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The article discusses the author's experience of observing the collective improvisation done by students at the Prairie Vista Elementary school in Southern California. According to him, students at the school are divided according to their ability. It is claimed that value judgments and biases are eliminated by considering a classroom interactions as collective improvisation.

The concept of giftedness is frequently challenged on the grounds that 1) it is a ragged or slippery concept, 2) it is inegalitarian, 3) it is culturally arbitrary, and 4) it fails to distinguish children with natural ability from children who are parentally pressured. I argue that all these charges are unfounded. We can distinguish between naturally gifted and pressured children, but not of course unless we embrace the distinction conceptually. Contrary to the egalitarian argument, moreover, it is claimed that the concept of natural ability (not to be confused with the concept of innate intelligence) is required for a just approach to education. Without this concept, two kinds of children are likely to escape our notice: the bright, disadvantaged under‐achiever and the successful but pressured ‘trophy child’. Both, it is argued, require identification and support. Slippery slope objections are addressed, as is the charge of cultural arbitrariness. I conclude that giftedness is conceptually challenging because decisions about who is and is not gifted bring us to the threshold of our disagreements about values. The ball is then thrown back into the detractors’ court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children who could overcome the gravity error on Hood's (1995 ) tubes task were tested in a condition where they had to monitor two falling balls. This condition significantly impaired search performance with the majority of mistakes being gravity errors. In a second experiment, the effect of monitoring two balls was compared in the tubes task and a spatial transposition task not involving gravity. Again, monitoring two objects produced impaired search performance in the gravity task but not in the spatial transposition task. These findings support the view that divided attention disrupts the ability to exercise inhibitory control over the gravity error and that the performance drop on this task is not due to the additional task demands incurred by divided attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: Structural equation modeling, hitherto used to examine unidimensional theoretical models only, was used to investigate 2 dimensions, abilities and levels, simultaneously. Good evidence for the validity of conceptualizing 2 types of mathematical ability, 1 academic and 1 creative, each at 4 hierarchical levels, was established in 10th- and 11th-grade students (N = 1,090). IQ scores, representing general academic ability, predicted academic, but not creative, ability in mathematics. Creative thinking predicted creative, but not academic, ability in mathematics. These findings led to an innovative approach to identifying mathematical abilities and provided reliable and valid psychometric tools to make it possible. Based on two new instruments, teachers can differentiate curricula and individualize instructional strategies to match each student's needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the implementation of talent development and schooling programs in diverse low-income populations in the U.S. Statements which illustrate the complexity of talent development; Educational models which have resulted in schools being organized in a manner that has an effect on the development of talent; Implications of misunderstanding talent development and the acceptance of an educational model for economically disadvantaged learners.

This study used an ABAB design to investigate the effectiveness of social stories as an intervention with five school children who were experiencing difficulties at school lunchtime related to independently entering the dining hall. Measurements of general behaviour using the Conners’ Teacher Rating Scale-Revised (CTRS-R:L): Long Version and social cognition were also taken. The results showed an increase in targeted behaviour when social stories were used for three of the five children. The profile of results from the CTRS-R and social cognitive tasks indicated that social stories were an effective intervention for children who had poor social skills and difficulties understanding the perspective of others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on a game, Parcheesi, used as a device for teaching students about the hand-eye coordination. This hands-on and minds-on explorations of children in mathematics presents teachers with open-ended investigations to enhance mathematics instruction. Activities like this invokes the problem solving and reasoning, require communication skills and connect various mathematical concepts and principles. Parcheesi contains dice combinations, experimental and theoretical exploration of the probability of each possible roll of the dice can be determined. Basic skills in addition, division, decimals, percents and rounding reinforced and maintained by these sorts of explorations. 3-dimensional spatial sense is built through this activity. The game provide social learning contexts that assist children in negotiating differences and learning cooperation skills require more than one person to play. The students learn data driven decision making and the principles these principles can be applied in the to many areas of our lives.

