Children's Strategies Research Articles

Exploring young children's performance on and acceptance of an educational scenario-based digital game for teaching route-planning strategies: a case study

Researchers suggest that game-based learning (GBL) can be used to facilitate mathematics learning. However, empirical GBL research that targets young children is still limited. The purposes of the study is to develop a scenario-based digital game to promote children's route-planning ability, to empirically explore children's learning performance in route planning through the game, and to probe children's technology acceptance of the game. A total of 71 children participated in the study, and both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used, including an interview analysis as well as performance and content analyses of learners’ route-planning tasks. The findings showed that the game had a positive effect on children's learning of route-planning strategies, that children's route-planning strategies were improved with the support of the game, and that children demonstrated high technology acceptance toward the game. This study may be of importance in offering insight into children's GBL.

Development of Sound Localization Strategies in Children with Bilateral Cochlear Implants.

Localizing sounds in our environment is one of the fundamental perceptual abilities that enable humans to communicate, and to remain safe. Because the acoustic cues necessary for computing source locations consist of differences between the two ears in signal intensity and arrival time, sound localization is fairly poor when a single ear is available. In adults who become deaf and are fitted with cochlear implants (CIs) sound localization is known to improve when bilateral CIs (BiCIs) are used compared to when a single CI is used. The aim of the present study was to investigate the emergence of spatial hearing sensitivity in children who use BiCIs, with a particular focus on the development of behavioral localization patterns when stimuli are presented in free-field horizontal acoustic space. A new analysis was implemented to quantify patterns observed in children for mapping acoustic space to a spatially relevant perceptual representation. Children with normal hearing were found to distribute their responses in a manner that demonstrated high spatial sensitivity. In contrast, children with BiCIs tended to classify sound source locations to the left and right; with increased bilateral hearing experience, they developed a perceptual map of space that was better aligned with the acoustic space. The results indicate experience-dependent refinement of spatial hearing skills in children with CIs. Localization strategies appear to undergo transitions from sound source categorization strategies to more fine-grained location identification strategies. This may provide evidence for neural plasticity, with implications for training of spatial hearing ability in CI users.

A longitudinal study of children's voices in regard to stress and coping during the transition to school

This study explores (1) how parental and teacher scaffolding and children's coping strategies contribute to children's adjustment during the transition from preschool to school; and (2) how children's perception of stress and coping are constructed over time. The sample included 216 six-year-old children, their parents and teachers. The parents, teachers and children reported that many children encountered social stress and being incompetent at school, and most of the children used either direct problem-solving or seeking social support to cope with stress, but had not used emotion-focused coping strategies learnt at preschool. Compared with the parents’ and teachers’ responses, the children reported more incidences of social stress. Compared with the children's responses, more parents and teachers reported children being incompetent in learning or self-help skills at school. Implications of the study were discussed at the end of the article.

Uncovering strategy profiles in young children's reading & spelling

Young children are taught to read and spell using a range of different approaches to encourage them to form connections between spoken sound and written text, but past studies have often looked at reading and spelling strategies in isolation. In this study, the performance of 48 young children in Years 1 and 2 was assessed on experimental measures of reading and spelling to encourage the use of different strategies. Strategies were identified by video analysis and verbal self-reports. The findings revealed a strong reliance on multiple strategies as well as similar patterns of development in children's strategy choice for reading and spelling. Two separate cluster analyses revealed separate profiles, based on similar patterns of strategy use for both reading and spelling strategies, respectively and while reading and spelling profiles were strongly related, suggesting a close connection between these two sets of skills, only the spelling profiles were influenced by age.

