Young Children's Awareness Research Articles

The Language of Appreciation through Talking and Making

This paper sets out to examine the value of talk in the making, understanding and appreciation of Art at Key Stage One of the National Curriculum. First‐hand experience of both artworks and natural and made objects is important to young children's aesthetic awareness and understanding but it also offers a means of developing a spoken and written vocabulary to describe and classify them. The spirit of co‐operation which seems to develop through exploration of objects provides opportunities for talk‐‐helping children to understand more clearly what they are doing and extending their powers of imagination, reasoning and problem‐solving. The use of works produced by artists, both originals and in reproduction, stimulates discussion as the children compare their attempts with the artists’ representations.

The mind's staircase: exploring the conceptual underpinnings of children's thought and knowledge

Contents: Part I:Introduction. R. Case, General and Specific Views of the Mind, its Structure, and its Development. R. Case, A Neo-Piagetian Approach to the Issue of Cognitive Generality and Specificity. R. Case, Advantages and Limitations of the Neo-Piagetian Position. Part II:The Role of Central Conceptual Structures in the Development of Children's Logico-Mathematical Thought. Z. Marini, Synchrony and Asynchrony in the Development of Children's Scientific Reasoning. S. Griffin, R. Case, R. Sandieson, Synchrony and Asynchrony in the Acquisition of Children's Everyday Mathematical Knowledge. A.M. Capodilupo, A Neo-Structural Analysis of Children's Response to Instruction in the Sight-Reading of Musical Notation. R. Case, R. Sandieson, Testing for the Presence of a Central Quantative Structure: Use of the Transfer Paradigm. Part III:The Role of Central Conceptual Structures in the Development of Children's Social and Emotional Thought. J. Goldberg-Reitman, Young Girls' Conception of Their Mothers' Role: A Neo- Structural Analysis. M. Bruchkowsky, The Development of Empathic Cognition in Middle and Early Childhood. A. McKeough, A Neo-Structural Analysis of Children's Narrative and its Development. S. Griffin, Young Children's Awareness of Their Inner World: A Neo-Structural Analysis of the Development of Intrapersonal Intelligence. A. McKeough, Testing for the Presence of a Central Social Structure: Use of the Transfer Paradigm. Part IV:The Role of Central Conceptual Structures in the Development of Children's Spatial Thought. S. Dennis, Stage and Structure in the Development of Children's Spatial Representations. D.T. Reid, Horizontal and Vertical Structure: Stages and Substages in Children's Motor Development. Part V:Cross-Domain Synchrony and Asynchrony in the Acquisition of Different Central Conceptual Structures. R. Case, S. Griffin, A. McKeough, Y. Okamoto, Parallels in the Development of Children's Social, Numerical, and Spatial Thought. J. Crammond, Analyzing the Basic Cognitive-Developmental Processes of Children with Specific Types of Learning Disability. M. Porath, Stage and Structure in the Development of Children with Various Types of Giftedness. T.A. Fiati, Cross-Cultural Variation in the Structure of Children's Thought. Part VI:Conclusion. R. Case, The Mind and its Modules: Toward a Multi-Level View of the Development of Human Intelligence.

Young Children's Awareness and Understanding of Social Class Differences

Abstract Preschoolers' awareness and understanding of social class differences were examined in this study. Ninety-three preschoolers, half from low-socioeconomic-status (SES) and half from middle-SES families, sorted and described photographs of people depicted as either wealthy or poor. Spontaneous references to social class occurred rarely, but when specifically asked to identify rich and poor people, the subjects were quite accurate. Their concepts about the nature and causes of social class differences were limited and depended on concrete cues. Most children said that rich and poor people were more different than similar but were divided in their responses about whether members of the two groups could be friends. There were virtually no age or SES effects, but some sex differences were found. Girls appeared to be more aware of social class cues than boys.

THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION OF HIGHLY ABLE YOUNG CHILDREN

Abstract Because the very early development of abilities is vitally affected by personal relationships, research emphasis has shifted away from the quasi‐experimental situation to the more natural home context. This has resulted in the rejection of some limiting ideas of very early potential, and particulary appropriate for the highly able, concern with young children's own awareness of what they do. The educational conclusions are that infants who develop and learn with speed and ease need a wide variety of activities, with parents who are aware and responsive, especially in play and verbal interaction. They also need both the appropriate material provision and facilities for practice to develop specific skills.

Exploring young children's language awareness

This paper presents some of the findings of a study undertaken by the Beginning Writing Enquiry Group, the members of which were mostly classroom teachers. The project included a study both of children's language awareness and of their writing. The language awareness enquiry was conducted twice with the same group of children, once at each end of a school year. It is the findings of the first part of this enquiry which are analysed here. The children were selected from the classes of the teachers in the group, and a questionnaire designed by the teachers themselves was presented to them. It was hoped that the children's responses to the various items would help the teachers gain a deeper understanding of how certain metalinguistic terms such as SENTENCE, WORD, and LETTER were understood. The children were also asked what they thought a good writer needed to know. The way in which the questionnaire was designed and the children's responses to each item are presented here in the hope that they will be of value to other teachers and therapists interested in the relationship between children's awareness of language and their ability to use it both in speech and in writing.

This Land is Our Land: Promoting Ecological Awareness in Young Children

(1990). This Land is Our Land: Promoting Ecological Awareness in Young Children. Childhood Education: Vol. 66, Teachers' Voices: Celebrating Experience, pp. 304-310.

Intentional Explanation and Its Limits

situation, a temporal order is proposed in which activity rise follows anger expression. If these were observed facts, the differential pattern would be impressive support for the levels theory. However, the data analysis provided here does not afford the necessary degree of temporal detail. The blocks of 3-min phases do not permit a view of acquisition or reaction to frustration. It would have been very interesting to see when the joy expression (the average being about 1 per subject) occurred in the course of initial exposure to contingency. Similarly, it would have been interesting to see when anger expressions were judged to arise in relation to heightened behavior rate in the extinction period. In closing, I return to my cat. If she is looking for evidence of intention, then I would say she could benefit greatly by studying Lewis's theory of intentional levels. As we consider her, or any other intentional system, as itself possibly examining intentions in others, we may ask when and how it comes to do that. Following his second principle of social cognition (Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979, p. 231), I expect Lewis would predict that young children's awareness of intention in others arises as they become aware of intentions in. themselves.

I pledge a legiance tothe flag: Three studies in word segmentation

ABSTRACTThree experimental tasks explored young children's metalinguistic awareness of word boundaries. First, preschool children recited word-by-word pieces which differed in abstractness and familiarity of vocabulary. Second, a teaching task was employed to train and then sample selected items taken from the recited pieces, representing words with cards. The data suggested that several strategies were employed: segment-by-phrase, segment-by-syllable, and segment-by-word. Children were less successful in segmenting the more abstract piece than the concrete one, and they tended to revert to a phrase strategy and/or to change abstract words into more common vocabulary. Error analysis revealed growing awareness of the functorsaandthe. In a third experiment, preschool and kindergarten children segmented phrases using the functorsa, an, my, or and phrases using phonetically similar embedded syllables (e.g., holdmynose; goldminer). Segmentation scores increased with age; even the 4½- to 5-year-olds were highly successful, segmenting with 60% accuracy, and by age 6–6½, they were correctly segmenting 75% of the phrases. Children who had begun to read performed better overall than their same-age peers who had not. Children were more successful withmy, or, and word-medialathan withanand word-initiala; embedded syllables tended to be easier than functors, especially for the younger subjects. In conclusion, the years from age 4½- to 6½ appear to be a period of vigorous development of word segmentation skills. During this period, children use increasingly complex strategies – first phrasal, then syllabic, and finally a full word strategy – and they demonstrate a growing knowledge of function words as well as content words. Functors vary in difficulty and developmental sequence due to differences in stress, amount of ambiguity with phonetically similar embedded syllables, semantic complexity, and salience of reference to the young child.

Limited confidentiality and the pedophile.

