Cognitive decentration and social codes: Communicative effectiveness in young children from differing family contexts.

Studied the effectiveness of verbal communication among 37 6-yr-old middle-class children from families exemplifying a person or a position social code. Families' social code was the percentage of person-oriented regulatory appeal statements made by mothers in response to questions concerning how they would attempt to regulate their children's behavior. On each of 5 measures comparing the form and content of messages to sighted and blindfolded listeners, children from person-oriented families showed greater evidence of accommodating their communication to the listener's perspective than did children from position-oriented families. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Induced versus spontaneous attainment of concrete operations and their relationship to school achievement.

Tested whether 3rd grade school achievement can be enhanced by training children to conserve 1 or 2 yrs prior to the time they would be expected to spontaneously conserve substances. Ss were 60 White middle-class 3rd graders who had taken part in conservation training studies when in kindergarten and been designated as trained and early conservers and controls. When Ss entered the 3rd grade they were administered the Otis-Lennon Mental Ability Test and the Stanford Achievement test. Results show that although the spontaneous early attainment of conservation is a valid predictor of certain areas of school achievement, Ss trained to conserve in kindergarten did not do better in school achievement than their later conserving peers. Findings are interpreted in light of the distribution between learning and development. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)