Les besoins exprimés par les parents d’enfants ayant un TSA : une étude exploratoire franco-québécoise

ObjectivesChildren with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may present, from birth, a range of behaviours, somewhat difficult to understand. For instance, language delays, a lack of social and emotional reciprocity, stereotypies and unusual behaviours, sleeping disorder or even eating issues may be observed. Such behaviours can significantly impair the daily functioning of families. Parents may not have all the necessary resources to face challenges associated with ASD. They might not always know how to educate their child or how to satisfy his needs which go beyond the basic needs of children without ASD present. Not only do they have to feed, dress, educate, encourage, stimulate and love their children, they also need to satisfy more specific needs. To do so, parents need to acquire and strengthen knowledge and abilities. Adaptive behaviours (i.e., autonomy) as well school, social and professional integration are greatly impaired by the severity of symptoms, meaning that limitations in these areas are more important when the severity of the disorder increases. ASD is considered to be a disability affecting all areas of parents’ lives. Individuals with ASD learn differently and require constant attention, thus their needs will become central and more often than not, activities of the family are reorganized around their needs. MethodsTo understand the needs of families of children with ASD, 257 parents of Quebec and France participated to the study. In Quebec, 101 parents (91 mothers and 6 fathers) were recruited through a private clinic and through Quebec's Federation of Autism. In France, 160 parents (113 mothers and 47 fathers) were recruited with the support of 15 clinical services and 4 parents’ associations. A sociodemographic form as well as a questionnaire on needs were sent to parents. Data obtained through these quantitative measures were analyzed. ResultsIt appears that more mothers than fathers completed the questionnaires. Even though parents in Quebec tend to keep their paid employment, their salary is perceived as being insufficient to satisfy the needs of their family. Most parents, Quebecer or French, live with their significant other and have at least two children including the one with ASD. Results show that French children are diagnosed later. However, they receive intervention earlier. In our sample, most children are verbal and one third use a communication system whether they are verbal or not. Parents in France believe their child presents weak adaptive skills, embarrassing behaviours and co-occurring disorders (i.e., eating disorders, sleeping disorders, etc.) even more so than parents in Quebec. More children in Quebec are enrolled in school and benefit from activities organized in integrated settings. However, more French children attend regular classrooms. Children in Quebec are enrolled as full-time students no matter what type of class they evolve in, which is rarely the case for children in France. Data with regard to the needs reveal that Quebec parents seek professional advice when making decisions about their child's future. They want their child to benefit from interventions adapted to his level of functioning. They show a desire to be listened to and encouraged. They want to learn more about their child's abilities and effective educative strategies. Few parents have expressed a need to get help from other parents or from their association to get more information on ASD and to share their own experience as parents. As for French parents, they tend to seek more information on intervention programs and specialized services that can be offered to their child and their family. They express the desire for care management that is more suited to their needs. They wish for optimal accompaniment to ensure their child's social participation. They believe a network of specialized and trained babysitters should be developed. They would like guidance concerning the education and the future of their child. As far as help from other parents and from their association is concerned, results show a similar perception of parents in Quebec. ConclusionsIn conclusion, it seems that all parents, French and Quebecer, show similar needs in regards to professional and educative advice when making decisions. Also, they all wish for their child to benefit from interventions adapted to their level of functioning. Children with ASD go through various transitions (daycare, school setting, youth, adulthood), just as any other children. However, they require specific and planned interventions tailored to their needs. Professional advice appears useful to guide families through these important steps. In addition, few parents from France or Quebec require help from other parents or their association. This result may be attributed to the increasing amount of information and help available through Internet (websites, discussion forums, etc.). Indeed, numerous parents of children with ASD visit discussion forums, for multiple purposes, either to find information, to confide, to ask for guidance or even to offer their help to parents living similar experiences.

Dynamics of Young Children's Socially Adaptive Resolutions of Peer Conflict

AbstractHow do young children negotiate conflicts with peers that result in mutually beneficial resolution and peaceful interaction after conflict? A few studies suggest that when children use conciliatory strategies in conflict, socially adaptive outcomes are more likely to be achieved. The present study explores the relative associations of types of children's conciliatory conflict resolution strategies (i.e., prosocial, compliance‐oriented, solution‐oriented, and verbal clarification/apology) with conflict outcomes to contribute to knowledge of the discrete behaviors that might have salience for conflict resolution training. Socially adaptive conflict outcomes were expected to strongly relate to children's resolution strategies of a prosocial nature as well as to teacher or peer interventions encouraging prosocial behavior or empathy. Sampled conflicts (N = 521) were collected through field observations of 107 ethnically/racially and socioeconomically diverse four‐ to seven‐year‐old children. Logistic regression analyses with bootstrap‐based inference suggested that children's prosocial behaviors in conflict were most strongly tied to mutually beneficial resolution and peaceful postconflict interaction, when controlling for relevant covariates. Other conciliatory strategies varied in their association with socially adaptive outcomes. The hypothesis regarding third‐party interventions encouraging prosociability or empathy could not be examined due to infrequent occurrence. Insights for future research on children's socially adaptive conflict negotiations are discussed.