There are other ethical and legal dilemmas inherent in balancing a pedophile's right to limited confidentiality with society's right to protect its children. For example, we need to further consider the implications of a therapist's duty to disclose patient records if a case does ever reach court (12). We also need to examine our new awareness of young children who have been abused and then proceed to abuse others while they are still children. Should these abusreactive children be assessed as dangerous to other children, and should we then report them and warn all of their peers? As Mr. S's case illustrates, there are no simple solutions. But it is hoped that clinicians will continue to recognize their own rights and responsibilities while they seek to protect their position as effective therapists, a position that must be fortified if we are to protect our patients and our society's children.

Measuring Print Awareness in Young Children

A 15-item test developed by the authors to assess prereaders’ understanding of the function of print is evaluated. It possesses advantages over the interview methodology used in previous research in that responses to items are independent of subjects’ verbal fluency. Thus, the test is quickly administered and objectively scored. Results show remarkable reliability given the relatively small number of items. In terms of validity, data from three-through five-year-old prereaders demonstrate a developmental progression in performance. In addition, contrasts between second-grade normal readers and two groups of poor readers are discussed, and correlations between the test and other measures are presented. The test is presented as a useful tool for researchers.

The impact of young children's print awareness in learning to read

The impact of young children's print awareness in learning to read

Representation of Nasality in Children's Non-Standard Spellings

Recent research has suggested the importance of oral language ability in learning to read. It has been shown that the young child's awareness of phonological structure can greatly influence early reading success. To expand our understanding of this linguistic awareness, children's written spellings of nasality were examined in four distinct contexts: (1) consonant, vowel, nasal, voiceless stop consonant; (2) consonant, vowel, nasal, voiced stop consonant; (3) consonant, vowel, non-homorganic nasal-consonant pair; and, (4) nasals in other positions. The results indicated that the young child's nasal representations reflect a highly developed awareness of phonetic detail, an awareness that becomes quite evident when the child constructs his own written cipher for the sounds that he hears.

The development of young children's awareness of the word as a unit of spoken language

Young children's awareness of the word as a unit of spoken language was investigated in a series of five experiments that required children aged from 4 to 7 years to segment spoken language strings into words. The results of the first three experiments suggest that young children have considerable success in segmenting spoken language materials, regardless of the grammaticality of the strings, and regardless of the grammatical form class, plurality, or syllabic length of the component words. The basis of such successful segmentation ability was considered further in a fourth experiment, which indicated that children may use stress as a basis of response. A fifth experiment therefore manipulated syllabic stress and morphemic structure to determine what response strategies are employed by children of different ages in segmenting speech. The results suggest that 4- to 5-year-old children respond primarily on the basis of acoustic factors such as stress, whereas somewhat older 5- to 6-year-old children respond on the basis of (unbound) morphemic structure. By age 7, most children have abandoned strategies and now respond on the basis of word concept. Implications of these findings for reading acquisition are briefly indicated.

The development of young children's awareness of logical inconsistencies

Research by Markman (1979) suggests that children up to 12 years of age do not spontaneously detect logical inconsistencies. The present study was directed to factors which may limit children's ability to recognize their failures to understand. A task was devised which involved materials that were clearly based on children's experiences, and which involved premises and conclusions which were presented contiguously, rather than being interspersed among other sentences. Ninety-six 5-, 6-, and 7-year-old children were asked to judge the acceptability of eight three-sentence “stories” told by a puppet, and were asked to justify their responses. The stories differed in whether they were consistent or inconsistent, and in whether the principle upon which a story's consistency depended was implicitly or explicitly stated. The results showed developmental differences. By Age 7 years, most children were quite capable of evaluating sentences for their logical consistency. Five-year-olds, however, did not perform as well on the task, especially when the information upon which the logical cohesiveness of the stories rested was implicitly, rather than explicitly, stated. An examination of the justifications provided by these children revealed that they tended to question the empirical validity of individual sentences, rather than integrate the story as a whole and examine its overall logical structure.

