American Kindergarten Children Research Articles

Testing the Cross-Cultural Clinical Utility of the VMI for Palestinian, Israeli, and American Typically Developing Kindergarten Children

Purpose: To assess the cross-cultural clinical utility of the Visual Motor Integration (VMI) standardized U.S. norms for typically developing Palestinian, Israeli, and American kindergarten children. The cross-cultural comparisons tested the extent to which the VMI standardized U.S. norms for all three tests (a) are appropriate for use with the aforementioned groups without the need for cross-cultural adaptations, and (b) have adequate rates of test sensitivity and specificity such that study classification results are comparable with those obtained using the VMI U.S. norms. Methods: The sample was comprised of 134 typically developing kindergarten children. Results: The observed mean performance scores were not significantly different from the published U.S. norms on all three tests for the Palestinian group and significantly higher for the Israeli group on all three tests. For the American group, scores were higher on the Visual Motor Integration and Visual Perception tests, but lower on the Motor Coordination test. The sensitivity rates for eight of the nine calculations resulted in perfect agreement between the study classification results and the VMI standardized classification of true positive cases. The specificity rates for the Palestinian group demonstrated perfect agreement between the study classification results and the VMI standardized U.S. norms. The specificity rates obtained for the Israeli and American groups were moderate. Conclusions: These exploratory findings merit additional research to further assess the clinical utility of employing the VMI U.S. norms with or without cross-cultural adaptations for these specific or any other cultural groups.

Testing the Cross-Cultural Clinical Utility of the VMI for Palestinian, Israeli, and American Typically Developing Kindergarten Children

Purpose: To assess the cross-cultural clinical utility of the Visual Motor Integration (VMI) standardized U.S. norms for typically developing Palestinian, Israeli, and American kindergarten children. The cross-cultural comparisons tested the extent to which the VMI standardized U.S. norms for all three tests (a) are appropriate for use with the aforementioned groups without the need for cross-cultural adaptations, and (b) have adequate rates of test sensitivity and specificity such that study classification results are comparable with those obtained using the VMI U.S. norms. Methods: The sample was comprised of 134 typically developing kindergarten children. Results: The observed mean performance scores were not significantly different from the published U.S. norms on all three tests for the Palestinian group and significantly higher for the Israeli group on all three tests. For the American group, scores were higher on the Visual Motor Integration and Visual Perception tests, but lower on the Motor Coordination test. The sensitivity rates for eight of the nine calculations resulted in perfect agreement between the study classification results and the VMI standardized classification of true positive cases. The specificity rates for the Palestinian group demonstrated perfect agreement between the study classification results and the VMI standardized U.S. norms. The specificity rates obtained for the Israeli and American groups were moderate. Conclusions: These exploratory findings merit additional research to further assess the clinical utility of employing the VMI U.S. norms with or without cross-cultural adaptations for these specific or any other cultural groups.

Language, School Functioning, and Behavior Among African American Urban Kindergartners

Significant relations among language impairments, academic difficulties, and behavioral problems have been well established in previous research, primarily with impaired children or non-minority samples. However, how and why these three developmental domains tend to co-vary has received only limited attention. Preliminary research suggests that academic deficiencies mediate the relation between language impairments and problem behavior. This study assessed 97 urban African American kindergarten children (mean age = 5.98, SD = .33) on measures of language impairment, school functioning, and behavior problems to examine potential processes linking these areas of functioning. Similar to previous research, all three factors correlated significantly with one another. Children with language problems were more likely to have problems with school functioning, and school functioning mediated the relation between language and behavior problems. Additionally, poor frustration tolerance moderated the relation between language impairment and behavior problems. Implications and limitations are discussed.

Resilient and Vulnerable At-Risk Children

Data from a large representative sample of American kindergarten children were used to examine the role of risk and protective factors involved in vulnerability and resilience as they relate to the development of school-based competence. Better fine motor, gross motor, and interpersonal skills and internalizing behaviors were associated with good outcomes across competence domains, even among children from at-risk backgrounds. Resilient children (higher risk, higher competence) had much in common with their competent peers with no risk factors, including average or better fine and gross motor skills, parental educational expectations, home literacy environment, and social skills and behavior. Results suggest that center-based child care and literacy-rich home environments are tied to competence as well as resilience among at-risk children.

Child care and severe externalizing behavior in kindergarten children

Data from a large representative sample of American kindergarten children were used to examine the relationship between prekindergarten child care arrangements and the frequency of severe externalizing behaviors among these children. Compared to parental care children, there was no increase in relative risk of severe externalizing behaviors for nonrelative and center care children. Head Start and relative care were associated with an increase in the relative risk of behavior problems; however, it appears that the increases in these care settings were the result of selection factors rather than experience in the settings. Public policy implications were discussed.

Phoneme awareness and pathways into literacy: A comparison of German and American children

Where American kindergartners are taughtletters and letter sounds, Germankindergartners are not; where American firstand second graders receive an eclectic blend ofwhole language, whole word and phonics-basedapproaches, their German counterparts aretaught by an intensive synthetic phonicsapproach. As a probe to the consequences ofthese pedagogical differences on the emergenceof phoneme awareness, this study administeredtwo tests of phoneme awareness tokindergarten-, first- and second-grade childrenin Germany and America, along with readingtests, the digit span test and a test of RANcolor naming ability. The American kindergartenchildren excelled on a phoneme identityjudgement and a phoneme deletion task that theGerman kindergartners found difficult. Theiradvantage held equally whether the manipulatedsound was a syllable onset or the initial partof a consonant cluster. The first and secondgraders surpassed the kindergartners in bothcountries; however, the German first and secondgraders equaled their American peers on bothtasks and both types of units. In addition,the German children were more accurate decodersof pseudowords by the end of second grade, andthe association between phoneme awareness andGerman decoding ability was weaker. Anincreased emphasis on phonics and the greatertransparency of the German alphabet arediscussed as possible factors in the decodingexcellence of the German second graders and itsdecreased association with phoneme awareness.The contrast between the American and Germankindergartners and the equivalence of the firstand second graders in the two countries areconsistent with a view that phoneme awarenessdevelops primarily as a product of literacyexposure.

