The Role of Objectification and Negativity in Young Children’s Conceptualization of Snakes

This article is a modified version of a previous paper Singer, E. (2013). and playfulness, basic features of early childhood education. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 21, 172-184. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1350293X.2013.789198?journalCode=recr20#.VZ0Mal_tlJAIntroductionThe founding parents of early childhood education, such as Friedrich Froebel, Maria Montessori, and Lev Vygotsky, focused the active playing and learning child (Singer, 1993). and learning go hand in hand in young children. Formal aimed at instruction and the transmission of knowledge are seen as teacher-centered. Play curricula were, and are, seen as child-centered and developmentally appropriate for young children. Many developmental studies have demonstrated the educational benefits of play (Walsh, Sproule, McGuinness, Trew,& Ingram, 2010). Neuropsychological studies have given new scientific arguments for the belief that play and learning are closely related in young children (Panksepp, 2012). During play, intense positive emotions, actions, and sensory experiences go hand in hand. experiences have a major impact learning. But play in which play is used as an educational tool can have drawbacks. According to Sutton-Smith (1997), the belief in play as an educational tool has become so dominant that we tend to forget the playing child. Children's ideas of play generally center on having fun, being outdoors, being with friends, choosing freely (p. 49). But teachers tend to behave too teacherly and misuse children's play to attain their own educational goals, thus spoiling children's fun (Pramling Samuelsson & Asblond Carlsson, 2008). In this article I rethink the importance of play from the perspective of children and the perspective of teachers. I argue that play and playfulness are a resource of shared pleasure and creativity for teachers and young children. The playfulness of teachers helps to prevent young children from becoming overburdened with strict rules and group discipline.What is play?In Homo Ludens the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1938/1955) analyzes the phenomenon of play in human cultures. His play theory is still acknowledged as a ground-breaking study for modern theories about play. He writes: First and foremost, all play is a voluntary activity. ...Child and animal play because they enjoy playing, and therein precisely lies their freedom (p. 8). The basic motive for play is the experience of pleasure that it affords. Huizinga gives the example of two puppies involved in play-fighting. keep to the rule that you shall not bite, or not bite hard, your brother's ear. They pretend to get angry. And what is most important -- in all these doings they plainly experience tremendous fun and enjoyment (Huizinga, 1955, p. 1). Humans also play for pleasure. These experiences can be captured only in qualitative descriptions of feelings like excitement, tension, release, uncertainty, togetherness, surprise, risk, balance. Children do not play for some educational benefit that is more valuable than play. For instance, 3-year olds do not jump up and down to practice motor skills but because jumping up and down is fun.The play-world: rhythms, repetition, roles, and rulesPlay presumes an intense relationship with the immediate social and physical environment. Children play with a friend or an adult, and they play with objects. In relation to other people and the surrounding environment, the playing child creates a play-world that is different from the ordinary world. The child and play partner create a shared play-world by using rhythms, rules, and roles. Detailed analyses of parent-infant interactions, for instance, show how a shared play-world is created. The infant and parent communicate by imitating each other, through eye contact, by taking turns, and by repeating, varying, and improvising sounds and gestures (DeZutter, 2007; Trevarthen, 2011). …

Black children around the globe develop and learn in persistently racist environments. Decades of early racial awareness research primarily center on the development of young children’s self-esteem, racial biases, or friendships. Researchers have yet to learn all that can be understood about young children’s perspectives on structural racial inequities. There is a dearth of research that examines young African American children’s emergent sociopolitical consciousness. As such, this article explores the following inquiry: What research conditions make it possible to elicit young African American children’s racialized sociopolitical awareness and knowledge? Over the course of one school year, I studied five African American first graders’ literacies, racial awareness, and sociopolitical knowledge who were enrolled in an independent neighborhood elementary school. Through a synthesis of my methodology, I detail three foundational orientations: (a) privileging intraracial spaces as contexts for narrating and grappling with racialized, sociopolitical realities, (b) utilizing children’s literature by and about Black people with critically conscious narratives, and (c) operating from the belief that young children are competent to speak about the racialized conditions in which they live. This research demonstrates the possibilities of Pro-Black research at the intersection of racial awareness and sociocultural literacy studies. To combat anti-Blackness in education research and in schools, we need to hear the voices of African American children and carve out spaces that center Blackness for them to express racial sociopolitical truths. Conducting early racial awareness research about and with young African American children requires that we believe they possess the developmental capacity to name and resist inequity and imagine the possibilities of racial justice.

