Migration flows are profoundly changing the composition of classrooms. Results from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) reveal that in 2015, almost one in four 15-year-old students in OECD countries reported that they were either foreign-born or had at least one foreign-born parent. Between 2003 and 2015, the share of…

Toddlers (2 to 3 years) and preschool children (5 to 6 years) were repeatedly presented with a six-tone melody, then tested for their discrimination of a variety of pattern features, including the specific component frequencies, successive intervals, and general melodic contour. To manipulate the information-processing demands of the task, the…

Events following children's imitation were observed. In the first study, immediate imitation of peers was observed during free play in four groups of preschoolers 23 months to 5 years of age. In the second study, immediate imitation of both peers and adults was observed in six groups of preschoolers 27 months to 5 years of age. (Author/RH)

Discrimination learning set performance was examined in preschool children as a function of age and number of trials per problem. Subjects were 120 children three, four, five, and six years old. (MP)

A total of 80 children 4 to 7 years of age participated in a study attempting to establish (1) the frequency of classification performance by age and in relation to available classification criteria, and (2) the degree of preference for different classification criteria by age, particularly differences between figurative and operative criteria.…

Young children's intentional preparation for future recall of the location of an object was examined within the context of a delayed-reaction paradigm. Children older than 3 years stored the object at distinctive locations and thereby facilitated retrieval. Feedback, viewing consequences, and suggestions for strategy positively influenced…

Preschool children were asked to choose the figure most resembling a real man from three figures drawn according to formulas used by children to depict humans. Results suggest development of drawing systems influences children's conceptions about objects or events. (Author/DB)

Thirty-six pairs of mixed-sex siblings were observed for two 1-hour periods in their homes. The younger siblings averaged 20 months of age and the interval between siblings was either large or small. Results are compared with a previous study of same-sex sibling interaction. (Author/RH)

Noting that children's appeals to parents can provide information about children's understanding of the family justice system and the dynamics of third party intervention, this study examined the tattling behavior observed in 2- and 4-year-old siblings of 40 Canadian families from diverse occupational and educational backgrounds. Observations of…

Systematic observations of affiliative interaction in 15 stable peer groups were conducted across three years in an urban day care center. Groups contained 193 French-speaking children ranging in age from one to six years. (Author/RH)

Studied preschoolers' and first through third graders' judgments about forgetting. Found that children believed central events of a story would be retained better than peripheral details; preschoolers and first graders believed memory was invulnerable to suggestion; and older children believed suggestibility and interference were less likely over…

In this study, Vygotsky's theory of the interpersonal origin and cognitive-developmental function of children's private speech is outlined and compared with Piaget's view of egocentric speech, and some contemporary North American research on children's private speech is reviewed. For the study, 32 preschool-aged children were videotaped during two…

Reviewed are major findings of the National Day Care Study (1986), a study intended to present to Canadians a general overview of day care services in Canada. Brief descriptions of major findings concern the increase in day care spaces, age groups served by day care programs, sponsorship of day care centers, day care spaces by province, and…

The effects of changes in spatial density on preschool children's behavior were examined in a quasi-experimental study involving repeated measures taken on two experimental groups and one control group. Subjects were all 59 children registered in three rooms of a non-profit public day care center in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Both quantitative and…

Studied the extent to which mothers' beliefs about children's social behaviors change during their children's transition from early to middle childhood and the extent to which these beliefs can be predicted from the circumstances of the mothers' lives and the mothers' perceptions about the social support resources available to them. (BB)