Cultural Difference in Conflict Management Strategies of Children and Its Development: Comparing 3- and 5-Year-Olds Across China, Japan, and Korea

Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to examine differences in the development of conflict management strategies, focusing on 3- and 5-year-olds, through a comparison of 3 neighboring Asian cultures, those of China (n = 114), Japan (n = 98), and Korea (n = 90). The dual concern model of conflict management was adopted to probe which strategy children would prefer to use in 2 hypothetical conflict situations. Results indicated that, first, for disagreement, 3-year-olds in the 3 countries equally preferred the dominating strategy. For competition for resources, 3-year-olds differed in their strategy preference across all cultures. Second, the observed strategy preference of 3- to 5-year-old children in this study was more or less different from that of older schoolchildren, regardless of culture. Practice or Policy: These findings suggest the significance of the context, the complexity of the phenomenon of the development of cultural differences, and the significance of cohort sampling.

Parents' and Children's Emotion Regulation Strategies in Emotionally Situated Zones: A Cultural-Historical Perspective

ALTHOUGH THERE IS A vast amount of literature on emotion regulation strategies, few studies have examined the direct relation between parents' and children's emotion regulation strategies. Those studies, however, are mainly laboratory based. Little attention has been paid to parents' and children's emotion regulation strategies in a naturalistic context. In drawing upon a cultural-historical perspective, this study investigates how parents' and children's emotion regulation strategies are related in everyday family life. A total of 61 hours of video data were collected from four families in Australia. New context-specific emotion regulation strategies and five emotionally situated zones were found. Similarities in emotion regulation strategies used by parents and children were also found. It is argued that children's acquisition of emotion regulation strategies has its origin in parents' everyday use of their own emotion regulation strategies. This study contributes to our understandings of children's development of emotion regulation in the naturalistic contexts of family life. Pedagogical suggestions and future research directions are provided.

Protecting Preteens on Facebook: An Exploratory Examination of Parental Mediation Strategies for Children’s Facebook Use in Singapore

Children are particularly vulnerable to the risks of going online, yet the profile of the child Internet user is becoming younger, particularly on social media. Parental mediation describes efforts by parents to translate the complexities of the physical/social environment as well as mass media into terms that children at various levels of cognitive development can understand. This exploratory study examined parental mediation strategies as predictors of parents’ intention to control underage use of Facebook in Singapore, a country with high internet penetration but little data protection regulation. The study found that parents with mediation styles that were highest on Regulated mediation (Restrictive and Selective mediation) as well as parents whose eldest child was female showed the highest level of intentions to control underage Facebook usage. Additionally, the younger the age group of the eldest child in the family, the more likely parents were to express intentions to control Facebook usage.

Making the tacit explicit: children's strategies for classroom writing

A key highlight of this study is generating evidence of children ‘making aware the unaware’, making tacit knowledge explicit. The research explores the levels of awareness in thinking used by eight 7–8 year‐old children when engaged in school‐based genre writing tasks. The focus is on analysing children's awareness of their thought processes, using a framework originally devised in 1989 to investigate ways in which children can transform their tacit knowledge to explicit within the writing process. Classroom ‘think aloud’ protocols are used to help children ‘manage their knowledge transfer’, to speak the unspoken. The 1989 framework distinguished between four levels of thought that was viewed as hierarchical and ‘increasingly metacognitive’. However, there is little evidence in this study to show that levels of awareness in thinking are increasingly progressive and observations made during the study suggest that young writers move in and out of the suggested levels of thinking during different elements of a writing task. The reasons for this may depend on a number of factors that are noted in this paper. Evidence does suggest children in this age group are consciously aware of their own and others' thought processes both with and without adult prompting. By using collaborative talk, their awareness of these thought processes is highlighted enabling the co‐construction and integration of new ideas into their existing knowledge base.

