The development and impact of children's concern for the environment is addressed. A model is presented that illustrates that such development may be based upon children's cognitive status, their exposure to nature, and their exposure to particular socializing influences. One of the possible outcomes of children's concern for the environment is that they may become catalysts for family environmental consumerism, and thereby influence related family attitudes and decision‐making. We propose that environmental consumerism may be moderated by the nature of family communication patterns, which can affect the possibility of family resocialization regarding environmental concerns. In addition, family resources are also expected to moderate the degree of family environmental consumerism. We suggest that environmental consumerism will be reflected in both purchasing and recycling choices and behavior. Consequently, marketing implications are also addressed. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Infants' cross-modal functioning was investigated in two studies. In Study 1, 11-month-old infants were confronted with five different visual-tactual discrepancies created with a mirror arrangement. The infants' behavioral reactions to the discrepancies were compared with their behavior on matched control trials with a forced-choice judgement procedure. Infants detected discrepancies in which they saw an egg and felt a cube, saw a fur-covered cube and felt an egg, and saw a cross and felt a fur-covered cube. However, they provided no evidence that they detected discrepancies in which they saw a cube and felt a cross or saw a cube and felt a fur-covered cube. In Study 2, infants were confronted with discrepancies that were the converse of those which seemed to go unnoticed in Study 1: They saw either a cross or a fur-covered cube and felt a plain cube. Both of these new discrepancies were detected according to the forced-choice judgment procedure. The results indicate that texture as well as shape can serve as a basis for cross-modal matching for infants. The asymmetries in cross-modal matching that were observed across Studies 1 and 2 are interpreted as evidence that visual information plays a directive, goal-setting role for infants' manual explorations.

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The use of retreat spaces by 65 children in 9 family child care homes was assessed in this study. Family child care providers used daily diaries to collect information about children's retreat frequency and associated behavior. The findings revealed that nearly half of the children used informal, readily available retreats during the research period. Playing with toys was the most frequent and stable retreat activity across age groups. Yet the number of passive and engaged behaviors varied based on child characteristics such as age, gender, and child's mood for the day. Retreat use can be viewed as a potentially adaptive environmental strategy that children apply as their needs change in a given day and from one developmental period to the next. Thus, it is recommended that child care professionals provide access to retreats and support children's varied use of retreat space. Practitioners and researchers in early education and child care, along with design professionals, call for access to private areas or retreats in settings designed for children. For example, some architects have suggested that wherever children play, small "caves" from "leftover spaces" such as stairwells should be available for children who will seek out special spaces for friends and themselves to play (Alexander, Ishikawa, & Silverstein, 1977). Landscape designers creating outdoor play areas for children have advocated that children in middle childhood need places where they can create and control private "dens" for themselves and peers (Kylin, 2003). The suggestion of providing a variety of social spaces that should include private areas for children to be alone or in small groups has also been made (R. C. Moore, Goltsman, & Iacofano, 1992). These ideals were demonstrated when a traditional school yard was transformed into an enriched environmental play yard (R.