Intervention to raise the literacy achievement of disadvantaged groups in society has focused on preschool literacy development because it is predictive of later educational achievement and because research has shown that key strands of literacy emerge very early in childhood. Intervention programmes to promote emergent literacy are likely to be…

This study examined the socio-demographic factors associated with trajectories of parental involvement in shared book reading and other home activities for children aged 2-6 years. The study uses data from 3836 families participating in "Growing up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children." Latent growth curve models…

Alleviating disadvantage in low-income environments predicts higher cognitive abilities during early childhood. It is less established whether family income continues to predict cognitive growth in later childhood or whether there may even be bidirectional dynamics. Notably, living in poverty may moderate income-cognition dynamics. In this study,…

In recent years, more than 700,000 children aged 3 through 5 years identified with speech or language impairments (44%), developmental delay (37%), autism (9%), and other disabilities (10%) received federally supported special education services. For our republished article in the inaugural issue of the 50th anniversary volume, we have selected a…

Indications are that verbal-sensory-perceptual ability can be raised during critical preschool years to improve chances for later learning. Measurement instruments were: Stanford-Benet, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Frostig Developmental Test of Visual Perception, Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities, and Metropolitan Readiness Tests.…

IN ORDER TO TEST THE EFFICACY OF METHODS USED BY VARIOUS RESEARCHERS FOR GENERATING SPONTANEOUS SPEECH FROM UNDERPRIVILEGED CHILDREN, 20 THREE- TO FOUR-YEAR-OLD GIRLS WERE SELECTED AT RANDOM FROM A HEADSTART-TYPE PROGRAM AT HOWARD UNIVERSITY FOR TESTING. ALL WERE NEGROES AND FROM A TARGET AREA FOR POVERTY PROGRAMS. THE CHILDREN WERE TESTED…

Thirty-one 4-year-old Negro boys attending a research preschool in Chicago were observed during a play session. Preliminary evaluation of the data from the observations indicated a marked heterogeneity in the subjects with regard to verbal facility, cognitive development, and quality and nature of object relationships. Poor correlation was found…

This study investigated the effects of a program of mother-child interaction using children's books on the verbal skills of culturally disadvantaged 3-year-olds. A total of 47 subjects were involved in the study, with white and black children, males and females equally represented in experimental, placebo and control groups. After only three…

After taking base rate measures of verbal behavior, using a specially devised Story Telling Test and selected sub-tests from the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities, 34 children with a mean age of 4-4, attending a year-round Head Start program, were assigned to matched experimental and control groups. The children in the experimental group…

THIS STUDY OF THE ARTICULATORY AND INTELLIGIBILITY LEVEL OF A SOCIALLY DISADVANTAGED GROUP OF CHILDREN IN THE HEAD START PROGRAM INVOLVED 150 CHILDREN, 4 1/2 - 6 YEARS OF AGE, WITH EQUAL NUMBERS OF BOYS AND GIRLS. THIS GROUP WAS COMPOSED OF CHILDREN OF FAMILIES WITH SPANISH LANGUAGE BACKGROUND, OF CHILDREN OF NATIVE NEGRO FAMILIES, AND OF CHILDREN…

Two levels of stimulus condition were used to determine whether or not the amount of salient information contained in the perceptual stimuli accompanying orally presented "wh-questions" (those including the concepts who, what, where, when, how and why) facilitates children's comprehension. Conditions varied in terms of the number of…

In an attempt to explore a systematic approach to language expansion and improved sentence structure, echoic and modeling procedures for language instruction were compared. Four hypotheses were formulated: (1) children who use modeling procedures will produce better structured sentences than children who use echoic prompting, (2) both echoic and…

AS PART OF A COMPREHENSIVE HEALTH CARE PROGRAM, A TEAM OF MEDICAL AND HEALTH-RELATED SPECIALISTS CONDUCTED SCREENING EXAMINATIONS OF CHILDREN ENROLLED IN SUMMER HEADSTART PROGRAMS IN WASHINGTON, D.C. THE 286 CHILDREN EXAMINED WERE NEGROES AND RECENTLY IMMIGRATED INDIANS AND LATIN AMERICANS. TWO SPEECH PATHOLOGISTS AND THREE AUDIOLOGISTS FROM THE…

THERE IS GROWING EVIDENCE THAT THE PROCESS OF EDUCATIONAL RETARDATION WHICH HAS BEEN OBSERVED IN MANY CHILDREN FROM ECONOMICALLY DEPRESSED AREAS SETS IN LONG BEFORE THE CHILDREN ENTER THE FIRST GRADE. THIS STUDY WAS DESIGNED TO EXAMINE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MATERNAL LANGUAGE STYLES AND PRE-SCHOOL CHILDREN'S COGNITIVE STYLES AND INTELLECTUAL…

PART OF A LARGER STUDY OF THE COGNITIVE ENVIRONMENTS OF PRESCHOOL CHILDREN, THIS EXPERIMENT EXAMINED THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MOTHERS' LANGUAGE STYLES AND THE CONCEPT ATTAINMENT OF THEIR PRESCHOOL CHILDREN. SPEECH SAMPLES WERE OBTAINED FROM 160 URBAN NEGRO MOTHERS OF FOUR SOCIOECONOMIC GROUPS (MIDDLE-CLASS, UPPER-LOWER, LOWER-LOWER, AND…