Performance Of Preschool Children Research Articles

Generalized oddity performance in preschool children: A bimodal training procedure

Oddity performance requires relational discriminative responding, which typically is difficult to establish in children with MAs below five. In Experiment 1, a combination intrasubject reversal and multiple baseline across subjects design was used to establish the internal validity of a bimodal intervention in establishing generalized oddity performance. Six of seven children demonstrated oddity responding when presented with stimuli that instantiated the oddity relation in the visual and auditory modalities simultaneously. Oddity performance was evaluated with both reversal assessments and assessments with new sets of stimuli. The newly acquired oddity performance was durable; the six children continued to respond discriminatively when returned to a visual-only task on which they previously had been unsuccessful. Utilizing a reversal assessment more stringent than that of Experiment 1, Experiment 2 replicated this effect. The present studies are the first to demonstrate the utility of bimodal training in establishing oddity performance. The bimodal procedure is discussed with respect to the theoretical positions of Gibson, Dinsmoor, and Dixon.

Prenatal alcohol exposure and sustained attention in the preschool years

The effects of fetal alcohol exposure on sustained attention in the preschool years were investigated in a sample of socioeconomically disadvantaged urban children. The 245 children examined were the 4-year 10-month-old follow-up cohort of a prospective study begun while their mothers were pregnant. Sustained attention was assessed by an automated, computer-administered vigilance task. Indices of fetal alcohol exposure included three measures of maternal drinking and two early indicators of fetal alcohol damage. The data were analyzed using univariate and multivariate regression techniques, both with and without adjustment for covariates. None of the analyses supported the hypothesis that fetal alcohol exposure adversely affects sustained attention performance in preschool children. We infer that, if there is an effect of prenatal alcohol exposure on vigilance task performance, that effect is small.

A Comparison of Preschool Children's Performance on the Kaufman-Assessment Battery for Children Nonverbal Scale and the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence Performance Scale

The relationship between the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) Nonverbal Scale and the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI) Performance Scale was examined for a sample of 48 preschool age children. The children were grouped according to their level of language development. One group consisted of normal children with no language delays. The second group was composed of children who exhibited mild to moderate language delays. The third group included children who were essentially nonverbal. Subjects were administered the K-ABC Nonverbal Scale and the WPPSI Performance Scale in a counter-balanced order. The scores were then analyzed to determine if there were any significant relationships or differences between the two measures or the three groups. Pearson product-moment correlations between the K-ABC Nonverbal Scale and the WPPSI Performance Scale ranged from .59 for the language delayed group to .79 for the entire sample. A significant difference was found between the obtained means of the instruments, with subjects receiving higher scores on the WPPSI Performance Scale. Implications of these findings are discussed in terms of assessing young language-delayed children.

The Development of Informal and Formal Mathematical Thinking in Korean and U.S. Children

SONG, MYUNG-JA, and GINSBURG, HERBERT P. The Development of Informal and Formal Mathematical Thinking in Korean and U.S. Children. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1987, 58, 1286-1296. This study sought to establish, first, whether Korean children exhibit superior levels of performance in school mathematics to U.S. children; second, whether an early advantage in informal mathematical thinking contributes to the expected superiority; and, third, whether the superior achievement is qualitatively different from U.S. children's. A large number of Korean and U.S. children at age levels 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 were given the Test of Early Mathematical Ability (TEMA), which measures both informal and formal mathematical thinking. The results showed that at the ages of 7 and 8, Korean children do indeed exhibit superior performance in formal mathematics. Yet Korean preschool children's performance in informal mathematics is inferior to U.S. children's. Korean children do not begin with a head start in informal mathematical thinking. Various environmental factors, including a lack of intellectual stimulation from parents at home, might explain Korean preschool children's relatively poor performance in informal mathematical thinking. On entrance to school, Korean children soon overcome this initial disadvantage and excel in school arithmetic. Moreover, the results show that Korean children's performance is superior to that of U.S. children in both mechanical and conceptual areas. Korean children do not succeed only because they can learn in a rote fashion. We attribute Korean children's relative success and U.S. children's relative failure primarily to such environmental-cultural factors as classroom practices, teacher attitudes and skills, expectancies, and parental demands, values, and assistance.

Oddity performance in preschool children at risk for mental retardation: Transfer and maintenance

The oddity performance of five preschool children at risk for mental retardation was facilitated by increasing the number of nonodd elements in a visual array. A combination intrasubject reversal and multiple baseline across subjects design indicated the internal validity of interventions designed to enhance the perceptual salience and consequent stimulus control of the odd stimulus. Results demonstrate that transfer and maintenance of oddity learning can be obtained even with individuals for whom correct oddity responding is uncommon. The typically poor performance of young and developmentally delayed children as compared to nondelayed children on tasks such as the oddity task may be attributable to a lower sensitivity to relational information.

