This article is a secondary data analysis of the University of Kansas Language Acquisition Project, which intensively studied, on a regular basis, parent and child language from age 6 months to 30 months. The association between residential density and parent-child speech was examined. Parents in crowded homes speak in less complex, sophisticated ways with their children compared with parents in uncrowded homes, and this association is mediated by parental responsiveness. Parents in more crowded homes are less verbally responsive to their children. This in turn accounts for their simpler, less sophisticated speech to their children. This mediational pathway is evident with statistical controls for socioeconomic status. This model may help explain prior findings showing a link between residential crowding and delayed cognitive development.

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As an environmental psychologist, her research interests are children's environments and environments for persons with special needs. She is currently doing research on the relationship between noise and preschool children's acquisition of prereading skills, environmental factors in preschool inclusive classrooms, and children's use of outdoorplay equipment. With a background in facility planning, she is also involved in architectural programming projects, of which a playground for both sighted and blind children is the most recent.

The purpose of this paper is to present, analyse and critique a research method, 'place mapping', used to document and understand teenagers' experience, use and perception of public spaces. Researchers in two case study sites, Edinburgh, Scotland, and Sacramento, CA, employed conventional street maps as a basis for eliciting and recording young people's spatial experiences. This method offers an effective mechanism for generating and structuring discussion-through dialogue-by the participants about their dynamic and shared experience of place, geographically recording places and ensuring equitable participation.

School or classroom density is most often studied as social density, namely, the number of people in a space. The current study investigates classroom spatial density effects on elementary school children. Outcomes included a measure of academic achievement, social behavior/disturbance, and a self-reported measure of psychological stress. Second- and fourth-grade children in urban public schools were the participants. Findings indicate amount of space per child in the classroom may be just as important as the number of children in a classroom. Girls' academic achievement was negatively affected by less space per student; boys' classroom behavior was negatively affected by spatial density conditions. There was no interaction of school and home density on the outcome measures; however, children in crowded homes were more likely to report more psychological stress than their less crowded peers. Home density also negatively affected academic performance.

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