Abstract
Preschoolers and children within the first 3 years of formal education are compared in respect of their performance on four tasks that embody basic skills underlying mouse-based control of a graphical computer interface. The children had not used such an interface before and were compared after a small number of introductory and practice sessions. Results from one preschool child studied over a longer period are included. The children's performance is set against that of their own novice teachers and a group of experts. Age differences are found on all tasks but the absolute level of control is impressive for all children involved. Younger children are mainly disadvantaged by difficulties in repositioning the instrument on the working surface while keeping the screen pointer fixed. No gender-correlated differences were found at any age. It is suggested that the results encourage the exploitation of graphical interfaces within the design of early educational software.
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