Merrill-Palmer Quarterly articles from January 2006

Merrill-Palmer Quarterly archives from January 2006

Conversation and developing understanding: introduction to the special issue.
January 1, 2006... With remarkable ease, young children acquire significant insight into mental states, their experiences, psychological processes in themselves and others, and the natural world. It is a challenge to developmental theory to understand how they do...

Mother-child reminiscing and children's understanding of mind.
January 1, 2006... Children's autobiographical memory is hypothesized to be a function of their understanding of mind (Perner & Ruffman, 1995; Welch-Ross, 1995). In the context of mother-child reminiscing, children may learn about and display their understanding...

Constructing emotional and relational understanding: the role of affect and mother-child discourse.
January 1, 2006... Research suggests that both emotion-laden discourse and positive affect facilitate the construction of emotional and relational understanding. Despite this, research has not typically examined simultaneously the connections among affect,...

The development of future time concepts through mother-child conversation.
January 1, 2006... This study examined the relationship between characteristics of mothers' talk about future events and young children's ability to contribute to naturalistic conversations about future events. Results indicated that three maternal style factors...

Similarity comparisons and relational analogies in parent-child conversations about science topics.
January 1, 2006... This article explores analogy as a communicative tool used by parents to relate children's past experiences to unfamiliar concepts. Two studies explored how similarity comparisons and relational analogies were used in parent-child conversations...

Coping, attachment, and mother-child narratives of stressful events.
January 1, 2006... Based on attachment theory and recent findings with adults on relations between narrative coherence and well-being, we hypothesized that mothers who are more securely attached and who cope more effectively would be more engaged and more...

A discussion of the Merrill-Palmer Quarterly special issue.(developmental issues)
January 1, 2006... Developmental issues raised by the papers are considered. First, collaboration between conversational partners raises the possibilities for cognitive change but also involves problems. The difficulty in making causal inferences from the speech...

It's probably good to talk.
January 1, 2006... Despite their diverse themes, the various articles in this special issue all focus on the possibility that the child's view of the world is infused with premises and assumptions taken on board from other people. Demonstrating that process of...