (SLI) and two control groups of normally developing children matched on chronological and language age, respectively. An experiment using an acting out procedure was undertaken. Group analysis revealed that SLI children's performance is qualitatively different than that of both control groups. Interpreting the data, processes involved in syntactic comprehension are taken into consideration. It is claimed that processing demands impede SLI children's performance due to a deficit in their competence grammar.     

Influences of grasp selection in typically developing children

When reaching towards an object, adults favour grasps which, following the intended action, end in a comfortable position even when this requires them to start in an uncomfortable position (the end-state-comfort effect). However, this strategy is not consistently used by children who instead seem to favour a minimal pre-contact rotation of the hand, even when this results in an uncomfortable end position. In terms of multiple movements, the strategies used for grip selection are unclear; adults may still grasp for end-state-comfort given their propensity to plan to the end of a movement; however, children who are less able to concatenate movement may tend to start-state-comfort movements. The current study considered grip selection in children ranging from 4 to 12 years and in a group of adults. Participants were asked to rotate a disc so that an arrow pointed towards a specific target(s), the number of sequences in a movement was increased from one to three. Planning for end-state-comfort was seen in all participants and a clear developmental trajectory was identified whereby the relative comfort of an end position could be directly predicted by age in months. Adults and 10–12-year-olds favoured an end-state-comfort strategy whereas the younger children gave equal weighting to end-state-comfort, start-state-comfort and no initial rotation strategies. All groups were able to end a movement comfortably when it was composed of three steps; however, the proportion of movements relying on an end-state-comfort strategy decreased as sequence length increase whereas the proportion of start-state-comfort and no initial rotation strategies increased. The current data support the concept that a mechanism for planning grasps may be based on motor experience.     

The early acquisition of verb meaning in German by normally developing and language impaired children

The research reported here focuses on the early acquisition of event structure in German. Based on longitudinal studies from 5 normally developing (ND) and 6 language-impaired (LI) children, a model of "event structural bootstrapping" is presented that spells out how ND children log into the verb lexicon. They project a target-consistent event tree, depicting the head-of-event of transitions. Young LI children, failing to employ this bootstrapping strategy, resort to radically underspecified event representations. The results from a truth-value judgment experiment with 16 ND and 16 LI children showed that ND children perform correctly on transitional verbs, while LI children perform at chance level on the same tasks. These findings are accounted for by the model of event structural bootstrapping to the extent that LI children lack an explicit representation of the head-of-event.     

Factors influencing therapist selection among gays,lesbians and bisexuals

For this study 609 gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals were surveyed with respect to openness about sexual orientation and preference for a therapist with a particular sexual orientation. Other factors considered important in selecting a therapist such as licensure, referral source, gender, cost and specialty were also examined. Data for this study was collected using two different methods. In the first method, data was collected from respondents subscribing to internet listervers serving gay, lesbian and bisexual subscribers. In the second, more traditional method, surveys were distributed by mail or hand delivered to various organizations serving gay, lesbian, and bisexual communities in two southwestern states. Findings suggest that significantly more lesbians than gay men and bisexuals in the e-mail sample prefer a therapist of the same sexual orientation. No significant relationships were found between degree of openness and importance of the therapist's sexual orientation. Other factors related to therapist preference were explored, and results are discussed.