Second-grade and fourth-grade subjects were required to listen to a congruent or scrambled story, followed by a recognition test of the sentences included in the story. The importance of information included in the story had previously been rated by college students. Older children were found to recognize the information more accurately than younger children. Both second and fourth graders performed better in the congruent condition than in the scrambled one. No difference was found between recognition accuracy for important and for unimportant information. The results supported previous findings for the age effect and the type of story. The lack of significant effects involving the type of information may have resulted from the lack of sensitivity of the indicator of importance used.

Students are regularly involved in art making as a part of the general school curriculum. This study investigated and documented sixth grade students' art making in terms of thinking and the construction of knowledge. Following qualitative research procedures the study took place in two sixth grade classrooms. Four questions directed the investigation. These included inquiries into the subjects' art making knowledge base, how knowledge is used in the practice of classroom art making, ways in which art making exhibits cognitive and reflective thinking, and finally how student production is affected by interactions with other members of the environment. Data was collected through observation and informal interview. Data collection activities focused on three student subgroups, identified by peers as having an interest, disinterest or a neutral attitude toward classroom art making.Analysis of data revealed three broad patterns of behavior relative to student art making. Reflecting the research questions these behaviors considered ways art making knowledge is constructed by students, how art making knowledge is used for the process of art production problem solving, and the impact of other members of the environment on the art making.These data indicate that subjects are especially able to construct and use art making knowledge in terms of technique and procedure. Knowledge exhibited through the use of analytical and critical language was observed less frequently, and with less skill. Subjects' processed art making as cognitive and reflective thinking, rather than as spontaneous activity. Students identified asart interested especially pursued their production activities, making choices and decisions relative to their act of making and their constructed object. Junctures of the art making activity specifically considered the envisioning of the problem, choosing appropriate production actions and the determination of a work's completion. Interaction between members of the setting was also prevalent during class observations. Teacher input resulted in the highest level of impact relative to student art making. The focus of student interactions was primarily social and thus had limited influence on the art making practices of their peers. / Department of Art

The purpose of this study was to determine if the 'language listening' of children ages three years and three months (3.3) to three years and nine months (3.9) as measured by their behavioral response is influenced by the word-order of an interrogative sentence when presented in normal word-order, misplaced word-order, and scrambled word-order.'Language listening' for the purpose of this investigation was defined as the interpreted meaning of a young child as measured by the correct behavioral response to verbal stimuli ordered in specific syntactical variations. The verbal stimuli were written in three variations of word order. These patterns were normal word order which was the regular order of an interrogative sentence; misplaced word order was a pattern in which all parts of the verb and noun were interchanged in position; and scrambled sentence were positioned randomly without any set pattern of order.The subjects in this study were selected from the available population of children attending five nursery schools located in the metropolitan area of Muncie, Indiana. Selection of subjects and categorization into groups was based upon the index of the mean length of utterance of each individual member. This index was computed from a language sample containing one hundred utterances that were collected in the Screening Session.'Language listening' was measured by the relevant responses of subjects performance to specific requests to respond with an appropriate toy to the question asked and the directions given. Scripts used in the Data Collection Session combined a series of nine behavioral tasks with three of each of the types of word order--normal, misplaced, and scrambled.One major limitation of this study was the index used to measure the verbal maturity of the subjects in this study. This index is an average of the utterance used by the child and disguises the verbal expansion ability of the child and the sophistication of the child's verbal ability. Another limitation of this study was the selection of the behavioral tasks. It was observed that the subjects' performance in some cases was made from an anticipated response rather than responding from actual understanding of the tasks. It appeared that the behavioral tasks were oversimplified to be used the subjects included in this study.A research design employing the use of a Latin Square was constructed to combine the behavioral tasks with the types of word order. An analysis of variance was used for the analysis of data. The F-ratio, derived from an analysis of variance, was used to test statistical significance of the null hypotheses. The .05 level of significance was designated as the standard of significance.The findings of this investigation revealed that there is no statistical significance between 'language listening' and the type of word order. It was also determined in this study that the type of word order does not differentially affect children with varying verbal maturity. The findings did agree with research in the area in regard to children with a nonfluent level of verbal maturity. Agreement was found to support the research that with children having a nonfluent level of verbal maturity, the type of word order that is used as verbal stimuli does not affect the meaning that they glean from the stimuli.Among the recommendations offered was that further research be conducted with children in the early stages of language listening. It was also recommended that further research be conducted using an index of verbal maturity that is descriptive of the actual verbal ability of the child.

