The present investigation examined whether academically gifted children, relative to their nongifted peers (a) were subject to greater self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism, (b) endorsed higher levels of Ellis' (1962) irrational beliefs, and (c) were prone to more negative reactions to an experimentally induced failure. Relative to their nongifted and academically achieving peers, the academically gifted students demonstrated more negative affective and physiological stress reactions to the experimentally induced failure, as well as higher levels of self-oriented perfectionism and irrational beliefs. The present findings highlight the need for research within the relatively new and unexplored field of gifted students' reactions to scholastic failure.

Developmental changes in knowledge about the differences between the mental processes of comprehension and memory were investigated in 3 studies using first graders, third graders, and undergraduates as subjects. 2 types of knowledge were assessed: (a) knowledge about the types of strategies appropriate to achieving the goals of comprehension, memorization, or a combination of the 2; (b) knowledge about how different task variables differentially affect comprehension and memorization tasks. With respect to the former, only the 2 older groups showed some understanding of the differential effectiveness of rehearsal and word familiarity for memory versus comprehension and thus showed some understanding of the comprehension-memory distinction with respect to strategy knowledge. As for the latter, only undergraduates correctly differentiated between the 2 mental processes with respect to the task variables of list length, item familiarity, and the categorical organization of the items.

This study investigated children's, adolescents', and adults' references to an actor's goals when explaining interpersonal actions. Participants were presented with eight brief stories containing a variety of social events and were asked to explain why the actor in each story performed the central action. Children, adolescents, and adults mentioned goals for most of the stories. Adults and adolescents mentioned psychological goals much more often than did children. Older children, adolescents, and adults mentioned complex psychological goals more often than did younger children. Younger children often mentioned instrumental or social goals. When making goal attributions, children, adolescents, and adults considered both the nature of the action and the social context in which it occurred. Participants mentioned psychological goals more often when explaining an antisocial action and social goals when explaining a prosocial action. Participants were also more likely to mention psychological goals when interpersonal events immediately preceding the central action were described. Thus, goals were offered as explanations for interpersonal actions by all age groups, but the type of goals mentioned varied by the age of the participant, the social context, and the valence of the action.

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Three experiments investigated developmental changes in children's ability to monitor and evaluate memorization and comprehension. First and 3rd graders rated the perceived difficulty of memorization (verbatim recall) and comprehension (block-building construction) after engaging in (a) a memory strategy (rote repetition) or a comprehension strategy (pictorial clarification of unfamiliar words; Experiment 1); (b) no strategy or repetition (Experiment 2); and (c) no strategy or clarification (Experiment 3). In Experiment 1, children recognized that clarification aided construction more than recall, but not that repetition aided recall more than construction. In Experiment 2, children recognized that repetition aided recall but not construction. In Experiment 3, children recognized that clarification aided construction more than recall. Thus, by 1st grade, children are sensitive to some aspects of the comprehension-memory distinction.Children must come to recognize and distinguish among cognitive activities such as perceiving, attending, remembering, forgetting, comprehending, reasoning, and guessing. Recent research suggests that the ability to distinguish among cognitive processes does not appear until middle to late childhood (Fabricius, Schwanenflugel, Kyllonen, Barclay, & Denton, 1989;Lovett & Flavell, 1990;Schwanenflugel, Fabricius, & Alexander, 1994). In particular, children may not come to distinguish between comprehension and memory, two cognitive processes that are important components of many academic activities, until 8 to 10 years of age (Lovett & Pillow, 1995). Wellman and Estes (1986) argued that acquiring knowledge about the variety of mental activities in which the mind engages is one important later step in children's developing "theory of mind." The present study further investigated children's sensitivity to the differences between comprehension and memory by assessing