The impact of impulsivity, possible selves, and social and communication skills on delinquent involvement in inner-city high school and incarcerated boys (aged 13-17, N = 230) was explored. Impulsivity, perceived attempts to attain possible selves, and balance in possible selves were hypothesized to directly influence delinquency. Social and communication skills were hypothesized to influence delinquency directly and indirectly through their effects on impulsivity, balance, and attempts to attain possible selves. These factors discriminated moderately well between high school and incarcerated youths. Impulsivity was an especially powerful predictor of self-reported delinquency among high school youths but not among incarcerated youths. The effect of other variables differed somewhat for different categories of delinquency (aggression, theft, hooliganism, and school truancy) and between subsamples, suggesting the importance of examining the subjective meaning of each of these behaviors for the individual in his social context.

No abstract

No abstract

Preschool children were trained in 1 of 3 different types of fantasy activities over a school year. The effects of this training were evaluated over a variety of tasks measuring cognitive development and impulse control. The same basic experiment was replicated over 3 different years. Results indicated that physical enactment of fantasy experiences (viz., acting fairy tales or enacting previous experiences) had a sizable effect on many of these variables; while simply listening and discussing was often no more effective than the control condition that merely cut, pasted, etc. Evidence suggested that fantasy play remoter from reality was more facilitative for development than more realistically oriented fantasy play.

Disadvantaged preschool children directed in the role-enactment of imaginary stories were found to be superior to control children (who did not engage in role playing) on several measures of social and cognitive development. Fantasy play training resulted in a higher incidence of spontaneous sociodramatic play, higher scores on an interpersonal perception test, and better performance on tasks measuring story sequential memory and story verbalization skills. However, this training did not improve performance on measures of intelligence. The authors suggest that fantasy play may be a promising intervention technique. (ST) FILMED FROM BEST AVAILABLE COPY ABSTRACT Report of the preliminaryfindingssof a broader longitudinal study investigating the effects of fantasy play intervention on socially and economically disadvantaged preschoolers. Young children directed in the role-enactment of imaginary stories were found to be significantly superior to control group youngsters on a number of measures of social and cognitive development.