Fifty-six preschoolers were placed in a high-active or comparison group based on a preschool rating scale. Individual types of behavior that differentiated between groups and an interaction of group with setting indicated that comparison preschoolers modulated changing activities during play and TV, whereas preschoolers with hyperactivity…

Reports a study conducted to assess the knowledge, attitudes and opinions of preschool children concerning a public figure through use of a questionnaire administered orally. (ED)

Describes how a teacher can use a puppet from outer space to help preschool children reinforce their knowledge of facial features, stretch their imaginations and practice using verbal skills. (CM)

Examined effects of social interactions experienced by newborns on later speech ability. Subjects were 20 5-year olds and 20 6-year olds. Children were observed conducting a telephone communication task and also given the British Picture Vocabulary Test. Found that first-borns had larger vocabularies but less-developed conversation skills than…

Three experiments examined the ability of 60 3-year-old children's ability to select homonym pairs and the extent to which they realized that homonyms represent 2 different categories. Results confirm that children have the metalinguistic skills necessary to identify homonym pairs and to realize they represent two different categories, suggesting…

Assessed three- to six-year-olds' understanding of their own knowledge on different see-know tests. Found a significant positive association between passing see-know tests and free recall, which persisted even when cued recall and verbal intelligence were partialed out. (MDM)

The goal of the present study was to explore the role of expressive vocabulary as a moderator in the relation between shyness and maladjustment in early childhood. Participants were 82 preschool children (39 males, 43 females). Mothers rated children's shyness at the start of the preschool year. Children were interviewed individually to assess…

In selecting the canonical colors of color-specific objects, children may use verbal mediation, a cognitive process whereby an object and its color are matched using verbal rather than pictorial representation [British Journal of Developmental Psychology 14 (1996) 339]. To investigate this process, 108 2- to 5-year-old children were asked to…

This longitudinal study examined a comprehensive set of predictors of preschool language performance in a sample of children of adolescent mothers. Six domains of risk (low maternal verbal ability, intergenerational risk, contextual risk, relational risk, home environmental risk, and child characteristics) for poor preschool language development,…

Study was conducted in order to obtain preliminary confirmation of the hypothesis that novel and appropriate linguistic behavior can be understood through an analysis of stimulus control. (Author)

Examined various ways Black, low-income preschool children transform reality into fantasy during free play. Approximately one-half of the girls' and one-third of the boys' utterances represented fantasy transformations, the most frequent of which were animation, reification, and situational attribution. Found significant effects related to sex of…

We compared the incidence of imaginary companions and impersonated characters in 152 three and four year old children (75 males and 77 females). Children and their parents were interviewed about role play in two sessions. Although there were no sex differences in verbal ability or fantasy predisposition, there was a significant difference in the…

This study was designed to examine 6-year-old pupils attending different preschool institutions in Turkey in view of the multiple-intelligences theory. This research aims at determining whether the gender of pupils attending different preschool institutions leads to differences in their verbal-linguistics, mathematical-logical, visual-spatial,…

A 112-item Multi-Modal Articulation Analysis test was administered to 116 Head Start children ranging in age from 4 years, 6 months to 5 years, 5 months. The test involves presenting to the subject an object, or representation thereof, requiring a one-word response. Four modes of stimulus presentation were used: (1) actual objects, (2) black and…

A simple referential communication task was administered to 3-5 year-olds. Each subject communicated either to an experimenter who apparently could not see the referents that the subject was referring to or to an experimenter who could see the referents. The subjects communicating to an apparently blind experimenter were far more explicit verbally…