Mothers' Concepts of Young Children's Areas of Personal Freedom

White suburban working- to upper-middle-class mothers ( N = 40) of children ages 5 and 7 were interviewed regarding their concepts of children's areas of personal discretion, autonomy, and individuality. Mothers treated standardized moral, conventional, and prudential items as issues that mothers should control, while standardized personal items were treated as up to the child. In open-ended interviews, mothers reported setting limits around issues of safety, family conventions, and daily routines but permitted children to make decisions about food, recreational activities, clothes, and playmates. Mothers viewed mother-child conflict as occurring over these same issues and viewed children's choices as helping them to develop autonomy and competence. Mothers viewed their roles as educators and nurturers and valued the development of individuality in their children, which was thought to emerge in infancy or toddlerhood. Few age differences were observed, but gender differences were found in the ways mothers characterized boys and girls' resistances to parental authority and in the content of mother-child disputes. Results were interpreted in terms of the emergence of the personal domain in children.     

Dance in computer technology: A survey of applications and capabilities

Conclusion Dance has made major incursions into the area of computer technology over the past 10 years. In this respect, it has more than rivalled the other arts and, in addition, has an even greater potential for reaching beyond current constraints and into the realm of vanishing horizons. Through computer and video technologies, dance has gained a potential and accelerated access to home audiences. Computer technology has also provided the art of dance with increased opportunities for creativity and experimentation, for literacy and for learning. In sum, and as a result, dance exemplifies the integration of artistic concerns and technological advances in today's world.     

Changes in letter sound knowledge are associated with development of phonological awareness in pre‐school children

Letter sound knowledge, which, together with phonological awareness, is highly predictive of pre‐school children's reading acquisition, derives from children's knowledge of their associated letter names and the phonological patterns of those names. In this study of 66 monolingual pre‐school children we examined whether phonological patterns between letter names and their associated sounds might be differentially associated with aspects of phonological awareness. Results suggest that rudimentary levels of phonological awareness may facilitate the learning of letter sound associations. However, more explicit phonological awareness appears to be linked bi‐directionally with letter sound knowledge with diverse name‐sound associations, with letter sound associations that do not follow regular patterns (e.g. ‘juh’ for ‘j’ and ‘huh’ for ‘h’) most closely associated with performance in more complex phoneme awareness tasks.     

Little pitchers use their big ears: preschoolers solve problems by listening to others ask questions

Children ask questions and learn from the responses they receive; however, little is known about how children learn from listening to others ask questions. Five experiments examined preschoolers' (N = 179) ability to solve simple problems using information gathered from listening to question-and-answer exchanges between 2 parties present in the same room. Overall, the ability to efficiently use information gathered from overheard exchanges improved between ages 3 and 5. Critically, however, across ages children solved the majority of problems correctly, suggesting preschoolers are capable of learning from others' questions. Moreover, children learned from others' questions without explicit instruction and when engaged in another activity. Implications for the development of problem-solving skills are discussed.     

Self‐monitoring and the cognitive editing of arguments

This report improves upon the authors’ previous investigations of naive actors’ argument standards in two ways: (a) by using a checklist to obtain subjects’ rationales for not using various arguments and (b) by using multiple operationalizations of each compliance gaining strategy. Overall results correspond generally to those of the earlier studies: effectiveness concerns account for 23.5% of rejections, principled objections to specific strategies for 15.7%, person‐centered issues for 26.1%, and discourse competence rules for 34.6%. The self‐monitoring scale has serious psychometric problems and does not strongly predict use of rejection criteria.     

Popular Music

Brian Rust The American Record Label Book (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1978— $20.00)

Bill Harry Mersey Beat: The Beginnings of the the Beatles (London: Omnibus Press/New York: Quick Fox, 1978—E2.50/$4.95, paper)

Mary Laverne Dimmick The Rolling Stones: An Annotated Bibliography (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978—$7.95)

Judith Glassman The Year in Music: 1978 (New York: Crown Publishers, 1978—$15.95)

Lionel Salter The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Classical Music: A Guide to Composers and Recommended Recordings (New York: Crown Books (Harmony Books)/London: Salamander Books, 1978—$17.95/8.95)

Gerald Bordman American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978—$35.00)