Reconstruction of arbitrary versus logical sequences by preschool children

The ability of preschool children to construct and reconstruct ordered sequences was examined in a series of four experiments. In Expt. 1, the task was to copy, with the model present or absent, the order of items pegged on a clothesline. In Expts. 2–4, the subjects were required to reconstruct ordered series of pictures from memory. In all experiments, the orders were either logical or arbitrary. Reconstruction of an arbitrary series of events is within the problem solving capacity of 4-yr-old children if (a) reconstruction takes place in the presence of the model or follows immediately upon the removal of the model and (b) the original sequence is presented simultaneously. If, however, the lag between viewing and reconstruction is increased and/or the original set is not viewed simultaneously, as a unit, performance declines. The provision of an inherent order to the items within a set, either by introducing a connective narrative, or a depicted logical sequence, is sufficient to maintain that order over time and to provide a unifying cohesion to the items when viewed successively.     

The importance of basic concepts in the individual assessment of preschool children

The directions for administering four major preschool instruments were analyzed to determine whether any basic concepts are included in the words spoken by the examiner. Boehm found that young children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, tend to have difficulty with numerous basic concepts. Consequently, the inclusion of several of these concepts in test directions may hinder a preschool child's understanding of what is expected of him (and possibly invalidate his scores). The WPPSI directions were found to include the greatest number of basic concepts, and the ITPA directions included the fewest; the Stanford-Binet and McCarthy Scales were between these extremes. The implications of these findings for individual assessment of young children's abilities were discussed.     

Dyadic interactions in accepted and rejected children

Forty same-sex dyads were separated into three groups (accepted, rejected, and mixed status) on the basis of their scores on the likability and rejection scales of the Pupil Evaluation Inventory [Pekarik, E.,et al. (1976).Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 4, 83–97]. These dyads participated in a 10-min videotaped interaction which was separated into three segments: waiting period, cooperative task, and conversational period. Observational recordings of six micro behaviors (talk time, gestures, gaze, smiles, orientation, and laughs), as well as ratings of physical attractiveness and speech volume (loudness) and observational counts of cooperation were obtained from these tapes. These data were subjected to a 2 (sex) × 3 (status) × 3 (segment) MANOVA, with sex and status as between-group factors and segment as a within-group factor. The results indicated a number of significant multivariate effects. Univariate tests for attractiveness, speech volume, and cooperation measures indicated a significant status effect for the variable of intensity. These results are interpreted in terms of the developmental literature on social behavior, as well as the data on face-to-face interactions provided by S. D. Duncan and D. W. Fiske [(1977).Face to face interaction: Research methods, and theory. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum]. Suggestions for future research are offered.The authors wish to thank the principals, parents and children of Clinton Central Elementary, Frontier Elementary, and Western Elementary Schools for their help and participation in this project. We would also like to express our gratitude to Judith Conger, Patricia Moisan-Thomas, Judith Dygdon, and all other members of the research team who contributed their time and effort to this project.     

Training generalized improvisation of tools by preschool children

The development of new, "creative" behaviors was examined in a problem-solving context. One form of problem solving, improvisation, was defined as finding a substitute to replace the specifically designated, but currently unavailable, tool ordinarily used to solve the problem. The study examined whether preschool children spontaneously displayed generalized improvisation skills, and if not, whether they could be trained to do so within different classes of tools. Generalization across different tool classes was monitored but not specifically trained. Five preschool children participated in individual sessions that first probed their skill at improvising tools, and later trained and probed generalized improvisation in one or more of three tool classes (Hammers, Containers, and Shoelaces), using a multiple-baseline design. All five children were trained with Hammers, two were trained in two classes, and two were trained in all three tool classes. Four of the five children improvised little in Baseline. During Training, all five showed increased generalized improvisation within the trained class, but none across classes. Tools fabricated by item combinations were rare in Baseline, but common in Training. Followup probes showed that the training effects were durable.     

Identification of letterlike distortions by preschool children.

In two experiments preschool children chose one of two test forms that looked like previously exposed distortions of a letterlike-form. In Exp. I a distance metric was defined to measure the physical discrepancy between forms. It was found that the distance relationship between distortions and particular test forms did not designate the children's choice behavior. In Exp. II the children were able to choose previously exposed distortions when particular test forms contained novel features. The results are related to distinctive feature and prototype hypotheses to account for children's performance in recognizing forms.     

Recall in preschool children

Free recall, cued recall, color recall, organization in recall, and sorting of 3- and 4-year-olds was assessed on 9-item lists of objects that were orthogonally varied on color and category dimensions. Half of the children in each age group were presented items successively, and the other half simultaneously. Older children recalled more items than younger children in both free and cued recall, and also organized their recall more. Moreover, simultaneous presentation benefited the older, but not younger children. Clustering and sorting data suggested a decreasing reliance on perceptual information, and increasing utilization of conceptual information, over the preschool years. The results were discussed in terms of the importance of concrete, external stimulus support at both time of encoding and retrieval.     

Levels in the identifying of orientation by preschool children

A new approach to understanding the perception of orientation proposes that the first level in the processing of orientation information results in perceiving whether a shape is upright or nonupright; nonupright orientations are not distinguished from each other. As predicted, children of 3 and 4 years discriminated upright from nonupright pictures more readily than they discriminated the nonuprights (upside down and sideways) from each other. The angular differences between the pairs of discriminanda (whether 90 or 180°) had no effect on performance. the difficulty of distinguishing between nonuprights could not be attributed simply to a lack of attention to the dimension of orientation. The theory appears to have considerable generality, and provides a basis for understanding (1) perception of the orientation of both realistic and geometric shapes, and (2) similarities in orientation perception observed between children and adults.     

