Three functions of interpersonal relations-attempt at behavior control, intimacy, and nurture-were assessed in friendship, mother-child, and father-child relations of 120 adolescents to examine age, relational, sex, and mother-father differences. Thirty students each from 4th, 7th, and 10th grades and undergraduate college programs rated eight statements that portrayed interpersonal interactions for each relationship to indicate how closely the statements described the subjects' actual interpersonal relations. The major findings are: Parents exert greater control than friends do across grades; intimacy in friendship is lower than in parent-child relations at 4th grade but it surpasses the parent level by 10th grade; nurture remains relatively consistent and high across grades for parents, whereas it increases with increasing age of adolescents in friendship (all significant at p< .01), Female friendship involves higher intimacy than male friendship (p < .01); males, but not females, perceive fathers to be more nurturant than mothers (p < .01). The results are interpreted in terms of their consistency with the Piagetian/relational framework of social development and their implications for research concerning parental and peer conformity in adolescent socialization.

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Adolescents' perceptions of discussions with parents and friends were examined with reference to the academic/vocational, social/ethical, family, and peer domains. A total of 180 subjects completed a paper-and-pencil questionnaire: 30 males and 30 females represented each of three age groups: 12-13-, 14-15-, and 18-20year-olds. Discussion levels for parents remained substantial across ages in the academic/vocational, social/ethical, and family domains. Discussions with friends about these domains increased with age, and peer relationship issues were discussed more with friends than with parents in all age groups. For mutuality of discussion, parents tended to explain their views more than they tried to understand the adolescents' views in all domains. Friends' efforts to explain and to understand did not differ significantly for most domains. The findings are discussed in terms of the differences in procedures of social construction between parents' and friends' socializing influences. 162-163.

Four parent-infant joint-action variables were derived by combining parents' vocal or object-stimulation behaviors with infants' vocal or object-directed behaviors observed in the home setting. Measures of simultaneous vocalization, joint-object play, parent-vocalize/infant-object play, and infantvocalize/parent-object stimulation were constructed to represent social-construction experiences in which shared actions between infants and parents are thought to contribute to infants' cognitive development. The analyses (based on 66 infants and their parents) focused on the normative changes and stability of individual differences of these measures from 6 to 12 months and their relations with 30-month cognitive-development status. The durations of all measures increased with age. All jointaction measures showed consistency across time and the 12-month mother-infant (but not fatherinfant) joint-action measures were strongly related with 30-month McCarthy scores.

Indices of social mastery motivation in Down syndrome (DS) and nondelayed infants, matched on Bayley mental scores, were observed during social tasks that encouraged socially motivated behaviors and object-play tasks that did not encourage these behaviors. During the object play, the DS infants' object-directed behaviors were not appreciably lower than the nondelayed infants', while their social behaviors were significantly lower. During social tasks, no significant difference was found. The nondelayed infants' positive affect was related to social and cognitive competence, but for the DS infants, only to social competence. The findings suggest differences in behavioral integration between the two samples.