Behavioral consistency when parents drive their children to preschool

How drivers signal, park, escort their children across a street to a preschool, and depart was videotaped unobtrusively for 39 days, to test for consistency of driver behavior and children's crossing behavior. Data were analyzed for 17 pairs of drivers and children, observed more than ten times under identical conditions. Frequency of identical actions was analyzed on the basis of category systems, whereby a sequence of behavior was broken down into several items. A variety of individual differences and inter-behavioral differences in consistency were detected, and in general drivers were more consistent than children. Drivers' signals and accompanying of children were somewhat inconsistent, while some of their choice behaviors were very stable. Inconsistent behavior was discussed in terms of the lack of or insufficient specification of drivers' and children's schemas. Repeated naturalistic observation can not only identify behavioral consistency and reveal the structure of relevant schemas in daily life but also can predict behavior.     

Verbal interactions between children and their mothers during the preschool years.

Observed 20 2-5 yr olds and their mothers while they interacted verbally in an unstructured situation. Quantitative as well as categorical aspects of the interactions were analyzed. Both types of dependent variables were found to change with the age and the language level of the children. Close mutual adaptation of both partners for the quantitative as well as the qualitative dimension were demonstrated. The correlation patterns between the types of utterances allow the abstraction of a "primitive" and an advanced cluster of language-teaching-learning behaviors. The stability and generalizability of these trends are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Child-rearing values of low-income, urban Puerto Rican mothers of preschool children.

To enhance clinicians' understanding of the child-rearing values Puerto Rican mothers consider important in parenting preschool-age children, the authors conducted focus groups, interviewed cultural consultants, and searched the literature. Eighty low-income, urban mainland Puerto Rican mothers with young children ranked in order of importance to them 13 child-rearing values that were presented. Mothers ranked honesty, respect, and responsibility most highly, followed by loyalty to family, affection, and sharing. They ranked values associated in the literature with Anglo culture (e.g., assertiveness, independence, and creativity) as being of lesser importance. Implications for therapy and educational interventions with parents and children are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Design and evaluation of an obedience training program for mothers of preschool children.

Conducted a training program in a clinic playroom to teach 24 mothers to use the principles of contingent social reinforcement to increase their preschool child's obedience. During the training, E relayed commands to the mother, cued her to reinforce her child, and reinforced the mother from behind a 1-way vision screen using a "bug-in-the-ear" device. As a group, the mothers' contingent use of maternal proximity and verbal reinforcement improved significantly as a result of the training program. Children's obedience to their mothers' verbal commands was improved as well. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

People versus object orientation, social behavior, and intellectual abilities in preschool children.

Relative preference for interacting with people vs objects (i.e., orientation) was observed in 38 4-5 yr olds during nursery-school free play. As expected, Ss who showed greater orientation to objects performed better on tests assessing ability to organize and classify physical objects. Contrary to expectations, greater orientation toward people was unrelated to tests assessing social knowledge (e.g., role-taking ability and moral judgment). Degree of social knowledge was found instead to relate to sociometric popularity with peers and to ratings of several aspects of social competence (e.g., peer leadership). Results suggest that interest in and knowledge of the physical environment form a mutually facilitating interactive system. A similar but separate interactive system may be formed between the effectiveness of social functioning and social knowledge. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptual grouping by infants and preschool children.

We tested infants 6 to 8 months and children 5? years of age for their discrimination of silent intervals between elements of auditory patterns. Standard patterns consisted of six 200-ms tones, three at 440 Hz and three at 659 Hz, with 200-ms intertone intervals (XXXOOO). Contrasting patterns differed only in the addition of a silent increment following the third tone (i.e., between tone groups, XXXOOO) or following the fourth tone (i.e., within a tone group, XXXOOO). Contrasting stimuli presented to infants had increments of 200, 125, 100, or 75 ms; those presented to children had increments of 100, 75, and 50 ms. Infants detected all increments in all locations except the 75-ms increment in the between-group location, but there were no differences in performance for different increment locations. Children detected all increments, but performed significantly worse for between-group increments than for within-group increments. Thus, the context of a temporal increment influences its detectability for children, as it does for adults, indicating that children group the elements of auditory stimuli on the basis of frequency. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Training preschool children to recognize phonemes in words.

