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TWO groups of pre-school children, matched for age, sex, intelligence and home background, were given a battery of verbal tests 2nd their conversations were recorded during periods of free play. Data were obtained on vocabulary and sentence structure under controlled and spontaneous conditions, on the children's ability to understand and express themselves in simple sentences and on verbal expression in social intercourse. In all quantitative comparisons, the nursery school children were found to be in advance of the children in residential nurseries. Among qualitative differences noted, was the cxtent to which speech was used for establishing social contacts with contemporaries and for obtaining adult attention. Although there was considerable overlap in the achievements of the two groups, our evidence confirms that there is some retardation in the language skills of pre-school children in care.

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SUMMARY. The incidence of four adverse conditions often claimed to be associated with ' broken homes,' was studied among children who had been ascertained as maladjusted and were attending special residential schools. The four circumstances, namely divorced parents, the presence of a stepparent, the death of one parent and illegitimacy, affected some 60 per cent. of the sample.Two further conditions were investigated. Firstly, the incidence of adoption which was found to be much higher among thf. maladjusted than the ordinary population. Secondly, there were twice as many left-handers among the maladjusted children as one would have expected from the incidence of left-handedness in the child population.

Summary. The findings reported here—which are part of a much larger longitudinal project—deal with the drawings of a man made by thirty‐seven children at yearly intervals throughout their junior school career, i.e., between the ages of 7 to 10 years. A total of 148 drawings was analysed according to Goodenough's instructions. The intelligence quotients obtained from the drawings were intercorrelated: (a) with each other; (b) with the Stanford‐Binet Intelligence Quotients and; (c) with W.I.S.C. Verbal, Performance and Full Scale Quotients. An analysis of the fifty‐one items of the Goodenough Scale was also carried out to investigate whether or not there is a regular, annual increase in scores over the four‐year period. The findings suggest: That for junior school children the longitudinal test‐retest reliability of the Goodenough Scale is too low for it to be regarded as a stable measure of intelligence. That the Scale's validity is even lower, average correlations with quotients obtained from the Stanford‐Binet Scale as well as from the W.I.S.C. Verbal, Performance and Full Scale being in the region of ·2. That its discriminating power between successive years is not entirely satisfactory.