In previous papers (Sims, Henderson, Hulme, & Morton, 1996a; Sims, Henderson, Morton, & Hulme, 1996b) we have found that the motor skills of clumsy children are capable of significant improvement following relatively brief interventions. Most remarkably, this included a 10-minute intervention while testing the kinaesthetic acuity of the children using a staircase method (Pest). In this paper, we show that Pest testing improves the kinaesthetic acuity of normal children as well. We analyse the available data on the development and improvement of motor skills and kinaesthetic acuity and derive a causal model for the underlying skills. We show that at least three independent cognitive/biological components are required to account for the data. These three components are affected differently by the various interventions that have been tried. We deduce that improvement on a general test of motor impairment can be found as a result of training in kinaesthetic acuity or through other, independent factors.

Children's understanding of marital conflict and the marital relationship was investigated in 60 children of 5, 7, and 9 years old. Age differences were hypothesized in four areas of children's understanding of marital conflict and the marital relationship, based on the development between 5 and 9 years of age of children's abilities to (a) analyse complex sequences of behavior in terms of the mental states of protagonists and (b) integrate multiple social roles. The four areas investigated were: conceptions of marital conflict, conflict resolution, family triangulation, and integration of the spousal and parental roles. Children were read stories involving family interactions. Open-ended questions were asked about their understanding of these interactions and a coding scheme was devised that reflected theoretical concepts. Nine-year-olds differed from 5-year-olds on all aspects of their understanding of marital conflict and the marital relationship, and 7-year-olds showed levels of understanding between 5- and 9-year-olds. Younger children were less likely than older children to explain marital conflict in terms of the divergent goals of each parent, to understand conflict resolution as dependent on one person changing their beliefs or goals, to understand that parents were simultaneously spouses and parents and to understand the nature of triangulation. Marital conflict is interpreted very differently by children of different ages.

There has, over the last few years, been a keen and contentious debate surrounding the interpretation and implications of an inexorably upward trend in class sizes in Britain, focusing particularly on the primary sector. This has been played out against a backcloth of such diverse influences as the continued diminution in public sector spending, low teacher morale, changes in school management and budgeting incorporating a market approach to school enrolment, the enhanced role of parents in school governance, the publication of league tables, and disputes about differential funding of schools. Day, Tolley, Hadfield, Parkin, and Watling (1996) characterise the resultant polarisation of view as being between education pressure groups on the one hand and the government on the other, i.e. the “critical” versus the “official” view. However, this is probably too narrow a characterisation because all parties with a legitimate interest in education have been involved, from parents and teachers through to national pressure groups such as teacher unions and the National Commission on Education. Several independent surveys have been undertaken, which show both the wide consensus about the effect of increasing class sizes among these groups, and the strength with which they hold their views.

In this single case study, paintings by a visually impaired and cognitively handicapped savant artist are evaluated. He paints his pictures exclusively from memory, either after having looked at a natural scene through binoculars, or after studying landscape photographs in brochures, catalogues, and books. The paintings are compared with the models from which they were derived, and the resulting generative changes are accounted for by an interaction between impaired visual input and memory transformations.

A 20-event, 7-point scale on the stressfulness of selected unpleasant experiences was administered to 364 children in Grades 4 to 6 in an American intermediate school. Independently, a parallel questionnaire was given to their parents to indicate (a) how upsetting they would find each event themselves, (b) what they estimate their own children's ratings to be, and (c) whether they think their children have actually experienced each event. The parent-child agreements among the 239 responding pairs were quite close on (1) the scale values (the median upsettingness ratings) with an r of .96, (2) the discriminal dispersions (the interquartile ranges of ratings) with an r of .79, and (3) the incidences with an r of .96. The striking contrasts with the earlier comparisons with professional judgements invite a reassessment of parents as dependable observer-reporters.

This study was an investigation of the relationship between family variables and the perceived quality of parental involvement following parental notification of an adolescent's decision to have an abortion. Demographics, family religiosity, and family functioning variables were examined. Pregnant adolescent clients from seven abortion clinics in three states completed a survey assessing their perception of the quality of parental involvement and the family variables. Only family functioning variables were significantly related to the perceived quality of parental involvement. Family adaptability (the family's ability to change its power structure, role relationships, and relationship rules in response to situational and developmental stress) was the most predictive. Adolescents from adaptable families had a more positive experience with parental involvement than adolescents from less adaptable families.

This study examined spontaneous blink rate, a putative measure of dopamine function, in 30 children with complex partial epilepsy and 61 normal children. The children with epilepsy had significantly lower blink rates than the normal children in a conversation and a verbal recall task, particularly if they had a schizophrenia-like psychosis, EEG evidence for left focal epileptic activity, illogical thinking, discourse deficits, and distractibility. They modulated their blink rates across a listening, a conversation, and a verbal recall task like the normal children. Given previously reported low blink rates in schizophrenic children, these findings suggest that children with complex partial epilepsy or schizophrenia might have similar biological features.

Historically there has long been an interest in establishing whether children's reading levels have declined or improved in comparison with previous years. This would seem to be a valid research question and a potentially useful area of investigation. However, in reality it is a minefield. There are several reasons for the explosive nature of this topic.

First, reading holds a central position in children's education. Producing young people who are literate is the sine qua non of an adequate education system—the necessary if not sufficient demonstration that schools are doing their job. Thus, the measure of reading standards is seen as a proxy measure for educational standards more generally.

Second, the rise and fall of reading standards provides a focus for fierce debates about teaching methods, which typically crystallise around traditional versus progressive methods. Currently, the traditionalists champion methods of teaching reading that involve explicit phonics tuition. The progressive movement, sometimes referred to as “the real books approach”, emphasises the importance of purposeful reading for meaning and enjoyment. In practice it is established that eclecticism rules.

Third, there are differences of opinion concerning the most appropriate ways to assess reading levels. In order to plot reading standards over time, both valid and reliable methods of assessment are required. Preferably, too, the same test should be repeated, although parallel versions of valid tests can also be used. In practice this has frequently meant that tests involve either decontextualised word reading or sentence completion. There is agreement that such forms of assessment do not measure all the aspects of reading or literacy. There are those who argue that assessment that fails to take into account a wider range of higher-order skills, such as skimming, scanning, interpretation, and comprehension monitoring, and that uses only a narrow range of decontextualised text, will tell us little that is valuable about the level of children's reading. From this position it is difficult to measure reading standards validly over time. It is also argued that assessment should measure the areas of literacy covered by the curriculum and that as this changes, tests must also change, making comparability over time problematic.

Despite these debates, children's reading levels have been measured over time and even across countries. The question is how valid such exercises are and what conclusions we can draw from the results.

I should like to make two comments on the paper of Zucker et al. (1997).

In this study we examined relations between adolescents' perception of parental care and intrusiveness and the abilities–achievement gap. Cognitive abilities and academic achievement were assessed for 200 Israeli 10th graders. Representations of maternal and paternal care and intrusiveness and externalizing and internalizing symptoms were self-reported. Gender differences were found for the abilities–achievement gap. Boys' achievement in mathematics and language was significantly lower than could be expected from abilities in these domains. Representations of maternal care predicted achievement while aptitude and socioemotional symptoms were controlled and moderated the relations of abilities and achievement. Paternal representations were unrelated to abilities or achievement. Among boys, maternal intrusiveness had a unique contribution to the prediction of achievement, above and beyond abilities, socioemotional symptoms, and maternal care. The relevance of the findings to cognitive and attachment perspectives on adolescent achievement is discussed.