Effects of an Inconsistency-Detection Training Aimed at Improving Comprehension Monitoring in Primary School Children

Grounded within the situation model framework, this study investigated the effectiveness of a reading comprehension strategy training aimed at improving children's comprehension monitoring strategies. Sixty-four third and fourth graders received a 4-week training targeted at situation model updating, evaluative and self-regulatory strategies, and metacognitive awareness. A group (n = 51) following the school's regular reading comprehension curriculum served as the control group. The inconsistency-detection training was expected to show a pretest-to-posttest enhancement in comprehension monitoring strategies (measured with the inconsistency-detection paradigm), general reading comprehension, and reading motivation. Results showed that, compared with the control group, fourth graders' inconsistency-detection performance significantly improved after the inconsistency-detection training. Third graders did not show a significant gain. General reading comprehension and reading motivation scores were promising for children receiving the inconsistency-detection training. In summary, our inconsistency-detection training was an effective means to enhance children's use of monitoring strategies required for constructing and updating a coherent situation model and to transfer these strategies to novel texts.

Encouraging 5-year olds to attend to landmarks: a way to improve children's wayfinding strategies in a virtual environment.

Wayfinding is defined as the ability to learn and remember a route through an environment. Previous researchers have shown that young children have difficulties remembering routes. However, very few researchers have considered how to improve young children's wayfinding abilities. Therefore, we investigated ways to help children increase their wayfinding skills. In two studies, a total of 72 5-year olds were shown a route in a six turn maze in a virtual environment and were then asked to retrace this route by themselves. A unique landmark was positioned at each junction and each junction was made up of two paths: a correct path and an incorrect path. Two different strategies improved route learning performance. In Experiment 1, verbally labeling on-route junction landmarks during the first walk reduced the number of errors and the number of trials to reach a learning criterion when the children retraced the route. In Experiment 2, encouraging children to attend to on-route junction landmarks on the first walk reduced the number of errors when the route was retraced. This was the first study to show that very young children can be taught route learning skills. The implications of our results are discussed.

Neuroendocrine and behavioral response to social rupture and repair in preschoolers with autism spectrum disorders interacting with mother and father

BackgroundPreschoolers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit difficulties in handling social stress and utilizing efficient emotion regulation (ER) strategies to manage high arousal. While researchers called to assess ER in ASD, few studies utilized direct observations. We tested children’s behavioral and cortisol response to maternal and paternal unavailability and hypothesized that children with ASD will employ less complex ER strategies and their parents would show increased regulation facilitation effort to accommodate their child’s difficulties.MethodsForty preschoolers with ASD were matched with 40 typically developing (TD) preschoolers. Children were seen twice for identical battery with mother or father in the face-to-face-still-face paradigm, a three-episode paradigm where parent-child play (free play (FP)) is interrupted by elimination of communication (still face (SF)) followed by resuming play (reunion (RE)). Micro-coding of parent and child’s social behavior and ER strategies was conducted. Parent and child’s cortisol was assessed at baseline, following stress, and at recovery.ResultsChildren with ASD exhibited the typical SF effect, indexed by an increase in negative affect and decrease in positive communications, but employed more simple regulatory behavior (self-soothing, proximity-seeking) and less complex strategies involving attention redirection and substitutive play. Their parents used more regulation-facilitation behavior, both simple and complex. All children showed initial cortisol response to novelty, which declined over time. However, maternal presence suppressed initial cortisol response in children with ASD.ConclusionsChildren with ASD form typical expectations of parental availability and their parents increase effort to help repair social rupture. Among children with ASD, maternal presence and regulation facilitation provide social buffering for the child’s HPA stress response in a manner similar to mammalian neonates. Results highlight the importance of assessing ER by combining direct observations and physiological measures and including fathers in empirical studies and intervention efforts for children with ASD during sensitive periods for social growth.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13229-015-0007-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Identifying strategies in arithmetic with the operand recognition paradigm: a matter of switch cost?