- Singing a ubiquitous human behavior and plays a significant role in human culture and socialization. Research on children's singing has focused on music instruction techniques for developing singers, yet little known about the developmental mechanisms underlying singing acquisition. Recently, Berkawska and Dalla Bella (2009a) proposed a sensorimotor loop model of singing to explain poor singing ability in the adult population. Here, we review the literature on the development of singing during childhood in the context of the sensorimotor loop model of singing. KEYWORDS - singing, development, children, auditory perception, motor function Singing widely regarded as a universal human behavior (Dowling, 1984; Welch, 1994) that serves a number of important social functions. Singing an effective means of transmitting cultural knowledge and social customs (Chatwin, 1987; Cong-HuyenTon-Nu, 1979). Singing also used to ease the pressures of everyday life. For example, many workers use song to accompany work activities, especially those requiring the synchronization of repetitive movements (Cong-Huyen-Ton-Nu, 1979; Keil, 1979). Singing often an important part of courtship, and it has been proposed that robust musical calls may signal the possession of healthy, appealing genes to prospective mates (e.g., Huron, 2001). In general, singing can promote social cohesion, reinforce cherished values and ideals, foster shared identity, and promote emotional contagion (Booth, 1981; Peretz, 2006). Finally, singing plays a critical role in child rearing and the caregiver-infant bond. Lullabies and playsongs are found in all known cultures, suggesting that they serve an important function in maternal child care (Trehub, 2000; Trehub & Trainor, 1998). Despite the importance of singing in both human development and human culture, there has been relatively little empirical research on the acquisition of singing during childhood. Singing thought to emerge spontaneously without formal instruction during early child development (Dalla Bella, Giguere, & Peretz, 2007) and many studies over the last 30 years have documented a relatively orderly progression of the acquisition of specific singing abilities during childhood (e.g., see Welch, 2006 for a review). However, the developmental mechanisms underlying singing acquisition during childhood are still not well understood. Although there general agreement that both maturational and experiential factors affect singing development (e.g., Davidson, McKernon, & Gardner, 1981; Stadler-Elmer, 2006; Welch, 1985), there are few empirical studies of how these factors interact. Welch (1986) proposed a model of singing acquisition in which children's singing behaviors appear in a fixed order from Stage 1, where the words of a song are the initial center of interest rather than the melody, to Stage 5, where there are no significant melodic or pitch errors in a child's vocal productions. Presumably this progression impacted by culture, practical experience, and genetically-driven maturation. Detailed study of singing development requires, first, a definition of singing and, second, a notion of what constitutes mature singing behavior. With respect to the first question, Welch (1994) noted that the judgment of an utterance to be speech or song is defined by a complex web of interacting factors encompassing perception, cognition, physical development, maturation, society, culture, history and intentionality (p. 3). Early in development, singing and talking may be less differentiated than later. Indeed, infant-directed speech often referred to as musical speech because of its exaggerated pitch contours, rhythmic patterning and repetition (Fernald, 1991). The boundaries between speech and song can be even less clear in the vocalizations of infants and young children, and determination muddied by the fact that adults often attempt to over interpret infant vocalizations (Welch, 1994). …

What drives young children to over-imitate? Investigating the effects of age, context, action type, and transitivity

Introduction. The number of complications in flu and acute respiratory viral infection, especially during epidemics, reaches 20–30%. The main causes of complications are immune protection disorders, leading to a sharp decrease in the antibacterial resistance of the body. Of particular importance is the prevention and treatment of flu in risk groups, especially in young children and elderly people.Aim of the study. Experimental study of possible antiinfluenza action of plant-based antiviral drug (EPs 7630) on the model of influenza A virus adapted to the human fetal lung fibroblast culture in conditions as close as possible to the lung tissue lesion in influenza infection.Materials and methods. The drug (EPs 7630) in the form of 11% solution in ethanol was diluted with sterile nutrient medium for application in the culture medium in the appropriate concentration. Transformed diploid culture of human fetal lung fibroblasts was used. Before the research 10 passages of the culture were made using growth medium with 10% embryonic bovine serum. Influenza virus A/Aichi/1/68 (H3N2) was also used, which was preliminarily adapted to the reproduction of human fetal lung fibroblasts in the cell culture. The cytotoxicity of the drug and its antiviral activity regarding the influenza virus were studied.Results. The presence of the drug in the human fetal lung fibroblasts culture in 3 tested concentrations had dose-dependent antiviral effect on the production of influenza virus A/Aichi/1/68 (H3N2), which also depends on the multiplicity of infection and the scheme of the drug use.Conclusion. The obtained data indicate that in case of low multiplicity of infection, the preparation has both preventive and therapeutic antiviral effect on the reproduction of influenza virus. The combination of antiviral and immunomodulatory action determines the bifunctionality of the drug, which contributes both to the suppression and elimination of influenza virus from the organ – the target and the body as a whole, and increase its non-specific congenital resistance, which makes it possible to consider the plant-based drug (EPs 7630) as the preferred tool in the prevention and comprehensive treatment of influenza and other respiratory viral infections in children and adults.

