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Children's Performance (children + performance)
Selected AbstractsChildren's performance on the ,give x' task: a microgenetic analysis of ,counting' and ,grabbing' behaviourINFANT AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2007Elizabeth Chetland Abstract Children's understanding of the cardinal significance of counting is often assessed by the ,give x' task, in which they are categorized as ,counters' or ,grabbers'. Previous research indicates a sudden stage-like shift, implying insight into a principle. Employing a microgenetic approach, the present study was designed to explore whether this dichotomy masks a more subtle pattern. Fifty-five 39- to 58-month-olds received five ,give x' trials, involving 4, 5, 6, 7, and 10 objects, within a single session counterbalanced across individuals, each child participating in two similar sessions one week apart. Children's spontaneous strategies were recorded. They also completed a simple verbal counting test. Participants seldom simply ,grabbed'; even those who never counted gave items one-by-one. Some gave correct amounts by starting off counting then taking the remainder silently, suggesting internal counting. There was also evidence of children taking correct non -subitizable quantities without overtly counting. Individuals' strategy choice and the way they employed particular strategies varied, both within and between sessions. Furthermore, after achieving procedural mastery, children continued to refine their use of strategies. The results are discussed in relation to Karmiloff-Smith's RR model and Siegler's overlapping waves model. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] "So Big": The Development of Body Self-Awareness in ToddlersCHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 5 2007Celia A. Brownell Early development of body self-awareness was examined in 57 children at 18, 22, or 26 months of age, using tasks designed to require objective representation of one's own body. All children made at least one body representation error, with approximately 2.5 errors per task on average. Errors declined with age. Children's performance on comparison tasks that required them to reason about the relative size of objects and about objects as obstacles, without considering their own bodies, was unrelated to performance on the body awareness tasks. Thus, the ability to represent and reflect on one's own body explicitly and objectively may be a unique dimension of early development, a distinct component of objective self-awareness that emerges in this age period. [source] Executive function and the development of belief,desire psychologyDEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, Issue 4 2010Hannes Rakoczy In two studies children's performance on tasks requiring the ascription of beliefs and desires was investigated in relation to their executive function. Study 1 (n = 80) showed that 3- and 4-year-olds were more proficient at ascribing subjective, mutually incompatible desires and desire-dependent emotions to two persons than they were at ascribing analogous subjective false beliefs. Replicating previous findings, executive function was correlated with false-belief ascription. However, executive function was also correlated with performance on tasks requiring subjective desire understanding. Study 2 (n = 54) replicated these results, and showed that the correlations hold even if age, vocabulary and working memory are controlled for. The results are discussed with regard to the role of executive function and conceptual change in theory of mind development. [source] Auditory and speech processing and reading development in Chinese school children: behavioural and ERP evidenceDYSLEXIA, Issue 4 2005Xiangzhi Meng Abstract By measuring behavioural performance and event-related potentials (ERPs) this study investigated the extent to which Chinese school children's reading development is influenced by their skills in auditory, speech, and temporal processing. In Experiment 1, 102 normal school children's performance in pure tone temporal order judgment, tone frequency discrimination, temporal interval discrimination and composite tone pattern discrimination was measured. Results showed that children's auditory processing skills correlated significantly with their reading fluency, phonological awareness, word naming latency, and the number of Chinese characters learned. Regression analyses found that tone temporal order judgment, temporal interval discrimination and composite tone pattern discrimination could account for 32% of variance in phonological awareness. Controlling for the effect of phonological awareness, auditory processing measures still contributed significantly to variance in reading fluency and character naming. In Experiment 2, mismatch negativities (MMN) in event-related brain potentials were recorded from dyslexic children and the matched normal children, while these children listened passively to Chinese syllables and auditory stimuli composed of pure tones. The two groups of children did not differ in MMN to stimuli deviated in pure tone frequency and Chinese lexical tones. But dyslexic children showed smaller MMN to stimuli deviated in initial consonants or vowels of Chinese syllables and to stimuli deviated in temporal information of composite tone patterns. These results suggested that Chinese dyslexic children have deficits in auditory temporal processing as well as in linguistic processing and that auditory and temporal processing is possibly as important to reading development of children in a logographic writing system as in an alphabetic system. