Humans construe their environment as composed largely of discrete individuals, which are also members of kinds (e.g., trees, cars, and people). On what basis do young children determine individual identity? How important are featural properties (e.g., physical appearance, name) relative to spatiotemporal history? Two studies examined the relative importance of these factors in preschoolers' and adults' identity judgments. Participants were shown pairs of individuals who looked identical but differed in their spatiotemporal history (e.g., two physically distinct but identical Winnie-the-Pooh dolls), and were asked whether both members in the pair would have access to knowledge that had been supplied to only one of the pairs. The results provide clear support for spatiotemporal history as the primary basis of identity judgments in both preschoolers and adults, and further place issues of identity within the broader cognitive framework of psychological essentialism.

This article describes a program developed to support the participation of children with autism in a full-inclusion summer day camp program with their typically developing peers. The goal of the program was to support the children in inclusive summer recreational settings and specifically target their social development with typically developing peers. The program contained the following elements: recruiting appropriate aides, providing the aides with ongoing training and support, creating individualized social and behavioral goals for the campers, developing interventions that were contextually appropriate to the camp settings, and communicating with the families during their participation in the program. This article discusses the relevant child, family, agency, and community issues relevant to the implementation of this program.

Despite improvements in interventions for children with autism, assessments tend to focus on their social, cognitive, and behavioral deficits, without similar systematic examination of their strengths. Strength-based assessment (SBA), which has been used in work with children with milder behavioral disorders, may also have value for individuals who have autism. Although not supplanting usual assessment procedures, SBA provides a method for identifying personal, familial, and broader contextual strengths. Research outside the area of autism has found that SBA can be a useful addition to assessment protocols because it provides specific information on assets that can be incorporated into interventions. Further, SBA has the potential to affect the attitudes and beliefs of parents and educators involved in the assessment, creating greater hope about the ability of the child to function well and contributing to a stronger bond between the assessor, the child, and their family. This article describes ways in which SBA can be added to typical assessment protocols for children with autism. Examples are provided on how to identify and utilize strengths that can be used for planning interventions and for building more effective working relationships between clinicians and children with autism and their families. Areas for future research are also discussed.

The authors discuss the use of storybooks to promote multicultural sensitivity among elementary school children. The increasing diversity in the United States dictates that children are sensitive to cultural differences of individuals from varied backgrounds. Because they are in a formative stage of life, children are an ideal population with which to begin teaching about diversity.Los autores discuten el uso de libros de cuentos para promover la sensibilidad multicultural entre niños de escuela primaria. La diversidad creciente en los Estados Unidos dicta que niños son sensibles a diferencias culturales de individuos de origen variados. Porque ellos están en una etapa formativa de la vida, los niños son una población ideal con que empezar la enseñanza acerca de la diversidad.

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