When we think of archaeology, most of us think first of its many spectacular finds: the legendary city of Troy, Tutankhamun's golden tomb, the three-million-year-old footprints at Laetoli, the mile-high city at Machu Picchu, the cave paintings at Lascaux. But as marvelous as these discoveries are, the ultimate goal of archaeology, and of archaeologists, is something far more ambitious. Indeed, it is one of humanity's great quests: to recapture and understand our human past, across vast stretches of time, as it was lived in every corner of the globe. Now, in The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, readers have a comprehensive and authoritative overview of this fascinating discipline, in a book that is itself a rare find, a treasure of up-to-date information on virtually every aspect of the field. The range of subjects covered here is breathtaking - everything from the domestication of the camel, to Egyptian hieroglyphics, to luminescence dating, to the Mayan calendar, to Koobi Fora and Olduvai Gorge. Readers will find extensive essays that illuminate the full history of archaeology - from the discovery of Herculaneum in 1783, to the recent finding of the `Ice Man' and the ancient city of Uruk - and engaging biographies of the great figures in the field, from Gertrude Bell, Paul Emile Botta, and Louis and Mary Leakey, to V. Gordon Childe, Li Chi, Heinrich Schliemann, and Max Uhle. The Companion offers extensive coverage of the methods used in archaeological research, revealing how archaeologists find sites (remote sensing, aerial photography, ground survey), how they map excavations and report findings, and how they analyse artifacts (radiocarbon dating, dendrochronology, stratigraphy, mortuary analysis). Of course, archaeology's great subject is humanity and human culture, and there are broad essays that examine human evolution - ranging from our early primate ancestors, to Australopithecus and Cro-Magnon, to Homo Erectus and Neanderthals - and explore the many general facets of culture, from art and architecture, to arms and armour, to beer and brewing, to astronomy and religion. And perhaps most important, the contributors provide insightful coverage of human culture as it has been expressed in every region of the world. Here entries range from broad overviews, to treatments of particular themes, to discussions of peoples, societies, and particular sites. Thus, anyone interested in North America would find articles that cover the continent from the Arctic to the Eastern woodlands to the Northwest Coast, that discuss the Iroquois and Algonquian cultures, the hunters of the North American plains, and the Norse in North America, and that describe sites such as Mesa Verde, Meadowcraft Rockshelter, Serpent Mound, and Poverty Point. Likewise, the coverage of Europe runs from the Paleolithic period, to the Bronze and Iron Age, to the Post-Roman era, looks at peoples such as the Celts, the Germans, the Vikings, and the Slavs, and describes sites at Altamira, Pompeii, Stonehenge, Terra Amata, and dozens of other locales. The Companion offers equally thorough coverage of Africa, Europe, North America, Mesoamerica, South America, Asia, the Mediterranean, the Near East, Australia and the Pacific. And finally, the editors have included extensive cross-referencing and thorough indexing, enabling the reader to pursue topics of interest with ease; charts and maps providing additional information; and bibliographies after most entries directing readers to the best sources for further study. Every Oxford Companion aspires to be the definitive overview of a field of study at a particular moment of time. This superb volume is no exception.

Children's Development of Self-Regulation in Speech Production

The prevalence of overweight among young children is increasing at an alarming rate. Global efforts to address the issue can benefit from understanding how young children's experiences across multiple contexts shape their perspectives of healthy weight. This qualitative study examines the substance and sources of young American children's knowledge related to healthy eating, physical activity and media practices. Role play and semi-structured interviews were conducted in child-care settings with 81 children aged 3-5 who represented diverse socio-economic statuses and ethnic backgrounds. Children demonstrated better understanding of the benefits of healthy eating compared with physical activity. Snacks and beverages consumed outside mealtime were less likely to be healthy even among the 40% of children who demonstrated an understanding of healthy nutrition. The majority of children's leisure activity selections involved media and minimally active pursuits. Three quarters of the children were unable to articulate reasons for healthy choices or identify the sources of their health understandings. The media was listed as source of health information more frequently than adults. Obesity prevention efforts targeting young children need to use consistent messaging across all contexts in which children develop in order to increase their understanding that physical activity and eating choices support health. Efforts need to counter inaccurate information and address the rationale for health practices. Key gaps in young children's understanding include: the importance of drinking water, that snacks are part of nutritional intake and the benefits of engaging in physical activities.

