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.…

Sixty-six preschoolers were asked to explain eight metaphors presented orally. Results indicated that older preschoolers gave significantly more metaphoric correct and metaphoric incorrect responses than did younger preschoolers; boys gave more metaphoric correct responses than girls; and girls gave significantly more consequential responses than…

The development of scripts and their use for guiding memory was examined in children ages 3 to 5 and 7 to 9. In the first phase of the study, 10 preschool children and 10 elementary school students were asked to describe three scripts related to everyday life. Scripts were analyzed to determine whether any differences existed between those of…

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…

The cognitive development of 30 24-month-old children who had entered residential care before the age of four months was compared with that of 30 working class children matched for age and sex who were living at home in London. Before testing, the children's fear of strangers was rated in a standardized situation. The mean mental age of the…

The follow-up study described in this paper tried to accomplish three major objectives: (a) to investigate the preschool and newborn antecedents of intellectual functioning, (b) to determine if there were stabilities from two and a half to seven and a half in the tempo and style of free play--and here we were looking for both isomorphic and…

The present study, based on teachers' ratings of their 4- and 5-year-old students, examined the correspondence between quantity and sophistication of verbal output and the child's production of gross bodily activity and fine manipulative movements. (Authors)

Syntactic analysis (kernel and matrix sentence frame types and transformational usage) of speech of fluent and disfluent preschool children revealed the fluent group using more double-base transformations and both groups comparable on the distribution of usage for sentence frame types. (Author/KW)

In developed countries, obesity tends to be associated with worse labor market outcomes. One possible reason is that obesity leads to less human capital formation early in life. This paper investigates the association between obesity and the developmental functioning of children at younger ages (2-4 years) than ever previously examined. Data from…

A total of 1,718 pre-K students had valid PPVT-III/TVIP pre- and posttest scores, and an analysis showed that 77% were in the average range at post-test in their language of instruction. An analysis of 2007 Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) reading and mathematics data for a cohort of students who attended pre-K in the 2002-2003…

Assumptions were made that children differ in production of imaginative behavior and speech-to-self or private speech. Three-, four-, and five-year-old children were observed with fantasy materials. Verbal fantasy play was assessed in relation to other individual characteristics of children. Results are reported. (JS)

It is evident from this task that preschool children can remember simple pictures as well as their names, that either pictorial or verbal codes can mediate memory of either pictures or words in accordance with task demands, and that same-different judgments tend to be faster to pictures than to words. (Author)

Sixty-four 3- and 4-year-olds were asked to identify another's view of a spatial array either verbally or by picture selection. Results indicate that verbalization leads to substantially more correct responses. Girls' performance was significantly better than boys' performance across both response modes. (Author/DB)