Cross-informant concordance (peers vs. teachers), temporal stability, and reliability associated with sociometrics were systematically examined in a sample of 84 preschoolers (M ϭ 4.5 years). Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that parallel forms of teacher and peer sociometrics measured overlapping and unique aspects of peer popularity. Reliability, a characteristic of a measurement instrument (sociometric assessment), was differentiated from stability, which is associated with the phenomenon or behavior being measured (children's peer popularity). Teachermeasured popularity was highly stable over an 8-week period, while peer-measured popularity showed lower stability. High reliability was found for both teacher and peer sociometrics. Child age and classroom participation rates did not alter the pattern or magnitude of the modeled relationships.Acquiring social competence and establishing positive peer relationships are important tasks in normal individual development (Hymel, Vaillancourt, McDougall, & Renshaw, in press). Research indicates that poor social competence and peer rejection are associated with concurrent

Sexuality is presumptively and observably a powerful core element of the human pair-bond relationship. Technological advances of the last half-century have made media a dominant cultural and developmental presence, including scripting sexual relationship attitudes and behavior. Theoretically and empirically, we examine loneliness as it relates to pornography use in terms of pornography's relational scripting and its addictive potential. Empirically, we examine the associative nature between pornography use and loneliness using a measurement model and two structural equation models where pornography use and loneliness are regressed on each other, respectively. Survey data were collected from a sample of 1,247 participants, who completed an online questionnaire containing questions on pornography use, the University of California-Los Angeles Loneliness Scale (UCLALS), and other demographic variables. Results from our analyses revealed significant and positive associations between pornography use and loneliness for all three models. Findings provide grounds for possible future bidirectional, recursive modeling of the relation between pornography use and loneliness.

Analysis of the behavioral traits of 56 breeds of dog produced three factors with some similarities to the popular five-factor model of human personality: (a) reactivity--surgency, (b) aggression--disagreeableness, and (c) trainability--openness. Canine and human personality similarities are argued to have their origin in biogenetic factors stemming from common evolutionary sources and from canine breeding for human compatibility and assistance with human tasks. Each of the three canine factors was shown to have a highly visible morphological indicator between breeds of dog. Reactivity--surgency was related to overall size, aggression--disagreeableness was related to having pointed ears, and trainability--openness was related to the ponderal index.

Factor analyses of data from 400 students who completed the adjective section of the Relate relationship evaluation and similar descriptors from the measure of the "big five" factors of personality by Digman and Inouye indicated that all of the "big five" measures, surgency, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness, can be assessed as part of the Relate assessment.

Seventy-five preschool children were instructed about birds by a human teacher, a moving personal robot, a stationary personal robot, and a tape recorder. How much the children learned and how much attention the children paid were compared for each type of instruction. The children learned when they were taught by the human teacher and when they were taught by the animated and the stationary robots. The children paid more attention to the live teacher and to the moving robot than they did to the stationary robot or to the tape recorder. The difference between the amount of attention the children paid to the animated robot and the amount of attention they paid to the human teacher was not statistically significant.