Pediatricians Are Not Just Small Internists

It has often been suggested that the English spelling system is so capricious that children must rely largely on rote memory to learn how to spell in English. However, Venezky’s (1970) demonstration that the English spelling system is more orderly than was thought before encouraged researchers to examine how children go beyond rote memorization in learning to spell. In a series of publications beginning in 1971, Read demonstrated that young children’s spellings are often systematic attempts to translate genuine phonological distinctions, even though these spellings may be mistaken from the point of view of the conventional script. For example, the fact that children sometimes spell the opening sound of truck as ch reflects a real phonological difference between words whose spellings begin with “tr” and those whose spellings begin with “t” followed by a vowel. More recent research (e.g., Treiman, 1993) has amply confirmed that many of children’s beginning spellings are guided by their understanding of phonology. For example, most Americans do not pronounce a separate vowel sound in words like girl, and young American children often misplace the letter for the vowel sound in such words or leave it out altogether, as in the errors GRIL and GRL. In British English, in contrast, words such as “girl” and “better” are pronounced without an “r” sound. Young British children are much more likely than their American counterparts to leave out the r when writing these words. English has morphological as well as phonological regularities, and some of these also influence the spellings of quite young children. For example, when the “t” sound is preceded and followed by a vowel in American speech, its pronunciation approaches that of a “d.” This is reflected in the writing of beginning American spellers who are quite likely, for example, to write water as WODR. Such errors are more likely to occur in one-morpheme words, like water, than in two-morpheme words, like biting, where the first morpheme, in this case bite, ends in a “t” sound. Children’s willingness to maintain the t spelling in these latter words supports the conclusion that from the start their spellings reflect their understanding of linguistic patterns — phonological and morphological — and not just rote learning.

Anxiety is one of the most prevalent mental health problems in young children but there has been a dearth of studies focusing on Asian American children. This study examines the patterns and the predictors of childhood anxiety and related symptoms in young children in a diverse Asian American (ASA) sample (n = 101). Findings indicate that ASA children are at higher risk for anxiety, somatization, and depressive problems than their peers. Parents' level of acculturation (i.e., American identity, English competence), parental negative emotion socialization, conflicted parent-child relationship, child emotional knowledge and adaptive skills, as well as teachers' ethnic background and school class types were all associated with ASA children's anxiety. A combination of cultural, family, and school factors explained from 17 to 39 % of the variance in anxiety symptoms. Findings inform prevention services for young ASA children.

The psychologic, physical, and social impact of atopic dermatitis is complex and varies among children of different ages, and the effects of atopic dermatitis on the quality of life of very young American children and their families are not well understood. This study was conducted to document these effects of atopic dermatitis on young children and their families. Directed focus sessions were performed with parents of 26 young children with atopic dermatitis and 6 expert clinicians. Specific mentions of the ways in which atopic dermatitis affected the children and parents were reviewed, rank ordered, and categorized according to similarity in content. The categories were examined to determine the domains represented, and the domains were used to compose a conceptual framework of all of the ways that atopic dermatitis affects children and their families. Parents and experts mentioned a total of 181 specific quality-of-life effects. A conceptual framework, developed from the 181 effects, contains the domains of physical health, emotional health, physical functioning, and social functioning; each domain includes effects on both the child and the parents. Atopic dermatitis greatly affects the quality of life of afflicted children and their families. The comprehensive conceptual framework summarizes the ways in which atopic dermatitis affects the quality of life in young American children. This conceptual framework forms the basis from which quality-of-life instruments can be developed.

