Toddlers with Down's syndrome (n=42) were presented with situations in which the primary focus alternated between an object stimulus and a social stimulus. The experimental subjects monitored their environment in the same manner as did the 25 control subjects (matched for mental age) during object mastery but had a more focused attention style…

Video games are neither neutral nor harmless but represent very specific social and symbolic constructs. Research on the social content of today's video games reveals that sex bias and gender stereotyping are widely evident throughout the Nintendo games. Violence and aggression also pervade the great majority of the games. (MLF)

Discusses the link between childhood memories and the "intimate geographies" of childhood experience as demonstrated in Hunter Diack's novel "Boy in a Village." Notes the settings of home, street, and institutional geography as themes in the book and in academic articles on children's social spaces. (JPB)

Many children do not enjoy social studies because they see it as having little, if any, relevance to their lives. That response is attributable primarily to two factors: Dry content and even drier instructional strategies. Teachers know that if material presented to children is not meaningful and relevant to their lives, real learning does not…

A multiple case study is reported aiming at identifying the degree of taking part and of being engaged in classroom activities for children with and without reading and writing difficulties/dyslexia. The aim was also to investigate the accordance between "effective literacy teaching" and children's expressed interest and observed taking…

Alberta parents enjoy a range of choices for their children's education, including the option of home education. Alberta's "School Act" and its funding guidelines for education recognize the central role of parents in the education of their children. No matter what your decision about educational programming, your ongoing involvement…

In children's realistic stories about animals a number of wholly and unambiguously anthropocentric assumptions are at work. For instance, in a study most of the books (81%) in one sampling of 50 stories involve a pet or the process of domesticating a wild animal. In most cases the primary animal character is a dog or horse. The predominance of…

Noting that most children enter school with a natural interest in writing, this digest discusses how elementary school teachers can become actively involved in teaching creative writing to their students. The digest considers several reasons for teaching creative writing, provides practical suggestions from other teachers about teaching story…

This publication recounts the childhood experiences of one boy at the Tennessee School for the Blind and his use of braille and talking book library services. It also describes his frustration at the rationing of braille reading materials at the school, and how his enormous appetite for reading material led him to "beat" the school's…

This study examined the relationship between adult physical activity levels and patterns of activity that were established during childhood. A random digit telephone survey was conducted of noninstitutionalized residents in a medium sized California city. Subjects ages 18 and over who volunteered to participate were questioned about their…

Seventy-five fifth grade students were administered an interest inventory to determine their attitudes toward reading and the kinds of reading materials they preferred. In addition, an observer completed reading behavior checklists for each student, and the students completed a second inventory to discover the amount of reading they did as opposed…

Annotations of 200 children's films, selected through evaluations of reactions of children at screenings at several schools in New York City and upstate New York, are included in this catalog. The introductory material reviews the screening and evaluation process and provides a glossary of related terminology. The films are then presented in…

Several points need to be addressed when selecting humorous books for children. First, people of all ages react to humor in different ways; therefore, what one child finds funny another may not. Care must therefore be taken in sharing books with and recommending books for children. Second, humor itself is difficult to define, but humor should…

The Preschool Interest Inventory (PSII) has been developed to meet the need for an informal measure of the interests, play behaviors, and communication skills of young children between the ages of 2 and 6 years, particularly those exhibiting delays in language development. The first step in the Inventory process is the Caregiver Interview. In the…

In this study, visual representations and childhood egocentricity were explored to see how young children found their simple representations adequate and sufficient at one time and then progressively increased their own demands for comprehensibility, accommodating to the perspective of the viewer. (Author)