Effects of Play Materials on the Topic Performance of Preschool Children

This study represents an attempt to empirically support clinical intuition regarding the effects of physical context variables on pragmatic performance. Specifically, the effects of different play materials on the topic performance of 24 4- to 5-year-old children were examined. Children were divided into 12 dyads, 6 male and 6 female, and videotaped in three counterbalanced play situations: Legos, miniature hospital set , and hospital props. All topic initiations and shadings were coded for specific types of topic categories. In support of our clinical intuition, certain play situations were effective in eliciting particular types of topics, having implications for language assessment and intervention.

A Comparison of At-Risk Preschool Children's Performance On the K-Abc, McCarthy Scales, and Stanford-Binet

This study examined the relationship among performance on the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC), McCarthy Scales, and Stanford-Binet for 72 children referred for placement in two early intervention preschool programs. The correlational results of the study yielded moderate positive relationships between both the Mental Processing Composite (MFC) and General Cognitive Index (GCI) (r = .59) and the MPC and Stanford-Binet IQ (r = 45). Individual performance profiles of the children placed in the programs were relatively flat on both the K-ABC and McCarthy. On the K-ABC, the Simultaneous scale (SIM) was 2 points higher than the Sequential scale (SEQ), and the Achievement scale (ACH) was about 2 points higher than MPC. On the McCarthy, all of the scale indexes were within 2 to 3 points of each other, except Verbal, which was 4 to 5 points higher.

幼児の課題遂行の一決定因としての自己評価の機能

Experiment I was conducted to investigate the relationship between motivation to play with the game, goal-setting, self-evaluation, and motivation to persist the game in preschool children. Results indicated that motivation to play with the game seemed to persist only when children could evaluate their own results appropriately. Experiment II was conducted to examine the effect of self-evaluation on motivation to persist the game. As predicted, children who changed their self-evaluation through treatment exhibited greater improvement of game persistence than those who did not change their self-evaluation. The results suggested the important role of self-evaluation in preschool children's task performance.

Blood lead, behaviour and intelligence test performance in preschool children

A variety of measures of behaviour and cognitive performance were taken on a group of preschool children together with a sample of venous blood. The relationship between blood lead and intelligence was small and statistically non-significant after controlling for other factors influencing cognitive performance.

Preschool Children's Performance on Two Measures of Emotional Expressiveness Compared to Teacher Ratings

Preschool Children's Performance on Two Measures of Emotional Expressiveness Compared to Teacher Ratings

Social Cognition and Verbal Requests Among Preschool Children

Summary This study was designed to identify possible relations between levels of social cognitive ability and requestive performance of preschool children in real-life dyadic interactions with peers. Thirty preschool children were pretested with four social cognitive tasks. They were divided into 15 same-sex and same-age dyads classified either as “high,” “average,” or “low” on social cognitive ability. The level of peer familiarity was also evaluated for each dyad. These dyads were then observed, during two free-play sessions, to assess the adequacy of their requestive interactions. Results revealed a significant effect of degree of familiarity on the frequency of verbal requests and a significant influence of the level of social cognition on the informational adequacy of the initial request. For both sessions, the appropriateness of the feedback provided by the requestee accounted for most of the variance associated with the successful outcomes of the requests. Results are discussed in terms of the natu...

Preschool children's conceptual tempo and performance on visual discrimination tasks.

The present study explored the relationship among conceptual tempo, age, sex, and performance on the Visual Association subtest of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (VA-ITPA). Preschool boys (n = 17) and girls (n = 34) were Ss. Time to the first response to the VA-ITPA rather than the Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFFT) was the measure of response latency. Results indicated that: (a) response error was a function of response latency, (b) response error was a function of age, (c) there was a multiple linear relationship among response latency, age, and response error. It was concluded that response latency not only related to errors on the MFFT but to other visual discrimination tasks.

Preschool Children's Performance with Perceptual and Conceptual Recognition Criteria

In two picture recognition experiments preschool children were required to make three different recognition decisions to a single study picture. In both experiments one of the three tests was based on perceptual identity (level 1), one on common objectclass (level 2), and the third on either taxonomic category or complementary pair formation (level 3). In experiment 1 it was found that the preschool children (X age = 4-10) could make both level 3 recognition decisions with equal ease and at 90% accuracy although there was a significant decline in performance as level of abstraction increased. In experiment 2, three-, four-, and five-year-olds' recognition accuracy improved with age and decreased as level of abstraction increased. Category decisions were associated with lower accuracy levels than those based on complementary pairs. For the category pairs, inferior choice explanations lagged well behind accuracy and improved with age in contrast with the acceptable explanations given by all age groups for the complementary pair solutions. Commonalities in the children's perceptions of the two level 3 grouping principles were discussed, as was the possible confounding of the comparison of the two organizational principles by differential picture pair difficulty.