Latent Models of Family Processes in African American Families: Relationships to Child Competence, Achievement, and Problem Behavior

This study explored the assessment of family processes for a sample of African American kindergarten children, parents, and teachers involved in the EARLY ALLIANCE prevention trial. Using modified versions of the Family Assessment Measure, the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales, the Family Beliefs Inventory, and the Deviant Beliefs measure, internal consistency analyses along with exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses provided empirical support for a Cohesion factor (cohesion and communication), a Structure factor (support and organization), a Beliefs factor (on family purpose and child development), and a Deviant Beliefs factor. Regression analyses examined the relationship of these measures of family processes to child social and academic competence, problem behavior, and early reading achievement. Family Structure (support and organization) was consistently related to parent‐ and teacher‐reported competence and behavioral outcomes, providing support for this construct as an important aspect of family process. Family Cohesion and communication, along with Beliefs, were also related to youth competence and behavior. None of the family process variables added a unique contribution to the influence upon achievement for these kindergarten children beyond the role of parental education and income. This work begins to examine specific dimensions of family processes and their relationships to important adaptive and less adaptive child outcomes. Other dimensions may be identified and examined in future research with families of color.

Screening Low-Income African American Children Using the BLT-2S and the SPELT-P

Screening the language abilities of African American kindergarten children with low socioeconomic status (SES) poses a major challenge for many speech-language pathologists. This article provides data on the effectiveness of two commonly used standardized screening measures: the screening version of the Bankson Language Test-2 (BLT-2S; Bankson, 1990a) and the Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test-Preschool (SPELT-P; Werner & Kresheck, 1983a). The results of the study provide information concerning the language screening failure rates for the two formal measures, the amount of correction achieved from using an alternative dialect-sensitive scoring method, and an item analysis of the children’s performance on these two measures. The findings presented here provide support for the need identified in the literature for alternatives to available formal language screening measures for use with low SES African American kindergarten children.

A Comparison of Levels of Involvement for Parents with At-Risk African American Kindergarten Children in Classrooms with High Versus Low Teacher Encouragement

Based on data obtained from their teacher, 76 African American kindergarten children were classified as at risk for poor educational outcome. The parents of these at-risk children also reported their parent involvement levels. Independent ratings by trained observers were used to divide the teachers into a highand low-involvement group based on measures of general involvement and involvement in two specific domains, that is, home-school conmmunication and school volunteering. No statistically significant differences were presentbetween the two groups of parents on the general involvement scores. However, statistically significant differences between parents occurred in home-school communication and school volunteering for parents grouped by teachers who were high and low in the encouragement of specific activities in these two areas. The implications of these findings, including designing and evaluating parent involvement programs for the large number of families with young African American children at-risk for schoolfailure, are discussed.

Mathematics achievement of Chinese, Japanese, and American children.

American kindergarten children lag behind Japanese children in their understanding of mathematics; by fifth grade they are surpassed by both Japanese and Chinese children. Efforts to isolate bases for these differences involved testing children on other achievement and cognitive tasks, interviewing mothers and teachers, and observing children in their classrooms. Cognitive abilities of children in the three countries are similar, but large differences exist in the children's life in school, the attitudes and beliefs of their mothers, and the involvement of both parents and children in schoolwork.

Social Control and Schooling: Power and Process in Two Kindergarten Settings

This microanalysis of the social organization of the school investigates the processes of schooling as they make power relations in the classroom explicit. Of focal interest are effects of both teacher social‐control techniques and classroom environmental features upon the socialization of urban American kindergarten children in open and traditional classroom settings. The major independent variable assessed is the set of verbal social‐control strategies and appeals employed by kindergarten teachers in establishing and maintaining social structure. The intervening variable is seen as the context in which socialization occurs, the “milieu‐with‐program.” The primary dependent variable examined is the set of control strategies and appeals employed by kindergarten children in each of the two settings.Measures of variables of interest were taken at the beginning and middle of the 1975‐76 school year. The bulk of the data was gathered in the classroom during the natural course of the school day and includes the following measures: (1) teacher strategies and appeals taken from audiotaped and transcribed protocols and analyzed using socioiinguistic markers, (2) classroom environment measured by analyses of the milieu‐with‐program, (3) children's strategies and appeals taken from protocols and analyzed using socioiinguistic markers.The research provides a sociolinguistic analysis of the impact of educational settings upon the development of children's social control skills, an important subset of communicative skills and one little analyzed in natural settings. The power of the kindergarten classroom teacher to determine amount and type of interaction has been documented; however, very little is known about the sociolinguistic character of such interactions or about the possible effect these interactions might have upon children's interactions with their teacher and peers in the classroom.

Perception of Emotional Responses to Social Interactions by Chinese and American Children

In the first stage of this study, groups of Chinese and American kindergarten children were asked to describe the kinds of situations that would make them feel happy, sad, afraid, or angry. Situations mentioned in each emotional category by both Chinese and American kindergarten children were written up as short stories and administered to second grade children from each cultural group. The responses of the Chinese and American second grade children to the social interaction situations were generally consistent with the spontaneous answers given by the kindergarten youngsters. The Chinese and American groups differed in that the Chinese second grade children perceived significantly more angry reactions whereas the American second grade children perceived significantly more sad reactions. An explanation was suggested on the basis of probable variations in child rearing practices in the two cultures.