Determining adults' and children's strategies in mental arithmetic constitutes a central issue in the domain of numerical cognition. However, despite the considerable amount of research on this topic, the conclusions in the literature are not always coherent. Therefore, there is a need to carry on the investigation, and this is the reason why we developed the operand recognition paradigm (ORP). It capitalizes on the fact that, contrary to retrieval, calculation procedures degrade the memory traces of the operands involved in a problem. As a consequence, the use of calculation procedures is inferred from relatively long recognition times of the operands. However, it has been suggested that recognition times within the ORP do not reflect strategies but the difficulty of switching from a difficult task (calculation) to a simpler one (recognition). In order to examine this possibility, in a series of 3 experiments we equalized switch-cost variations in all conditions through the introduction of intermediate tasks between problem solving and recognition. Despite this neutralization, we still obtained the classical effects of the ORP, namely longer recognition times after addition than after comparison. We conclude that the largest part of the ORP effects is related to different strategy use and not to difficulty-related switch costs. The possible applications and promising outcomes of the ORP in and outside the field of numerical cognition are discussed.

Reconceptualizing Children's Rights in International Development: Living Rights, Social Justice, Translations. By Karl Hanson and Olga Nieuwenhuys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 302 pp. $99.00 cloth.

Reconceptualizing Children's Rights in International Development: Living Rights, Social Justice, Translations. By Karl Elanson and Olga Nieuwenhuys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 302 pp. $99.00 cloth.Although the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was adopted 25 years ago, questions about the meaning and scope of the rights enshrined in it (and beyond) remain relevant in contemporary discourse on children's rights. Numerous reports suggest that violations of children's rights are still rampant in much of the world, with developing countries commonly being a major target of criticism by children's rights advocates. However, perhaps the most challenging aspect of the CRC's new legal order is the concept of children's agency. Notwithstanding the CRC's clear intention to shift the conceptualization of children from objects of enculturation to subjects in their own right, and from passive to active participants in their social, political, and familial milieu, answering what to make of the child's voice and how to incorporate it in the human rights discourse remains controversial.The book's editors, Karl Hanson and Olga Nieuwenhuys, compiled a collection of essays to address this question from a child-centered approach. Contrary to the view of the CRC as a neutral legal reform, as often portrayed by children's rights advocates, and the subsequent discourse on children as victims when they engage, for example, with work, the overarching goal of the book is to provide a contextual, bottom up account of how children understand, interpret, and act on their rights. Toward this goal, the book proposes a conceptual framework for children's rights comprised of three key, inter-related concepts: living rights, social justice, and translations of children's rights into practice. By so doing, the book aims to start to grasp the complexities of how rights take shape in children's living realities and daily struggles (p. 6), to help understand the complex ways in which children's rights come into play in today's developing world, and to develop a contemporary theory that extends beyond children to human rights more generally (p. 22).Accordingly, in addition to introductory and concluding chapters, the book's three parts correspond to these three concepts. Part I examines living rights. Analyzing girls' local discourse on marital practices, snapshots produced by children living and working on the streets, children's negotiation strategies in household livelihood activities and children's self-determination practices as migrant workers, the four chapters demonstrate how children shape the various rights in their social world. Part II focuses on the concept of social justice, which the editors interpret to encompass moral economy, the state as guarantor of necessary goods (from land and employment to health, education and food), and social movements challenging the elites. The three chapters in this part highlight conflicting local and international core conceptualizations of personhood, autonomy, and kinship and the need for recognizing the various cultural, political, and social forces to develop a fruitful conversation between the stakeholders of children's rights. …

Computational fluency and strategy choice predict individual and cross-national differences in complex arithmetic.

The present study tested the hypothesis that children's fluency with basic number facts and knowledge of computational strategies, derived from early arithmetic experience, predicts their performance on complex arithmetic problems. First-grade students from United States and Taiwan (N = 152, mean age: 7.3 years) were presented with problems that differed in difficulty: single-, mixed-, and double-digit addition. Children's strategy use varied as a function of problem difficulty, consistent with Siegler's theory of strategy choice. The use of decomposition strategy interacted with computational fluency in predicting the accuracy of double-digit addition. Further, the frequency of decomposition and computational fluency fully mediated cross-national differences in accuracy on these complex arithmetic problems. The results indicate the importance of both fluency with basic number facts and the decomposition strategy for later arithmetic performance.

Patterns of individual coping, engagement with social supports and use of formal services among a five-country sample of resilient youth.

