Significant controversy exists about the nature of phonological awareness, a causal variable in reading acquisition. In 4 studies that included 202 5- to 6-year-old children studied longitudinally for 3 years, 123 2- to 5-year-old children, 38 4-year-old children studied longitudinally for 2 years, and 826 4- to 7-year-old children, the authors…

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…

For may early childhood teachers, angry voices of children are heard all too often. When children focus on protecting themselves and surviving conflicts, they miss out on the joys and opportunities the early childhood program has to offer. Without the ability to solve problems in their interactions with others, children are not able to peacefully…

Initiation and continuation of preschool inclusion is a challenging task. Through interviews and focus groups of school district and special education personnel, researchers in this study examined how 5 programs in 1 Midwestern state provided such services. The investigation used a multiple-case study methodology to examine how these programs…

The first part of this study examined children's concepts of "preference of racial diversities" (PRD); nonviolent conflict-resolution (NCR); and "negative peace" (NP), defined as "peace in contrast to war." The first part also assessed children's mental development. The second part examined the relation of children's…

Improving identification and recruitment of preschool migrant children is one of the goals of the Preschool Coordination Project. Migrant recruiters may be failing to identify preschool-aged children because they believe there are no services for them. However, although federal regulations do not mandate services for every identified migrant…

The purpose of this study was to determine the conditions under which children at computers help or teach each other and to identify ways teachers might efficiently prepare and supervise a computer area. A total of 36 observations were collected of 4- through 7-year-old children and their teachers in three early childhood programs. One hundred and…

Sex differences in language development were studied. Protocols from 54 children, aged 2;0 to 4;2, were analyzed with Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) as the independent variable. When MLU's reached 3.75 to 4.0, differences began to favor girls. Results are discussed in terms of a social learning model and a cognitive model. (Author)

Literature on sociometric assessment with preschoolers is reviewed, along with research with kindergartners and elementary school students. It is concluded that sociometric status can be reliably measured in preschoolers, although some research indicates that rating scales can be more reliable for use with young children than nomination scales.…

Observed role relationships and behaviors that characterize interactions of preschool-aged sibling pairs and school-aged sibling pairs. Seven roles were operationalized and observed: teacher, learner, manager, managee, helper, helpee, and observer. Instances of prosocial and agonistic behavior were also observed in unstructured naturalistic…

Examined children's reasoning about mixed-domain events containing both conventional and moral components--violating a conventional rule and negatively affecting others. Found that older children were able to identify the moral components of mixed-domain events and combined moral and conventional issues in their reasoning. Younger children were…

Seventeen preschool children, 26 kindergarten, and 26 fourth grade childrens' knowledge structures were examined with a word association task and a match-to-sample picture task to determine whether or not children used slot-filler categories as a mediating structure between event-based and taxonomic knowledge structures as proposed by Nelson…

Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-Revised and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised were administered to 51 preschool, kindergarten, first and second grade students. Although two of four Pearson correlations between these two instruments were statistically significant, they may not be of practical importance. (Author)

Describes the educational thought of Friedrich Froebel and his substantial influence on early childhood education. Illuminates the historical influences on Froebel's philosophy, and how his ideas about Christianity affected his ideas on child-centeredness, on the role of play in construction of world knowledge, and on his concept of unity in…

Two experiments investigated 4- to 7-year olds' memory for a specific episode of a repeated event. In Experiment 1, younger children had more difficulty remembering when a new activity type had been experienced, although experience improved memory for schema-atypical activities introduced in repeated events. Experiment 2 showed younger children…