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Cross-linguistic transfer of phonological skills: a Malaysian perspectiveDYSLEXIA, Issue 1 2002Caroline Gomez Abstract This study examined the phonological and reading performance in English of Malaysian children whose home language was Bahasa Malaysia (BM). A sample of 69 Malaysian Standard Two pupils (aged 7,8 years) was selected for the study. Since commencing school at the age of 6 years, the children had been learning to read in BM and had subsequently also been learning to read in English for some 12 months. The study was part of a larger scale research programme that fully recognized the limitations of tests that had not been developed and standardized in Malaysia. Nevertheless, as a first step to developing such tests, a comparison with existing norms for the Phonological Assessment Battery (PhAB) and the Wechsler Objective Reading Dimension (WORD) was undertaken in relation to information about the children's L1 and L2 language competencies. Results showed that the children's performance on PhAB was at least comparable to the UK norms while, not surprisingly, they fared less well on WORD. The results are discussed in terms of L1 and L2 transfer, whereby the transparency of written BM and the structured way in which reading is taught in BM facilitates performance on phonological tasks in English. This has implications for identifying children with phonologically based reading difficulties. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Executive functioning by 18-24-month-old children: effects of inhibition, working memory demands and narrative in a novel detour-reaching taskINFANT AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 5 2006Nicola McGuigan Abstract Infants can inhibit a prepotent but wrong action towards a goal in order to perform a causal means-action. It is not clear, however, whether infants can perform an arbitrary means-action while inhibiting a prepotent response. In four experiments, we explore this executive functioning in 18,24-month-old children. The working memory and inhibition demands in a novel means-end problem were systematically varied in terms of the type and combination of means-action(s) (causal or arbitrary) contained within the task, the number of means-actions (1 or 2), the goal visual availability and whether the task was accompanied by a narrative. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that children performed tasks that contained causal as opposed to arbitrary information more accurately; accuracy was also higher in tasks containing only one step. Experiment 2 also demonstrated that performance in the arbitrary task improved significantly when all sources of prepotency were removed. In Experiment 3, task performance improved when the two means-actions were intelligibly linked to the task goal. Experiment 4 demonstrated that the use of a narrative that provided a meaningful (non-causal) link between the two means-actions also improved children's performance by assisting their working memory in the generation of a rationale. Findings provide an initial account of executive functioning in the months that bring the end of infancy. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Successfully Translating Language and Culture when Adapting Assessment MeasuresJOURNAL OF POLICY AND PRACTICE IN INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES, Issue 2 2010Juan Bornman Abstract A need exists for culturally valid and reliable developmental assessment tools for children with disabilities that are able to accommodate multiple languages. One way in which this goal can be achieved is through test translations. The purpose of this preliminary study was to examine the use of translations of select developmental assessment instruments from English to Afrikaans and from one cultural context to another (Western to South African). Specifically, we examined children's performance on two measures of development: the Mullen Scales of Early Learning and the Ages and Stages Questionnaires (ASQ). Both measures were completed for 47 typically developing South African preschool children between 3 and 6 years of age. The Mullen was completed by a speech and language therapist and the ASQ by a parent. Both of the measures used yielded similar results, and compared favorably with the existing norms. The procedures provide a framework for expanding such adaptations in other applications. [source] Children's memory of recurring events: is the first event always the best remembered?APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2003Martine B. Powell Three experiments were conducted to examine the effect of age (4,5 and 6,8 years) and retention interval on children's ability to remember separate occurrences of a repeated event that varied in terms of content (items, dialog, etc.) Experiment 1 explored children's ability to recall the first versus last occurrence of a series of six events, at either one week or six weeks delay. Experiments 2 and 3 explored children's ability to identify the position of items in terms of their order of presentation within the series across two retention intervals. Overall, the results revealed clear age differences in children's performance. In general, the 6- to 8-year-old children performed better on all tasks than the 4- to 5-year-old children. Further, the older children showed relatively good memory of the first and last items compared to the middle items, although the last items were more likely to be forgotten or misplaced in the sequencing tasks over time than the first items. For the younger children, the patterns of results were sometimes but not always consistent with that of the older children. The relevance and generalisability of these findings to the legal setting are discussed as well as directions for future research. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Parental Guidance in Preschoolers' Understanding of Spatial-Graphic RepresentationsCHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 3 2004Lisa E. Szechter This research was designed to observe whether parents guide their children's understanding of spatial-graphic representations and, if so, to describe the quality of the strategies they use. Parents read a picture book to their preschoolers (3 or 5 years, N=31) and children completed spatial-graphic comprehension tasks. Observational data revealed a range of creative behaviors used to address the book's spatial-graphic challenges. The incidence and quality of parental spatial-graphic behaviors were significantly related to 5-year-old children's performance on spatial-graphic measures. These findings, as well as the paucity of parent attention to aesthetics or graphic production techniques, are discussed in relation to representational development and educational practice. [source] | ||||||||||