We examined the relation between individual differences in 36-month-old children's conversations about feeling states with their mothers and siblings and their later ability to recognize emotions in an affective-perspective-taking task at 6 years. Subjects were 41 children observed at home. Differences in discourse about feelings (in frequency, causal discussion, diversity of themes, and disputes) were correlated with later ability to recognize emotions. The associations were independent of children's verbal ability and of the frequency of talk in the families. Results highlight the significance of family discourse in even very young children's developing emotional understanding.

The CAMCOG, which forms part of the CAMDEX interview (Roth et a/., 1986, 1988), is a brief neuropsychological battery designed to assess the range of cognitive functions required for a diagnosis of dementia, and to detect mild degrees of cognitive impairment. It was administered to a population sample of 418 elderly people (aged 77 and above) in their place of residence. The data show that in contrast to the Mini-Mental State Examination, total CAMCOG scores are well distributed and there is no ceiling effect.Examination of the association between CAMCOG scores and socio-demographic variables (age, sex, education and social class) shows that each exerts a significant, and independent, effect upon performance.CAMCOG also includes a number of subscales which assess individual areas of cognitive function. Of the eight major subscales (orientation, language, memory, attention, praxis, calculation, abstract thinking, perception), age was significantly related to all but attention ; sex with attention, praxis, calculation and perception; education with language and abstract thinking; and social class with language and perception. In all these analyses, the results were adjusted for the effects of the other socio-demographic variables using analysis of variance. However, education and social class are highly correlated variables and when the association with education is examined without adjusting for social class, attention and praxis are also found * Requests for reprints.

Stability and correlates of individual differences in children's relationships with their siblings between early childhood and adolescence were studied in 39 sibling dyads, using home observations and maternal interviews in the early childhood period and interviews with mothers and children at the later time points. Stability of individual differences found over the 7 years increased with age. The behavior of the other sibling in the preschool period related to both older and younger siblings' behavior at the last time point. Life events were associated with increased warmth between the children. By preadolescence, gender and socioeconomic status (SES) were related to differences in the relationship. Multiple regression showed that preschool measures of sibling interaction contributed independently of gender and SES to the variance in individual differences in positive aspects of the relationship at early adolescence.

The findings show high rates of new onset dementia, increasing markedly with age, and suggest rapid acceleration of one or more processes that is common in advanced age.

Theoretical accounts of the cognitive processes involved in prospective memory imply that performance on such tasks will be more vulnerable than retrospective memory tests to the early stages of dementia. This hypothesis is examined in elderly subjects from a general population sample which includes demented subjects. We report the findings on three tests of prospective memory from the Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test (Wilson et al., 1985) and compare it with measures of retrospective memory for recently acquired information. In contrast to retrospective memory where subjects with minimal dementia perform at a level intermediate between normals and more demented subjects, the subjects with minimal dementia perform as poorly as more demented subjects on the prospective memory tests. These findings provide evidence that prospective memory tasks are particularly sensitive to the early stages of dementia. Covariance analysis and the pattern of intercorrelations found between prospective and retrospective memory lead to alternative hypotheses about the cognitive processes involved in prospective memory and the way in which they break down.