In this research we explored the relationship between spatial activities in the home and spatial ability at the start of formal schooling at age four. In total, 30 children participated in this research. Data sources included a demographic questionnaire, a survey of at home spatial activities, and standardized testing in verbal and non-verbal…

Psychologists are amongst the professionals who assess children to identify and prescribe for those with learning differences. They currently carry out these assessments in the context of the practice of inclusive education that involves providing for all children's educational needs in regular classroom settings. Recently, some psychologists have…

An experiment is described that involved video conferencing technology with preschool children in a music instruction context. Video conferencing is a powerful communications medium, and may be used in creative interactive contexts. The subjects were children, ages 3 through 5, participating in video conferences from Australia and Canada, eight at…

Children's understanding of a first order false belief was compared with their understanding of a third order embedding of mental states, defined as "an intention about a false belief about an intention." Subjects were 72 Canadian middle-class children who were 3, 4, or 5 years of age. Materials were playfigures of a mother, little boy,…

The purpose of this study was to identify the nature of the information which preschool-age children must attend to and maintain within problems in order to solve a series of two-choice simultaneous discrimination problems. Twenty-four preschool children participated in the experiment. The stimuli used in these problems consisted of planometric…

Early childhood professional organizations in Canada and the United States have evolved since leaders of the Kindergarten Department of the National Educational Association (NEA) met in Toronto in 1891. This meeting led to the creation of the International Kindergarten Union (IKU), now known as the Association for Childhood Education International…

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…

A total of 48 Canadian, middle-class 3-year-olds participated in a study of their abilities to predict the actions of a story character with a false belief and a story character engaged in pretence. In the experimental situation, a red puppet with pen-markers for legs left an "inky trail" to the location of a hidden treasure in one of…

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.…

An evaluation was made of the effectiveness of an empirically derived five-item questionnaire, the Teacher's School Readiness Inventory (TSRI), in identifying at-risk or failure-prone preschool children. Screened with the TSRI in the spring of either the prekindergarten or kindergarten year, four samples totalling 453 children were followed…

In the past few years, the concept of local control of public education through elected school boards has been superseded by legislation mandating other forms of citizen involvement in educational decision-making. Specifically Alberta's enactment of the Department of Education Act and approval of Operational Plans for Early Childhood Services…

A study investigated the relationships between the beliefs which parents hold about literacy learning and their children's early literacy knowledge and perceptions of learning to read and write. Sixteen 3- and 4-year-olds who attended the University of British Columbia Child Study Center completed child literacy and literacy perception tests,…

The relationship between preschool children's level of gender understanding and their ability to identify gender-linked attributes was examined. Participants were 26 3-year-old and 30 4-year-old children who were administered a single-cue gender labelling task, Slaby and Frey's (1975) gender constancy test, and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test.…

The paper reviews the history and present status of special education in Canada (with particular emphasis on the province of Ontario) and identifies recommended future directions. The legislative authority for special education and current policies are summarized in sections on the following provinces: British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan,…

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…