Effects of eye color and sex on accuracy in archery

126 subjects were 47 children in Grade 7, 49 students in Grade 8, and 30 adults, who shot arrows at bull's-eye targets from varying distances. Analysis of variance of accuracy scores indicated that there was no difference for eye color, but boys scored more points than did girls.     

Behavior problems in elementary school children

Two-year follow-up data for an ostensibly normal sample of children who had been previously characterized on a number of behavior problem dimensions by their teachers and peers were analyzed. In addition, 1-year follow-up data were presented for a group of extreme behavior children from the same school. The behavior dimensions of Distractibility and Conduct Problem were fairly stable over 2 years for girls and boys. In addition, Inadequacy—Immaturity was stable for girls and may mark more severe behavior problems for young girls. Behavior problems of young girls were more predictive of later achievement difficulties while behavior problems of boys were more prdictive of peer and teacher difficulty. Finally, teacher's clinical judgment was demonstrated to be useful for indexing behavior for hyperactive boys.Portions of this paper were presented at the New England Educational Research Organization Meeting, Provincetown, Massachusetts, May 1975. The authors wish to thank Dr. Raymond Pressman and the teachers of Hillside Elementary School, Niakayuna, New York, for providing valuable assistance in support of this study. This study was supported in part by the Research Foundation of New York, Grant number 020-7315-A.     

Rehearsal dynamics in elementary school children

Several studies on free recall suggest that processes responsible for recall are analogous to processes responsible for rehearsal. In children, the relationship between cumulative rehearsal and recall performance has been proven to be critical; however, the locus of the effect of rehearsal is not yet fully understood. To unfold the mechanisms that come into play in an overt rehearsal free recall task, we assessed rehearsal and recall sequences in children between 8 and 10 years of age. These sequences give information about the context in which items are repeated and rearranged throughout the list and subsequently recalled. Rehearsal sequences consisted mainly of items from neighboring list positions in their original temporal order. The same characteristics were true for recall sequences. Qualitatively, order effects during study and recall did not differ over age groups. However, in older children who were using cumulative rehearsal more intensively, successive rehearsal and recall of items in their original order was more pronounced. Therefore, we suggest that a main feature of item rehearsal with regard to facilitating recall is the strengthening of interitem associations based on the temporal order within a list and that this characteristic develops with age.     

Effects of ball color on horizontal perimetry detection

The subjects were 16 college students assessed as having normal, uncorrected visual abilities. Each subject responded to the appearance of each of five variously colored ball sections as they were introduced into the subjects' visual field. Analysis indicated that colors with luminance values greater than 70 CD/M2 (black, blue, green) were detected further in the horizontal peripheral plane than were colors possessing values less than 36 CD/M2 (red, purple).     

Effects of eye color on frisbee toss

Light-eyed individuals generally perform better at self-paced activities while dark-eyed individuals perform better at reactive activities. Using multiple regression it was found that dark-eyed students hit a target with a frisbee more times than did light-eyed students.     

Development of the concept of family in elementary school children

Two studies were conducted to examine the relation of age, gender, and family structure to children's understanding of the concept of family. In Study 1,387 children in Grades 1 through 6 were asked to classify various groupings of individuals as constituting or not constituting a family. Results showed both age and gender differences in children's conceptions of families: Younger children, especially boys, generally used concrete, absolute criteria for defining a family; younger girls were similar to older children in that they were more likely to employ abstract, relational criteria for family definition. Results also showed that children's own family structure was not related to their family definitions. In Study 2, 64 children from the original sample were given a measure of cognitive ability to examine whether differences in cognitive development or differences in socialization were a likely source of younger girls' more advanced understanding. Gender differences in cognitive ability did not emerge, suggesting that the gender effects in Study 1 reflected differences in the socialization of boys and girls. Implications of the findings for understanding children's reactions to family disruption are discussed.     