Although resilience among victims of child abuse is commonly understood as a process of interaction between individuals and their environments, there have been very few studies of how children's individual coping strategies, social supports and formal services combine to promote well-being. For this study, we conducted a multi-phase analysis of a qualitative dataset of 608 interviews with young people from five countries using grounded theory strategies to build a substantive theory of young people's service and support use patterns. We started with an analysis of ten interviews (two from each country) and then compared these findings to patterns found in each country's full dataset. The substantive theory that emerged explains young people's transience between individual coping strategies (cognitive and behavioral), reliance on social supports (family members, peers and teachers), and engagement with formal service providers whose roles are to provide interventions and case management. Young people's patterns of navigation were shown to be contingent upon the individual's risk exposure, his or her individual capacity to cope, and the quality of the formal and informal supports and services that are available and accessible. Differing amounts of formal resources in low-, middle- and high-income countries influence patterns of service use. Implications for better coordination between formal mental health services and social supports are discussed.

Investigating children's emotion regulation in socio-emotionally challenging classroom situations

Decades of research have associated effective emotion and behaviour regulation with learning and social competence among young children. However, further studies on children's use of emotion regulation in their everyday lives are required. This study focuses on investigating six- to nine-year-old children's (N = 24) use of emotion regulation strategies in various socio-emotionally challenging classroom situations. Data consist of video recordings of different classroom situations, which were analysed using interaction analysis and theory-oriented content analysis in connection with the Multisource Assessment of Social Competence Scale questionnaire results on social competence. The results of this study indicate the differences in children's abilities to use emotion regulation strategies appropriately in socio-emotionally challenging classroom situations. Qualitative features of children's strategies in different situations also vary. These findings, along with those of previous studies, suggest a need for teachers to scaffold children's developing skills of emotion regulation in school contexts.

Genes in FSGS: Diagnostic and Management Strategies in Children

FSGS is a molecularly heterogeneous disease, and can be classified into primary or secondary disease. Primary FSGS can be due to immune or genetic causes. To date, more than 20 genes have been implicated in FSGS. The discovery of so many FSGS genes, together with the advent of next-generation sequencing, has led to a paradigm shift in the genetic diagnosis and management of this disease. However, genetic screening in FSGS may not be so straightforward because of the difficulty in selection and prioritization of genes. It is challenging to appreciate the prevalence of mutations in the different genes based on the current literature due to heterogeneity of the studies and rarity of the disease. Clinicians need to understand the different methods of genetic screening available. These should be weighed against practical issues such as clinical urgency, financial costs, availability of expertise, and test accessibility. Clinicians should also consider the likelihood of a genetic etiology and the clinical impact of a genetic diagnosis to decide, with the patient and family, on the extent or “aggressiveness” of the genetic screening. The main impact of a genetic diagnosis in FSGS is on the use of immunosuppressive medications as well as on peri-transplant management involving the selection of live-related donors and risk of post-transplant recurrence.

Analyses of pupils’ polygonal shape drawing strategy with respect to handwriting performance

Polygonal shape drawing tasks are commonly used in psychological, clinical and standard handwriting tests to evaluate children's development. Early detection of physical/mental disorders within subjects therefore requires objective analysis of the drawing tasks. This analysis would help to identify specific rehabilitation needs and accurate detection of disorders. Herein, the aim is to determine the correlation between the performance of polygonal shape drawing and levels in handwriting performance. In the reported experimentation two groups of participants aged between 6 and 7 were studied. The first group was identified by educational experts as being below-average writers within their age group whilst the second group was age-matched controls of average and above. Subjects were required to draw an isosceles triangle within a novel computer-based framework founded on a pen-based graphic tablet capture device. Subsequently, a sequential feature vector containing performance values relating to the order in which they drew the triangle was extracted from tablet data and compared against one another when presented in constructional strategy models. Statistical analyses and automated classification were applied to sequences to infer handwriting level based on the triangle drawing strategy. From our experiments drawing strategies showed significant differences in drawing end-point position, number of strokes used, and the frequency of particular drawing strategies amongst average and below-average handwriting groups. Additionally, a support vector machine classifier was used to detect group membership based on the triangle drawing strategy. From this exemplar polygonal shape drawing study it is revealed that there are details in children's drawing strategy which considerably differs in grouping based on handwriting performance.