Trained 64 preschoolers (4 yrs 4 mo to 5 yrs 7 mo of age) to recognize isolated phonemes in word context. A forced-choice matching-to-sample procedure was used in a learning set design in which the following factors were varied: (a) position of phoneme, (b) contrast between words, (c) type of phoneme, (d) redundant visual cue, and (e) allophonic variation. Performance improved significantly over 4 days of training. There were a number of significant main effects and interactions as a function of task factors. The redundant visual cue greatly improved performance during training but produced no significant transfer. Allophonic variation had no significant effect on performance. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Multimodal assessment of impulsiveness in abusing, neglecting, and nonmaltreating mothers and their preschool children.

Three groups of 12 mothers who had a history of child abuse (mean age 26.67 yrs), child neglect (mean age 25.75 yrs), or no known history of child maltreatment (mean age 29.08 yrs) and their 48–70 mo old children were compared on the nature and extent of their impulsiveness in a multimodal assessment procedure. Children were also rated by their mothers on the Revised Conners Parent Rating Scale and by their teachers on the Conners Teacher Rating Scale. Results indicate that comparison mothers performed better than did abusing mothers on 2 measures of motor inhibition, a modified Matching Familiar Figures Test and the Stroop Color and Word Test. Neglectful mothers rated their children as having more conduct problems than did comparison mothers. No significant differences were found on the other child measures of impulsiveness. Implications for assessing and treating child maltreatment are discussed. (48 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Marital conflicts in the home when children are present versus absent.

Characteristics of marital conflict when children (8-16 years) were present versus absent were compared on the basis of 47 mothers' and fathers' reports during a 15-day period. Mothers described 669 incidents of marital conflict, and fathers described 551 incidents. About two thirds of the conflicts occurred in children's absence. Contrary to predictions, conflicts in which children were present were more negative (e.g., more negative emotions, more destructive conflict tactics) and more often about children than were child-absent conflicts. Although parents may attempt to protect children from conflict exposure, children tend to be exposed to a relatively hostile and emotionally negative subset of the marital conflicts that occur in the home. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The nature of preschool phonological processing abilities and their relations to vocabulary, general cognitive abilities, and print knowledge.

The development of reading-related phonological processing abilities represents an important developmental milestone in the process of learning to read. In this cross-sectional study, confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the structure of phonological processing abilities in 129 younger preschoolers (M = 40.88 months, SD = 4.65) and 304 older preschoolers (M = 56.49 months, SD = 5.31). A 2-factor model in which Phonological Awareness and Phonological Memory were represented by 1 factor and Lexical Access was represented by a 2nd factor provided the best fit for both samples and was largely invariant across samples. Measures of vocabulary, cognitive abilities, and print knowledge were significantly correlated with both factors, but Phonological Awareness/Memory had unique relations with word reading. Despite significant development of phonological processing abilities across the preschool years and into kindergarten, these results show that the structure of these skills remains invariant. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality resemblances in adoptive families when the children are late-adolescent or adult.

Members of 220 families who had adopted children at least 14 yrs previously completed the California Psychological Inventory and Thurstone Temperament Schedule to investigate personality resemblances among adoptees and their adoptive families. Adopted children were in late adolescence or adulthood. Results show that, consistent with other recent adoption studies, there was little resemblance between parents and adopted children or between adopted and natural siblings. The presence of a biological relationship raised correlations slightly, suggesting that much of the explanation for personality variation lies in within-family environmental variation or nonadditive genetic effects. It is noted that, in previous research, young adopted children were better adjusted on the average than biological children in the same families; however, this was no longer true for the late adolescents and young adults of the present study. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Family Health Project: Psychosocial adjustment of children whose mothers are HIV infected.

The psychosocial adjustment of 87 inner-city African American children 6–11 years old whose mothers were HIV infected was compared with that of 149 children from a similar sociodemographic background whose mothers did not report being HIV infected. Children were not identified as being HIV infected. Mother reports, child reports, and standardized reading achievement scores were used to assess 4 domains of adjustment: externalizing problems, internalizing problems, cognitive competence, and prosocial competence. The results indicated that, on average, children from both groups had elevated levels of behavior problem scores and low reading achievement scores when compared with national averages. Relative to children whose mothers were not infected, those whose mothers were HIV infected were reported to have more difficulties in all domains of psychosocial adjustment. Potential family processes that may explain the findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What's driving you? A template which underpins the assessment of preschool children by speech and language therapists

This paper presents a diagrammatic representation of features which underpin the initial assessment of preschool children newly referred to speech and language therapy. This model forms part of the results of a project whose overall aim was to make explicit the way in which expert speech and language therapists consider preschool children for intervention. Within a mainly qualitative methodology, data were collected by use of semistructured interviews, case analyses and a focus group workshop. The notational tool used for analysis, systemic grammar networks, is described and used to represent an assessment paradigm. The model is presented as a potential support for less experienced therapists or as a stimulus to reflection in more experienced therapists.     