Self-regulation and academic achievement in elementary school children

Self-regulation is a key construct in children's healthy and adaptive development. In this chapter, the authors situate self-regulation in a theoretical context that describes its underlying components that are most important for early school success: flexible attention, working memory, and inhibitory control. The authors review evidence that supports substantive links between these aspects of self-regulation and academic achievement in young children. They also discuss methodological challenges in reliably and validly assessing these skills (involving measures that are biased, are not applicable across broad age ranges, or triangulated) and describe some recent advances in measures of self-regulation (involving the NIH Toolbox or the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders assessment) that are reliable, ecologically valid, and predictive of children's school achievement.     

Effects of midterm integration on state and trait anxiety in black and white elementary school children

This study investigated the effects of stress associated with school integration on state and trait anxiety for 637 Black and White fourth- fifth- and sixth-grade children. A court-ordered integration plan resulted in the transfer of children from all-White and all-Black schools into integrated schools 2 months before the end of the school year. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children (STAIC) was administered 1 week prior to the transfer and 6 weeks following transfer. Females who were transferred had higher state anxiety scores than nontransferred females, but there were no differences for males. Transferred Black and White children did not differ in state anxiety, but transferred Blacks were higher in trait anxiety than transferred Whites.     

The development of moral orientation in elementary school children

While much research has focused on issues of justice in children's moral learning, little is known about children's use of other moral orientations in solving moral problems. A study was conducted with children drawn from Grades 1, 3, and 5 (total n=54). Fables were used as the moral dilemmas, since previous research had shown that they could be solved from either a justice or a care orientation. In individual interviews, children were asked how they would solve the problems in the fables, whether there was a different solution, and what the best solution (justice or care) would be. They were then asked to explain the logic of the solution they offered. The results from the study showed that (a) children tended to adopt a care orientation as their first solution and to consider it the best solution, (b) there were no differences between first- and third-grade boys and girls, (c) solutions involving violence and tricks appeared among the fifth-grade boys only, and (d) the ability to explain the logic of both orientations to the fables problem was correlated with children's use of abstract reasoning skills on beginning formal operational tasks and with perspective-taking ability.We would like to thank the principal and teachers of the Thetford Elementary School, Thetford, Vermont, for their participation in this project. We are also grateful to Elizabeth Hoffman, Dan Parish, Kathleen Lambert, and Heather Caldwell for their help with data collection, to Carol Kottmeier and Mary Varanese for their coding of the Selman data, and to Ann Huebner, Kay Johnston, Sharry Langdale, Michael W. Pratt, and Lawrence Walker for their comments on the paper. Support for the research was provided by Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College.     

Prevalence of behavioral symptoms in rural elementary school children

Third- and fourth grade children attending rural midwestem elementary schools were assessed for the presence of fiftyfive behavior symptoms. In general, prevalence rates were higher for boys and reflected behavioral patterns commonly associated with conduct problems and immaturity. More neurotic forms of behavior were reported for girls. Additionally, an increase in symptoms per sex across grade level was found with fourth grade girls showing an increase common to the conduct disorder cluster.     

Academic engagement of elementary school children with learning disabilities

Variability of attention-to-task and its relation to instructional contexts for children with learning disabilities was investigated. Twenty-four mainstreamed children were observed in both the regular class and the resource room. Student behaviors relating to academic engagement and the situational contexts in which they occurred were coded. Significant differences in rate of engagement were found for classroom setting, type of instruction, and level of peer involvement, indicating that degree of attending is not stable but a function of the context in which it occurs. Implications for the assessment of attentional problems and instructional practices, especially as related to the resource room program, are discussed.     

Chinese children excel on novel mathematics problems even before elementary school

ABSTRACT— Kindergartners in China showed greater numerical knowledge than their age peers in the United States, not only when tested with arithmetic problems, which Chinese parents present to their children more often than U.S. parents do, but also when tested with number-line estimation problems, which were novel to the children in both countries. The Chinese kindergartners' number-line estimates were comparable to those of U.S. children 1 to 2 years more advanced in school. Individual differences in arithmetic and number-line-estimation performance were positively correlated within each country. These results indicate that performance differences between Chinese and U.S. children on both practiced and unpracticed mathematical tasks are substantial even before the children begin elementary school.