Human-centeredness is not a universal feature of young children's reasoning: Culture and experience matter when reasoning about biological entities

Actuality. The current training system with primary school children offers a flexible offer, which allows the teaching staff to modify, supplement or replace the learning activities. The pursued study consists in the analysis and determination of a personalized didactic approach, through which the training of the skills provided by the program is ensured in the specific context of each class and each children. The need for a specific approach to early childhood education is essential, based on the stimulation of learning through play. In this sense, the "music and movement" discipline has a novelty character in relation to the disciplines studied so far in primary education, due to its integrated character. Movement through its means educates the basic components of body-gestural beauty and expressiveness. Music is the perfect artistic way to express feelings and emotions, it contributes to the development of cognitive processes and the development of children's personalities. The purpose of the research is to improve the instructional-educational process of primary school students through the formation of motor intelligence, based on the specific means of movement in combination with musical support. Research objectives: 1. The study of specialized literature regarding theory and practice in order to form the personality of primary school students through the use of music and movement 2. Determining the development of a curricular model as a means of training motor intelligence based on a music and movement program oriented towards the psychomotor training of young school-age students Research methods used are: bibliographic study, interview and pedagogical observation, the method of tests and pedagogical experiment. The results of the study demonstrated that the discipline "Music and Movement" aims at an educational course specific to the intuitive stage, as the first stage in the realization of musical education. The association of music and movement at the level of the official curriculum has the advantage of stimulating the expressive manifestation of the student. The sociological study carried out on the level of development of the motor intelligence of primary school students shows that in preparatory classes I and II the association of music and movement is on the one hand appropriate to the particularities of the children's age, and on the other hand has pedagogical valences in the sphere of supporting physical development harmonious, movement coordination, aesthetic sense development, affective development and intellectual development. By determining the level of knowledge of physical education teachers about learning and motor intelligence of children of small school age, analyzing the level of awareness of teachers about motor learning, motor intelligence of students in order to improve psychomotricity components within the discipline of Music and movement and identifying the way in which physical education teachers represent their method of teaching the subject in the instructive-educational process for children of small school age, it was found that musical education has a determining role in the multilateral development of children's personality and is an integral part of aesthetic education, throughout elementary school. The argumentation and experimental verification of the effectiveness of the methodology of applying music and movement activities, aimed at the formation of the personality of primary school students in psychosocial and psychomotor terms, makes a substantial contribution to the formation of the personality of students by optimizing psychomotor potential, motor intelligence, establishing interpersonal relationships effective, expressed through indicators of group cohesion and personality traits by approaching new perspectives in the instructive-educational process in the field of music and body movement for students. The applied value of the research is given by filling the obvious gap created in practical knowledge and developing the curriculum that combines music and movement, contributing to the harmonious development of primary school students and increasing interest in active and creative participation in their own training. The correlations obtained for the test values at the beginning and at the end of the training period additionally underline the well-achieved results by using the proposed curriculum through the value of the correlation coefficient for the experimental group in the final tests but also by the correlation of the data obtained at the end of the test period between the various tests carried out: movement memorization, body alignment, rhythm structure and musicality and dynamism. The overall value of these tests underlines Gardner's idea, like "music and movement to define as an ability to solve problems and/or create products that are valued at a given time by a certain human culture". The influences of musical education are not only limited by the biological side, but also determine the formation of skills, skills and motor qualities, they have positive effects on the spiritual side as well, the student being engaged with his whole personality. Practicing for physical perfection the student perfects his higher spiritual structures of cortical activity involved in the development of language, thought and all psychic capacities. The declared goal is that the students will obtain superior values of the various psycho-functional types through which the motor intelligence will be manifested.

BackgroundCapturing epidemiological signatures is essential to document burdens of disease and to design health care services, including prevention measures, clinical interventions, and policies. There are large geographical and ethnic variations in the epidemiology of allergic and immunological diseases. Various data are available from North America and Europe, but the epidemiology of allergic and immunological diseases in Asia is not well documented. ObjectiveTo characterize epidemiological signatures of allergic and immunological disease in young children in Japan. MethodsThis was a national, multicenter, prospective birth cohort study: Japan Environment and Children's Study (JECS). A general population of 103,060 women was enrolled during pregnancy. Allergic and immunological outcomes were assessed among young children using questionnaire data. ResultsThe prevalence of caregiver-reported immediate food allergy was 7.6%, 6.7%, and 4.9% at age 1, 2, and 3 years, respectively. Hen egg allergy was most common (5.4% prevalence at age 1 year) followed by allergies to cow milk and wheat. Several patterns of allergic symptom clusters were identified. Physician diagnosed, as reported by the caregiver, non-IgE mediated gastrointestinal food allergy affected 0.5% of infants. By contrast, caregiver-reported gastrointestinal food allergies affected 1.4% of children. Kawasaki disease affected 0.3% and 0.4% children, respectively, at age 1 and 3 years. Primary immunodeficiency disorders affected 0.005% children at age 3 years. ConclusionThese data provide important epidemiological signatures of allergy and immunology in young Japanese children including the age-specific prevalence of allergic disease, Kawasaki disease, and primary immune deficiency.