This paper reports the results of a study into the quality of peer feedback provided by students within a computerised peer-assessment environment. The study looks at the creation of a ‘feedback index’ that represents the quality of an essay based upon the feedback provided during a peer-marking process and identifies a significant positive correlation between this index and the average marks produced for an essay. The data produced are analysed in an attempt to ascertain whether specific groups of students, based upon their ability in developing an essay within this subject area, in general tend to mark and/or comment on their peers either too generously or too critically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored a holistic model of English reading comprehension among a sample of 135 Spanish-English bilingual Latina and Latino 4th-grade students This model took into account Spanish language reading skills and language of initial literacy instruction. Controlling for language of instruction, English decoding skill, and English oral language proficiency, the authors explored the effects of Spanish language alphabetic knowledge, fluency, vocabulary knowledge, and listening comprehension on English reading comprehension. Results revealed a significant main effect for Spanish vocabulary knowledge and an interaction between Spanish vocabulary and English fluency, such that faster English readers benefited more from Spanish vocabulary knowledge than their less fluent counterparts. This study demonstrates the existence of literary skills transfer from the 1st to the 2nd language, as well as limits on such transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tasks representing 9 cognitive constructs of potential importance to understanding Chinese reading development and impairment were administered to 75 children with dyslexia and 77 age-matched children without reading difficulties in 5th and 6th grade. Logistic regression analyses revealed that dyslexic readers were best distinguished from age-matched controls with tasks of morphological awareness, speeded number naming, and vocabulary skill; performance on tasks of visual skills or phonological awareness failed to distinguish the groups. Path analyses further revealed that a construct of morphological awareness was the strongest consistent predictor of a variety of literacy-related skills across both groups. Findings suggest that morphological awareness may be a core theoretical construct necessary for explaining variability in reading Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study involved 281 early-school-age twin pairs (118 monozygotic, 163 same-sex dizygotic) participating in the ongoing Western Reserve Reading Project (S. A. Petrill, K. Deater-Deckard, L. A. Thompson, & C. Schatschneider, 2006). Twins were tested in their homes by separate examiners on a battery of reading-related skills including phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, word knowledge, and phonological decoding. Results suggested that a core genetic factor accounted for a significant portion of the covariance between phonological awareness, rapid naming, and reading outcomes. However, shared environmental influences related to phonological awareness were also associated with reading skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to examine the cognitive correlates of 3rd-grade skill in arithmetic, algorithmic computation, and arithmetic word problems. Third graders (N = 312) were measured on language, nonverbal problem solving, concept formation, processing speed, long-term memory, working memory, phonological decoding, and sight word efficiency as well as on arithmetic, algorithmic computation, and arithmetic word problems. Teacher ratings of inattentive behavior also were collected. Path analysis indicated that arithmetic was linked to algorithmic computation and to arithmetic word problems and that inattentive behavior independently predicted all 3 aspects of mathematics performance. Other independent predictors of arithmetic were phonological decoding and processing speed. Other independent predictors of arithmetic word problems were nonverbal problem solving, concept formation, sight word efficiency, and language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a possible link between creativity and insomnia. No research on the influence of creative talents exists, although there are several reasons to predict that creative tendencies could increase the likelihood of insomnia. There are, for example, anecdotal reports of persistence and single-mindedness in creative persons and in descriptions of creative work. The aim of this study was to look at the incidence of sleep difficulties in 30 highly creative children compared with 30 control children. The hypothesis was that there would be a higher incidence of sleep disturbance in highly creative children than in control children. Results showed that there was a significant difference between the two groups, with the creative children reporting more sleep disturbance, thus suggesting that creative ability may affect an individual's sleep patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the findings of a study on the sociolinguistic situation and psychology of learning a language in Punjab, India. The attitudes and development of the abilities of children are influenced by the education of parents. One of the constituents of the socioeconomic background of an individual is the level of linguistic skills of a student and the parents. There is a relationship between the socio-economic background and the choice of a language course leading to masteral degree.

Copyright of European Early Childhood Education Research Journal is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In a study of the ability to reconstruct the times of past events, 86 children from 4 to 13 years recalled the times of 2 in-class demonstrations that had occurred 3 months earlier and judged the times of hypothetical events. Many of the abilities needed to reconstruct the times of events were present by 6 years, including the capacity to interpret many temporally relevant cues, but there were substantial changes well into middle childhood in the availability of temporally useful episodic information. Children were poor at remembering the events' proximity or order with respect to a major holiday, but the order of the 2 target events was well recalled by 6 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers two transcripts, illustrating that children are often wiser than we imagine.The transcripts also reveal that tapping into this wisdom involves considerable openness and skill on the part of the adult listener and brings with it a considerable degree of adult responsibility. This, in turn, has implications for child-inclusive practice in postseparation mediation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many recent studies have explored young children's ability to use information from physical representations of space to guide search within the real world. In one commonly used procedure, children are asked to find a hidden toy in a room after observing a smaller toy being hidden in the analogous location in a scale model of the room. Three-year-old children readily find the hidden toy, although children at 2.5 years often have difficulty with the task. This experiment examined the causes of 2.5-year-olds' difficultly with this symbol system by incorporating testing procedures previously used with chimpanzees. Results indicate that young children's poor performance primarily stems from a difficulty achieving symbolic insight (i.e., recognizing the model-room representational relationship) but is also strongly affected by deficits in inhibitory control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technical characteristics of the Reading Essential Skills Screener -Elementary Version (RESS-E; B. T. Erford, G. Vitali, R. Haas, & R. R. Boykin, 1995) were studied using 4 independent samples of boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 8 years. Evidence of internal consistency, test-retest reliability, decision efficiency, factorial validity, convergent validity, and item difficulty and discrimination are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views on developing courage in children. According to the author, the qualities of courage and the ability to respond heroically are built in small step-by-step increments. The author views that, persevering despite adversity and remaining mindful despite fear are the two fundamental skills learned during early childhood in which the courage finds its roots.