It was the major purpose of this study to determine whether changes in the thinking and behavior of Head Start mothers would occur if they received training to teach cognitive concepts to their children. The sample consisted of three groups of Head Start mothers. One experimental group received training in the use of the child-centered approach to teach cognitive concepts to their children. The other experimental group received training in the use of the task-centered approach in teaching cognitive concepts to their children. The control group received no training to teach cognitive concept to their children. PopulationThe subjects were forty-one Head Start mothers who volunteeredto participate in the study. Mothers in the two experimental groups were assigned to treatment groups according to their proximity to a treatment center. Mothers were assigned to the control group because they were unable to attend treatment sessions.InstrumentThe Parent As A Teacher Inventory (PAAT) was used to measure the feelings and behavior of the Head Start mothers about their role as teachers to their own children.Treatment SessionsThere were two experimental treatment groups in the study. Group I received training to teach cognitive concepts to their children with a child-centered approach. The child-centered approach refers to teaching with focus on the feelings of the child, the attitude of acceptance, and the use of positive feedback. Group II received training to teach cognitive concepts to their children with a task-centered approach. The task-centered approach refers to teaching with primary focus on the activity and the manipulation of materials.Both experimental groups received training to teach the concepts of the classification of colors, the classification of geometrical shapes, and the classification of size. There were four training sessions for each experimental treatment group. The meetings were held bi-weekly and each were one hour and a half in length. The training sessions were conducted by the researcher. The materials to be used by the mothers to teach the cognitive concepts were provided by the researcher. Statistical AnalysisThe posttest means were adjusted on the basis of the pretest scores. The adjusted posttest means on the Parent As A Teacher Inventory (PAAT) were then compared using analysis of covariance. The analysis of covariance is a statistical technique which permits one to test a null hypothesis of no difference among the groups' criterion means (posttest means) after a potentially confounding variable, the covariate (pretest means), has been controlled. The hypotheses were tested using a t statistic.It must be oncluded that no statistically significant changes in the thinking and behavior of Head Start mothers were produced by providing only four training sessions. Neither the child-centered nor the task-centered approach to teaching changed the thinking and behavior of the mothers to produce statistically significant differences.However, parents indicated in their interviews that they believed the training was beneficial to their children and to themselves. In the interviews, mothers stated that they became interested in teaching their children and will continue to teach them. Many stated that the workshops gave them new ideas about teaching materials and new ways to teach their children. Many mothers also expressed that the time which they spent with their children teaching and playing the games was valuable for the learning which took place and for the positive interaction between the mother and the child.

This thesis explores preschoolers' use of causal-associations (associations between specific instrument and effects) and causal relations incorporating knowledge of transformation from initial to final states. Gelman, Bullock and Meek (1980) claimed that preschoolers use causal relations. However, in their study it was possible to make correct choices using causal-associations. Therefore, in Experiments 1 and 2 tasks were designed to distinguish between use of the two relations. Preschoolers made inferences about instruments which could produce the transformations depicted within event sequences (based on those used by Gelman et al.). Performance on tasks requiring selection of causal relations was significantly worse than performance on tasks where causal-associations could be used. Two methods of reasoning, Relational (causal) and Associative- Causal Matching, were identified. Modified versions of the tasks in Experiment 1 were used in Experiments 3, 4 and 5. Four-year-olds were more proficient at using Relational Methods than 3-year-olds although both ages demonstrated the ability to use this method. In Experiment 6 children had to construct sequences. Three-year-olds preferred associative constructions to causal ones. This preference may have influenced their performance in the previous experiments. Experiments 1, 2, 3 and 5 incorporated sequences with compound end-states (e.g. wet and broken cup). Three-year-olds clearly preferred to focus on just one of these attributes, chosen on the basis of salience. This preference evidently contributed to their lower scores throughout these experiments. However, even when relative salience was controlled (Experiment 7) or when single attributes were used (Experiment 4) 3-year-olds' performance was worse than 4-year-olds' in terms of choices based on causal relations. These experiments indicate that preschoolers use both Associative-Causal and Relational Methods. There is evidence for a shift from a preference for judgements based on associative relations to a preference for causal relations between 3 and 5 years. The ability to deal with compound features also appears to develop over the preschool years.

Specific strategic control (executive) processes were investigated in 17 boys with ADHD and 18 normal control boys, ages 9--13 years, using a paradigm combining the Warned Reaction Time and Stimulus-Response Compatibility tasks. The length and constancy of the preparatory interval (PI) were manipulated in order to study preparatory processes associated with prediction and temporal adjustment. Compared to control boys, boys with ADHD had particular difficulty with long, fixed, and short, variable preparatory intervals, suggesting problems with the strategic control of response preparation and adaptation to temporal changes. Heart rate deceleratory patterns recorded during the PI indicated that impaired active, accurate, prediction played a major role in the preparatory deficit. The study also manipulated compatibility and predictability of response demands in order to assess inhibitory processes and the ability to shift flexibly between changing response demands. Boys with ADHD had particular difficulty shifting flexibly between compatible and incompatible responding, indicating a problem with strategic response adjustment. Findings also suggested possible difficulties with the allocation of consistent, effortful attention and the inhibition of inappropriate responding. In addition, interactions were also observed in the ADHD group between the strategic and inhibitory measures. Overall, the findings supported Douglas's (1988; 1999) conceptualization of ADHD as involving a self-regulatory deficiency consisting of interacting strategic, effortful, and inhibitory components. The study also addressed the question of whether Sanders' (1983) cognitive-energetic model, which has been used widely in studies of ADHD, can deal adequately with the cognitive difficulties associated with ADHD. The findings indicated that the model has not been developed adequately to deal with the kinds of higher level processing deficits that were identified in the ADHD group. In addition, in

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1982. / Bibliography: leaves 109-118. / Microfiche. / x, 118 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1984. / Bibliography: leaves 138-146. / Microfilm. / xi, 146 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

There is no abstract available for this dissertation.