The purpose of this paper is to determine if girls of preschool ages find more success in learning letters of the alphabet, their sounds, and simple two and three letter words formed from these letters, than boys of similar ages; and in addition to compare the achievement of three-year -old children to that of four-year-old children. The children were introduced to six letters of the alphabet and the sound associated with these l etters. They were then introduced to sixteen two and three-letter words that could be formed from these letters. At the conclusion of the ten tasks, a post test was administered and the results were studied to compare the achievement of girls to boys and three-year-old children to four-year-old children. It was found that there is no appreciable difference between the scores of girl s and boys, nor is the difference between the scores of three-year-old children and four-year-old children meaningful.

This study investigated the development of curiosity in young children. A previous study by Kreitler, Zigler, and Kreitler had identified five specific types of curiosity, manipulatory curiosity, perceptual curiosity, conceptual curiosity, curiosity about the complex, and adjustive-reactive curiosity. The basic problem was to describe the development of these five types of curiosity in three-, four-, and five-year-old children. A secondary problem was to determine if children follow a predictable pattern in their development of the five types of curiosity. Five tasks, measuring nineteen variables of curiosity, were administered individually to thirty three-year-olds, thirty four-year-olds, and thirty five-year-olds by a trained rater. Mean scores for each variable and each type of curiosity were calculated for each group.