Counting on working memory when learning to count and to add: A preschool study.

In this study, the author aimed at measuring how much limited working memory capacity constrains early numerical development before any formal mathematics instruction. To that end, 4- and 5-year-old children were tested for their memory skills in the phonological loop (PL), visuo-spatial sketchpad (VSSP), and central executive (CE); they also completed a series of tasks tapping their addition and counting skills. A general vocabulary test was given to examine the difference between the children’s numerical and general vocabulary. The results indicated that measures of the PL and the CE, but not those of the VSSP, were correlated with children’s performance in counting, addition and general vocabulary. However, the predictive power of the CE capacity was significantly stronger than that of the PL capacity. Poor CE capacity should thus be taken into consideration when identifying children at risk of experiencing learning disabilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sarcoplasmic reticulum responses to repeated sprints are affected by conditioning of horses

Sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) responses to repeated sprints and to physical conditioning were studied in 10 Quarter Horses. Exercise tests (four repeated sprints on a treadmill) were conducted before and after 12 wk of sprint conditioning. Muscle samples from the middle gluteal muscle were taken before and after each exercise test, and SR vesicles were isolated. Calcium uptake was determined spectrophotometrically using antipyrylazo III, and Ca2+-ATPase activity was determined using an enzyme-linked optical assay. Conditioning increased calcium uptake rate and Ca2+-ATPase activity by 14 and 38%, respectively, before exercise and by 25 and 26% after exercise. Exercise decreased calcium uptake rate and Ca2+-ATPase activity by 37 and 27%, respectively, before conditioning and by 28 and 21% after conditioning. Decreases in calcium uptake and Ca2+-ATPase activity of SR have been associated with fatigue during exercise, and this association is strengthened by the moderating effect of conditioning.     

Immunity to coccidiosis: stages of the life-cycle of Eimeria maxima which induce, and are affected by, the response of the host

An attempt was made to determine the relative importance of the different life-cycle stages of Eimeria maxima in the induction of immunity and also those stages most affected by the immune response of the host. In one experiment the life-cycle was controlled by chemotherapy but in all other experiments partial life-cycles were induced by transfers of infected mucosa between hosts. The results indicated that the second generation schizont stage is probably that most concerned in the induction of protective immunity and that sexual stages are most susceptible to immune inhibition. After initial inhibition in the immune host the earlier asexual stages were able to resume development when transferred to a susceptible host. The longer the period of exposure to the immune environment, the less able was the parasite to recover.     

Teaching writing to children who are underserved.

Writing instruction for children from low-income families has been dominated by 2 antithetical views, one emphasizing component skills and drill-and-practice instruction, the other emphasizing natural processes of learning language. A 3rd approach, one that reflects pedagogical principles that are based on a sociocognitive model of writing was investigated. Writing instruction that featured these principles in varying degrees was examined in 26 4th-grade and 16 6th-grade classrooms. Regression analysis indicated that more than 40% of the variance in children's posttest writing-quality scores was accounted for by degree of adherence to the model, and scores in writing mechanics did not suffer from application of the model. The results suggest that sociocognitive approaches to writing instruction have much to offer this population of children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Broader transfer produced by guided discovery of number concepts with preschool children.

In 2 experiments, 43 preschoolers learned the concept of one-to-one correspondence to identical behavioral criteria by matched discovery, expository, or observation methods of instruction. Performance on a subsequent posttest, administered by a "blind" experimenter, revealed a pattern in which the groups did not differ on short-term recall and near transfer, but the discovery group excelled on far transfer (conservation) and delayed recall. The effect of guided discovery on the acquisition of broader learning outcomes is discussed. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A cognitive-social learning approach to social skill training with low-status preschool children.

Changes in the behavior and peer acceptance of low-status preschool children as a result of social skill training were examined. Children who had low sociometric status and were also low in classroom use of social skills were randomly assigned to a skill training group (n?=?18) or to an attention control group (n?=?15). Children in the training group were coached in 4 skills: leading peers, asking questions of peers, making comments to peers, and supporting peers. Trained children showed a significant increase in their use of the trained skills comments and leads from pretest to posttest, whereas control-group children showed no change. Neither control nor skill-trained children changed significantly on sociometric measures from pretest to posttest. Increases in skill use in the classroom with peers was correlated with improvements in children's knowledge of friendly social strategies from pre- to posttest. Results are interpreted as evidence of a social skill basis for peer acceptance and of the need to develop procedures to assess the mechanisms of change during social skills training. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)