Test sample selection by preschool children: Honoring diversity

In a test of an inductive inference, preschool children's selection of objects was examined. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds selected diverse objects first in sequential selections; in Experiment 2, adults and 4-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, made similar selections under the same conditions. A defective object led subjects in all age groups to test a similar object. In Experiment 3, 4-year-olds chose to test a pair of dissimilar objects rather than a pair of similar objects, but 3-year-olds did not. Three-year-olds' selections were independent of diversity. In Experiment 4, we attempted to emphasize the diversity of objects for 3-year-olds. Their first task was to select an object that was the same as or different from a target object. The subjects responded correctly in this task but did not prefer to test diverse objects. Experiment 5 showed that neither 3- nor 4-year-olds have a bias to select nondiverse objects in a nontest context. The findings indicate that children as young as 4 years old value diverse evidence in induction.     

Spatial cognition: gathering strategies used by preschool children

How preschool children retrieve hidden objects was examined in two cross-sectional studies. The first was a simple task in which 1- and 3-year-olds saw two treats hidden in their living room. The newly walking infants generally sought the closer treat first, providing evidence for a least-distance spatial strategy. However, this strategy was affected by a tendency to approach the hiding place most recently baited. Three-year-old children used a least-distance strategy regardless of the order of hidings. In Experiment 2, 3- and 5-year-olds saw 12 puzzle pieces hidden in various containers equally spaced within a naturally furnished children's laboratory. Factors in addition to age were the distinctiveness of the containers and a requirement to return to the center of the array after each retrieval. Overall, children of both age groups were quite successful at this task, retrieving 11 of the pieces. However, 3-year-olds were less efficient, retrieving fewer pieces and requiring more searches. Detailed analyses of errors and patterns of choices indicated differential processes in achieving their performance. Three-year-old children showed the use of memories for events, discrimination of classes of hiding places, and efficient spatial biases. Five-year-old children were more likely to exhibit these processes concurrently.     

Closing-in behaviour in preschool children

Many pre-school children show closing-in behaviour (CIB) in graphic copying tasks: a tendency to place their copy abnormally close to or even on top of the model. Similar phenomena have been studied in patients with dementia, though it is unclear whether the superficial similarities between CIB in development and dementia reflect common underlying cognitive mechanisms. The aim of the present study was to investigate the cognitive functions involved in CIB in pre-school children. Forty-one children (3–5 years) were assessed for CIB, and completed a neuropsychological battery targeting visuospatial abilities, short term memory (verbal and spatial) and attention (sustained attention, selective attention and attention switching). Binary logistic regression found that performance on the attention subtests was the best unique predictor of CIB. A second analysis, in which the three attention subtests were entered as separate predictors, suggested that attention switching ability was most strongly related to CIB. These results support the view that CIB in children reflects inadequate attentional control. The convergence of these results with similar observations in patients with dementia further suggests that similar cognitive factors underlie CIB in these two populations.     

Symbolic functioning in preschool children

An important goal of parents and preschool educators alike is to introduce young children to a variety of symbol systems, and to help children begin to master some of these crucial cultural tools. Our research indicates that, in spite of the importance that adults place on symbolization, adult intuitions about the acquisition of symbolic functioning and how to facilitate it are often poor. In this article we summarize research on toddlers' understanding of two kinds of symbols—models and pictures. We show that the initial insight that something is a symbol or representation of something else is extremely challenging for young children, and it is an insight that must be achieved with each symbol system they encounter. Two factors that contribute to the difficulty children have appreciating symbolic relations are discussed: dual representation (the ability to think about something in two different ways at the same time; specifically, the ability to think of something both as an object itself and a symbol for something else) and representational specificity (understanding that a symbol can stand for a specific reality). Implications of these factors for preschool practice are considered.     

Planning processes in preschool children

This study investigated different types of planning skills in 4- and 5-year-olds. The planning tasks consisted of three search tasks and two clustering tasks. Each task was measured in three ways: by a planning score, the Bronson task attack strategy measure of ongoing behaviors, and by self-report. A varimax rotation of the scores in a factor analysis produced the same two factors for both the planning scores and the Bronson task attack strategy scores. One factor was formed by tasks that allowed for a variety of open-ended solutions, but also had heavy information-processing demands. Tasks that allowed for only one task-imposed solution, but with lighter information-processing demands, formed the second factor. Two of the primary planning tasks used in prior research with preschoolers did not load on the same factor, the grocery store search task (Gauvain & Rogoff, 1989) and the Wellman search task (Wellman, Fabricus, & Sophian, 1985), which suggests that these tasks measure different types of planful search. Self-report data indicated that children were not able to adequately describe their plans. In addition, the one task that required semantic clustering was too difficult for the majority of the preschoolers. Taken together, this suggests that language-based planning measures will underestimate preschoolers' actual planning capacity.     

Imaginary companions of preschool children

The developmental significance of preschool children's imaginary companions was examined. Mothers of 78 children were interviewed about their children's social environments and imaginary companions (if their children had them). Results revealed differences between invisible companions and personified objects (e.g., stuffed animals or dolls) in terms of the pretend friends' stability and ubiquity, identity, and relationship with the child. Relationships with invisible companions were mostly described as sociable and friendly, whereas personified objects were usually nurtured. Mothers reported that personification of objects frequently occurred as a result of acquiring a toy, whereas invisible friends were often viewed as fulfilling a need for a relationship. Compared to children without imaginary companions, children with imaginary companions were more likely to be firstborn and only children.