The first goal of this study was to examine young children's developing narrative comprehension abilities using theory-based, authentic measures of comprehension processes. The second goal was to examine the relations among young children's comprehension abilities and other early reading skills. Children ages 4 and 6 listened to or watched two…

AN OVERALL SURVEY AND ANALYSIS OF THE SUMMER 1965 PROJECT HEAD START IS PRESENTED IN THIS REPORT. THE FIRST SECTION DISCUSSES THE INCEPTION, IMPLEMENTATION, AND FORMAL ORGANIZATION OF THE PROJECT. THE SECOND SECTION PRESENTS DETAILED INFORMATION ON THE COMMUNITIES, CHILDREN, PARENTS, STAFF, AND WORKERS INVOLVED IN THE PROJECT. THE THIRD SECTION…

TO DETERMINE WHETHER SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES EXIST IN SKILL PERFORMANCE AS A RESULT OF HEAD START EXPERIENCE AND TO DETERMINE WHETHER THESE DIFFERENCES EXIST BETWEEN TWO ETHNIC GROUPS, 17 ANGLO-AMERICAN AND 62 MEXICAN-AMERICAN CULTURALLY DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN WERE PRE-TESTED AND POST-TESTED DURING THE SUMMER OF 1965 IN CONNECTION WITH SIX-WEEK…

The authors investigated whether practice in reading fluency had a causal influence on the relationship between working memory (WM) and text comprehension for 155 students in Grades 2 and 4 who were poor or average readers. Dysfluent readers were randomly assigned to repeated reading or continuous reading practice conditions and compared with…

Items missed on the PPVT were analyzed according to race and sex; results indicated that an alternative form of the test might use stimulus words other than those missed by a disproportinate number of subjects in this study. (MM)

Purpose: This study examined the effect of socioeconomic status (SES) on the early lexical performance of African American children. Method: Thirty African American toddlers (30 to 40 months old) from low-SES (n = 15) and middle-SES (n = 15) backgrounds participated in the study. Their lexical-semantic performance was examined on 2 norm-referenced…

This document reports an investigation of the relationship between maternal practices as observed in the home and the cognitive development of young children from low-income families. The purpose of the study was to determine if lower-class maternal warmth was associated with intellectual growth of the child. Fifty-two lower class mothers were…

The Monongalia County (West Virginia) Even Start Program is a comprehensive, rural, home-based family literacy program that provides families with adult literacy education, parenting education, and early childhood education. Although all Even Start programs conduct some home visits, the Monongalia County program is unique in that home visits are…

Mothers and caregivers of 28 preschoolers were trained to facilitate children's play. Play training of adults was shown to be an effective mechanism for enhancing preschoolers' verbal cognition. Training of mothers and caregivers was more effective than training of caregivers only. (CB)

The English second language development of 19 children (mean age at outset = 5 years, 4 months) from various first language backgrounds was examined every 6 months for 2 years, using spontaneous language sampling, parental questionnaires, and a standardized receptive vocabulary test. Results showed that the children's mean mental age equivalency…

Two cause indicator models were formulated to link items of the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment--Short Form to the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test--Revised. These models were tested with data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (506 and 345 children), and a final model was developed. (SLD)

This study attempted to develop a valid instrument for the assessment of attitudes in kindergarten children and to evaluate two potential curriculum procedures for facilitating attitude growth. One experimental treatment evolved from role-theory and emphasized perceptual awareness and the ability to put oneself in the place of another; the other…

THIS SUMMARY OF SELECTED HIGHLIGHTS IS FROM A MAJOR REPORT TITLED "A STUDY OF THE FULL-YEAR 1966 HEAD START PROGRAMS." THE STUDY WAS DONE TO DETERMINE WHETHER THE PERFORMANCE OF CHILDREN ON FIVE TESTS AND RATING SCALES IS RELATED TO THE LENGTH OF THE 1966 FULL-YEAR PROGRAM WHICH THEY ATTENDED. FULL-YEAR PROGRAMS WERE CLASSED AS SHORT…

Spanish-speaking preschoolers learning English in a bilingual preschool program were videotaped while working independently on tasks to examine their spontaneous private speech. Results show that the private speech of bilingual preschoolers appears to develop normally. Positive effects of second-language learning in a bilingual program on the…