Children aged 15 months and 24 months were observed with their mothers in a directed play situation. Mothers were asked to take an active role by ensuring that the children played with the full range of toys available. The children's responses to the mothers' control directives were assessed in terms of three types of compliance: orientation compliance, contact compliance, and task compliance. Differences in the overall rate for these three types were examined. Attention was also given to the conditions under which mothers were most likely to obtain the required response, in particular, the syntactical construction of the directive, the presence of referential nonverbal behavior, and the timing of the mother's utterance in relation to the child's current state of involvement in the object referred to. Considerable variations occurred in compliance rate according to the type of response required. Maternal controls were most likely to succeed if they formed part of a sequential attention-action strategy designed to manipulate the child's involvement state. These findings bear on a view of socialization that stresses the mutuality of the parent-child relationship; they also have implications for the concept and the assessment of compliance.

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This paper reports a study that investigated the effects of gender, Internet anxiety, and Internet identification on use of the Internet. The study involved 608 undergraduate students (490 females and 118 males). We surveyed the students' experience with the Internet, as well as their levels of Internet anxiety and Internet identification. We found a number of gender differences in participants' use of the Internet. Males were proportionally more likely to have their own web page than were females. They used the Internet more than females; in particular, they were more likely to use game websites, to use other specialist websites, and to download material from the Internet. However, females did not use the Internet for communication more than males. There was a significant positive relationship between Internet identification and total use of the Internet, and a significant negative relationship between Internet anxiety and total use of the Internet. Controlling for Internet identification and Internet anxiety, we found a significant and negative correlation between gender and use of the Internet. In total, all three of our predictors accounted for 40% of the variance in general Internet use: with Internet identification accounting for 26%, Internet anxiety accounting for 11%, and gender accounting for 3%.

The home computer use of 33 children aged between 7 and 11 years is described. These children and their parents were interviewed on four occasions. In addition, domestic computer use was monitored for 30 days in respect of the identity of user(s) and the nature and duration of their software use. Although parents had strong aspirations that household computers should support their child's learning and although parents' main software purchases were educationally oriented, children spent most of their time on games of a sort not typically found in their classrooms. This observation was explored through a comparative analysis of the home and school ecology. Description of the school setting was achieved by engaging with pupils and teachers attending the five schools from which the home‐based sample was drawn. Patterns of school computer use conformed to practices commonly reported for early education. However, this classroom context of computer use was shown to be very different to that sustained in homes. Parents took few steps to orchestrate the content or motive of children's computer activity and they rarely become directly involved in that activity themselves. These observations are discussed in relation to contemporary ambitions to influence the interface of home and school through the mediation of information and communications technology (ICT).

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Sex differences in social behaviour emerge as early as 2 years of age and gender schema theorists have suggested that preverbal infants possess ‘tacit’ knowledge of gender which informs their behaviour. This study examined sex‐congruent preferences using a visual preference paradigm in four domains (babies, children, toys, activities) in a longitudinal study of infants aged 3, 9 and 18 months. At 3 months, infants showed a marginally significant preference for same‐sex babies driven principally by males. Sex‐congruent toy preference was found among males at ages 9 and 18 months. Both sexes preferred masculine activity styles but this effect was significantly stronger among males than females. Gender schema theory requires gendered self‐concept as a precursor to sex‐congruent preference. Infants did not recognize themselves from photographs at any of the ages tested. By 18 months approximately two thirds of infants showed self‐recognition on the rouge test. However, at none of the ages and in none of the domains tested was self‐recognition related to sex‐congruent preference. Cross‐domain consistency of preference was not found. There was evidence of some stability of preference within domains between the ages of 9 and 18 months and this stability was very marked for activity preference.

In this paper, a novel approach to engaging students in personal inquiry learning is described, whereby they carry out scientific investigations that are personally meaningful and relevant to their everyday lives. The learners are supported by software that guides the inquiry process, extending from the classroom into the school grounds, home, or outdoors. We report on a case study of personal inquiry learning with 28 high school students on the topic of healthy eating. An analysis of how the personal inquiry was enacted in the classroom and at home, based on issues identified from a study of interviews with the students and their teacher is provided. The outcomes showed that learners were alerted to challenges associated with fieldwork and how they responded to the uncertainty and challenge of an open investigation. The study, moreover, raised an unexpected difficulty for researchers of finding the 'sweet spot' between scientifically objective but unengaging inquiry topics, and ones that are personally meaningful but potentially embarrassing. Implications for further research are shaped around ways of overcoming this difficulty.

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