Developing a Language of Human Action: Subjective Goal as Semantic Component of the Verb "Give"

LYONS-RUTH, KARLEN. Developing a Language of Human Action: Subjective Goal as Semantic Component of the Verb Give. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1981, 52, 866-872. The aim of the present study was to examine young children's awareness that an actor's intention to transfer possession or control is a necessary precondition for correct use of the verb give. 96 4through 6-year-olds were presented with anecdotes in which the actor's behavior was held constant but his subjective goal was varied. 5and 6-year-olds, but not younger children, varied their usage of give according to the information regarding the actor's intent to transfer possession. Analysis of errors indicated that 4-year-olds attributed intent to transfer possession on the basis of behavioral information rather than on the basis of directly stated subjective goal information. However, 4-year-olds' usage of give did not appear to be based on consideration of intent to transfer possession or control, even when intent was inferred from behavioral cues. Not until age 5 were judgments of give usage strongly correlated with judgments of subjective goal.

Phonological awareness and reading acquisition

Recent research has suggested the importance of oral language ability in learning to read. It was proposed that the young child's awareness of the phonology of his language would greatly influence early reading success. The results revealed a strong relationship between the first grader's reading performance and two measures of his phonological awareness, invented spelling and phoneme segmentation abilities. Development of phonological awareness was not related to the child's sex, intelligence, socioeconomic status, or chronological age within a 12-month span. A third measure of phonological awareness, auditory analysis skills, was found to have less predictive value. The results suggest that an understanding of phonological relationships above and beyond that required for ordinary speaking and listening enables the beginning reader of English to make contact with his alphabetic writing system at the phonemic level. Instruction at the appropriate age level should facilitate this understanding.

Young children's awareness of violence in Northern Ireland: the influence of Northern Irish television in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Children aged 5 to 6 years living in either a suburb of London or in a small town in Northern Ireland which has been virtually free from violence, were asked to make up stories in response to a series of pictures depicting such things as derelict houses or a train crash. More Northern Irish children mentioned bombs and explosions than did the London children. To investigate the possibility that this knowledge of explosions might be the result of at least incidental exposure to coverage of such events on Northern Irish television news a further study was initiated. Children from another relatively quiet part of Northern Ireland were compared with children from two separate areas of Scotland where television reception is only possible from Northern Ireland and from a third area in Scotland where Northern Ireland television news cannot be received. Children from those areas where Northern Irish television news can be received again outnumbered those from the control area in terms of mentions of the words bomb or explosion.

Young Child's Awareness of Self

The study investigated relationships among hypothesized contributors to a differentiated concept of self in 69 kindergarten children: articulation of body concept, affect awareness, and the tendency for make-believe play. A principal component procedure located three unrotated factors. All three self-aware measures load moderately well on a first factor. A child who codes one aspect of his inner experience, such as his body concept, also codes affect and fantasy.

Word Awareness, Reading and Development

Research on young children's word awareness, the ability to identify the lexical constituents of a meaningful utterance, has received different interpretations: Either word awareness is related to linguistic and cognitive changes associated with the early school years or is a concept that children can learn when appropriate techniques are employed. This study was devised to clarify the nature of variables influencing word awareness during early childhood by analyzing responses of 26 kindergarten and 24 first-grade children to the Homophones Test of Word Awareness. Responses were assigned to seven categories representing a continuum characterized as ranging from discrete to global. Older children made fewer errors, and they gave a higher proportion of discrete responses. Younger children gave more global responses. Memory was evidently not the source of the younger children's inability to perform as well as the older ones. Rather, the difficulty appeared to stem from the younger children's inability to divorce sound from meaning in spoken messages. The role of developmental factors in children's conscious awareness of language structure and lexical units is supported by these findings.

The emergence of the child as grammarian

Demonstrations of some young children's awareness of syntactic and semantic properties of language are presented. Rudiments of such ‘meta-linguistic’ functioning are shown in two-year olds, who give judgments of grammaticalness in a role-modelling situation. The growth of these abilities is documented for a group of five to eight-year old children, who are asked explicitly to give judgments of deviant sentences. Adult-like behavior, in these talented subjects, is found to emerge in the period from five to eight years. Possible relations of meta-linguistic functioning to other ‘meta-cognitive’ processes are suggested.