Class Inclusion: Effect of Response Variation on Assessment of Preschool Children's Performance

To investigate the effect of response variation in the assessment of preschool children's performance on a class-inclusion task 52 girls and boys, 4 and 5 yr. of age, were randomly assigned to verbal and manual response conditions on a class-inclusion task. Judgments and explanatory responses were scored separately and two-way analyses of variance were conducted on each set of scores. Children in the manual condition scored significantly higher than those in the verbal condition; however, there was no indication that full mastery of class inclusion could be elicited earlier by the manual condition. There was no main effect due to sex, but there was an interaction of sex by procedure.

Verbal Reinforcement, Socio-Economic Status, and Intelligence Test Performance of Preschool Children

90 preschool children of middle- and low-socioeconomic-status were administered Form A of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and the verbal portion of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence under three treatment conditions to study effects of verbal reinforcements on individual test performance. Data indicate that subjects of middle status scored significantly higher than their lower-status counterparts on both the Peabody and the WPPSI measures. No significant verbal reinforcement effect or interaction of status × reinforcement was found. Correlations of .58, .65, and .75 between the Peabody and the WPPSI scores were demonstrated in the groups, control, praised, and “correctness” feedback.

Preschool Children's Performance on the Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test

In two situations various comparisons were performed among the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) and Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices (RCPM) scores of 11 girls and 11 boys of preschool age (Study 1) and of 11 nonproblem and 11 behavior problem preschool children (Study 2). A possible sex difference was found: girls did obtain a significant correlation between the PPVT raw (or non-age-corrected) scores and the RCPM, whereas boys did not. Age and RCPM scores were significantly correlated (Study 1), but age and PPVT IQ scores were not. Thus, it appeared that scores on a measure of the spatial ability involved in the RCPM do increase progressively with age, although they are not related to the skills measured by the PPVT. In Study 2 a trend toward higher correlations was found between the RCPM and the PPVT scores for the nonproblem as compared to the problem children.

Effects of live and recorded story telling on retelling performance of preschool children from low socioeconomic backgrounds

Two modes of story telling, live reading and recorded reading, were compared to test the hypothesis that live reading results in better retention. Thirty-four preschool children from low socioeconomic backgrounds were randomly assigned to the two conditions. Each child heard a story presented by the teacher or a recording and then retold the story in his or her own words. Children in the live group used significantly more words and more correct themes in retelling (p <.01) than did those in the recording group. Implications for research and teaching are discussed.

Physical Growth of Ethnic Groups Comprising the US Population

A workshop dealing with the physical growth of ethnic groups comprising the US population, organized by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, was held at Elkridge, Md, from Feb 18 to 20, 1975. A summary of the proceedings and the recommendations of the participants follow. Jean-Pierre Habicht, MD, discussed the selection of appropriate anthropometric variables, using as his main criterion their relevance to normal health and functioning. He showed, for example, that head circumference provides information other than that available from height and that it may be related to brain growth and intelligence test performance in preschool children. Many physicians cease to measure head circumference at 2 years of age. This is unfortunate because these measurements are very reliable and a decrease in a child's head circumference is a sensitive index of fat loss. James P. Carter, MD, DPH, stressed the importance of monitoring growth rate and

Perceptual Discriminability and Communication Performance in Preschool Children

Perceptual Discriminability and Communication Performance in Preschool Children

Length variables in sentence imitation.

The present study was designed to determine which of three indices of sentence length most effectively predicted pre-schooler's correct sentence imitations : total number of words; number of content words only; or the density of content words within a sentence. Twenty-four pre-school children, mean age 3.11 years, were asked to imitate 32 sentences which varied in total number of words, number of content words, and lexical density. Analysis of the childrens' correct responses, using verbatim imitation criteria, revealed that the ordering of sentences obtained was one not predicted by any of the three length indices. Re-examination of the sentences suggested that the number of morphemes (the number of meaningful units), rather than the number of orthographically defined words, might be the appropriate counting index. A significant Spearman rank order correlation (r = + 0.67, 30 d.f., p &lt;0.01) was found between morpheme length and sentence difficulty. It was concluded that morpheme length rather than word length may be a significant variable affecting pre-school children's sentence imitation performance.