An Investigation of Cognitive Tempo and Its Effects on Evaluating Kindergarten Children's Academic and Social Competencies

Abstract

Success in kindergarten is primarily determined by one's end of the year achievement and social competence. Although achievement can be measured objectively, social competence is determined by teachers’ perceptions. The purpose of this investigation was to determine whether kindergarteners with different cognitive tempos would exhibit differences in end of the year achievement and result in differences in teachers’ perceptions of their social competence. Two‐hundred twenty‐one kindergarten children (115 males; 106 females) participated in the study. The Matching Familiar Figures Test was administered to the children to determine whether they exhibited a reflective, impulsive, fast‐accurate (F/A) or slow‐inaccurate (S/l) cognitive tempo. End of the year achievement and teachers’ perceptions of children's social competence was assessed using the Metropolitan Readiness Test (MRT) and the Hahnemann Elementary Behavior Rating Scale (HEBS), respectively. Controlling for developmental level, a 4(cognitive tempo) x 2(sex) multivariate analysis of variance was performed on the 5 MRT factors and 16 (HEBS) factors. Results indicated that reflective children scored significantly higher on three of the five achievement variables and were perceived as more socially competent on eight of the 16 H EBS variables. The F/A and S/l groups fell between the other two groups but were significantly different than neither.