Two studies were conducted to examine the hypothesis that compliance may be a "keystone" behaviour for intervention for children with developmental delays. The relations among children's behaviours were examined during teaching sessions conducted either by children's mother or an unfamiliar examiner. Specifically, the relations between children's compliance with instructional requests and their attention, affect (positive and negative), and inappropriate behaviours (inappropriate object use, inappropriate vocalizations, inappropriate sitting, wandering, and self-directed behaviour) were examined. In both studies, highly compliant children showed less negative affect and were more attentive to the tasks than were less compliant children. Highly attentive children, in turn, showed less out-of-seat behaviour/wandering, less inappropriate object use, and less negative affect, than did less attentive children. / In the second study, the hypothesis that delayed children may have greater difficulties with self-regulation than nondelayed children was investigated by examining-the effects of task difficulty on children's behaviour and affect during instruction. The responses of preschoolers with developmental delays Were compared to those of their nondelayed peers during two types of tasks (verbal and visual-perceptual) presented at three levels of difficulty (easy, moderate, and difficult). The tasks were presented in a standardized manner by an unfamiliar adult to minimize extraneous sources of variation in children's responding. To ensure that children in all groups received comparably difficult tasks, task difficulty was defined using an individualized procedure. Thus, group differences in children's responses to task requests could not be attributed to differences in their level of developmental functioning. Finally the associations between children's behaviours and task performance were examined to identify the behaviours that contributed to task success. / The results indicated that even when given comparably difficult tasks, children with delays showed less tolerance for task demands than did their nondelayed peers. The delayed children were less compliant than the nondelayed children during moderately difficult and difficult tasks and were also less attentive than the controls during difficult tasks. Also, whereas the delayed children showed reductions in compliance and on-task attention with increases in task difficulty, the nondelayed children were equally compliant and attentive at all levels of task difficulty. / All children were more compliant and attentive and showed less inappropriate behaviour during the visual-perceptual than the verbal tasks. Furthermore, compliance was strongly associated with children's performance on both types of tasks. The findings are interpreted as evidence that children with delays may have greater difficulties with emotion and self-regulation than their nondelayed peers.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.34771 |
| Date | January 1997 |
| Creators | Rogers, Cheryl-lynn. |
| Contributors | Zelazo, Philip R. (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Psychology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001617257, proquestno: NQ44565, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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