The relation between reading ability and performance on an auditory temporal pattern discrimination task was investigated in children who were either good or delayed readers. The stimuli in the primary task consisted of sequences of tones, alternating between high and low frequencies. The threshold interstimulus interval (ISI) for discrimination of differences in the temporal properties of the sequences was measured. An ISI threshold was also measured in a control task that was identical to the primary task, except all tones in a control sequence had the same frequency. Delayed readers and good readers were equally able to discriminate the timing of the sequences at short ISIs, for both the primary and control tasks. Furthermore, the ISI thresholds were not correlated with the ability to read either irregular words or nonwords. These results suggest that reading ability is not related to the ability to track large and rapid frequency changes in auditory temporal patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how children think about the needs of animals may aid bridging from how they care about individual animals to caring about the environment more generally. This study explored changes with age in children's conceptions of animals' needs, including how such conceptions may extend beyond the individual animal to larger systems and conservation. During attendance at a North American zoo, 171 children between the ages of 4 and 14 years were interviewed and did drawings in response to questions about the needs of a favorite animal. The results reported here focus on developmental patterns. Animals' basic physiological needs were grasped at an early age. Understanding ecological and conservation needs showed the strongest developmental trends across the full age range, with some children showing early proficiency in ecological, but not conservation, concepts. Conservation and ecological thinking appeared to follow different trajectories, especially through middle childhood, when other dimensions than knowledge may cause increases in conservation conceptions. Educational implications include building on interest in individual animals; not underestimating even young children's ability to assemble ecological facts around an animal; emphasizing concrete ecological connections; and highlighting animals that children experience in their own lives. Considering the needs of animals offers a developmentally pre-potent way to increase how children know and value multiple levels of biological organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines whether reading-as-the-reader strategy can improve child writers' ability to compose descriptive writing consistent with the informal needs of their readers. Improvement in the ability of the children to revise and draft their essays; Sensitivity of writers to their readers; Readers' reflections on their experiences.

Examines the effects of concept mapping on the science achievement of middle grade science students. Ability level of students; Measures of achievement; Better success of lower ability students with concept mapping than higher ability students.

Objectives: This study investigated long-term neurobehavioral outcome from childhood bacterial meningitis, with particular focus on the influence of acute neurologic complications and age at illness.Methods: This prospective, longitudinal study compared survivors of childhood bacterial meningitis (n = 109) with grade- and gender-matched controls (n = 96) selected from the target children's schools 12 years post-illness, in order to identify residual deficits in intellectual, academic, and executive ability.Results: Results showed that at 12 years post-illness, children with a history of meningitis were at greater risk of impairment in each of these domains. However, development was shown to keep pace with that exhibited by healthy controls, suggesting no deterioration in function with time since illness. While prediagnosis symptom duration and acute neurologic complications were not predictors of 12-year outcome, meningitis before 12 months of age was significantly related to poorer performance on tasks requiring language and executive skills.Conclusions: These findings suggest that while the overall impact of meningitis may be relatively general and mild, younger age at illness is predictive of neurobehavioral outcome. There was no evidence of progressive deterioration postmeningitis, with comparison of results from 7 to 12 years post-illness demonstrating significant "catch-up" in aspects of executive function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the re-emergence of two understandings in relation to a current perspective on the nature of emotional intelligence. The first understanding is dualist in character, seeing the emotions as internal events subject to introspection. The second sees the emotions as sources of energy or tension that can be relieved in the process of articulation, in other words a kind of therapeutic dimension in a 'confessional' context. These two understandings together form the perspective that may be referred to as the 'introspective/confessional' hypothesis. Some of the traditional philosophical problems with this hypothesis are revisited and an alternative perspective of the emotions is offered. This alternative perspective sees our emotional lives as developing within a social and cultural context, as essentially public and open to objectification, what might be termed an 'objectivist/constructivist' hypothesis. Both hypotheses form the basis for discussion of our concept of emotional education. The conclusion is that the latter is a more practical and appropriate understanding for the purposes of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory (PEDI) is an instrument for evaluating functional performance in disabled children aged 6 months to 7.5 years. PEDI measures both performance and caregiver assistance in three domains: self-care, mobility and social function. The purpose of this study was to investigate the applicability of the American normative reference values of PEDI, to describe ability among Norwegian children. This was investigated in a sample of 52 non-disabled Norwegian children in the age range 1.0-5.9 years. The Norwegian sample scored significantly lower than the American reference values for Functional Skills; self-care (mean 39; p <0.001), Care-giver Assistance; self-care (mean 43; p <0.001), and Functional Skills; mobility (mean 43, p <0.001). For caregiver assistance, mobility, and for functional skills and caregiver assistance, social function, there was good agreement between observations in the Norwegian sample and PEDI reference values. The result calls for a larger study, from which Norwegian reference values for PEDI can be derived [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interviews Mary M. Fraiser, associate director of The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented in the U.S. Interest of Fraiser in determining the gifts and abilities of children; Importance of recognizing signs of potential in atypical gifted children; Details on the people who had the greatest effect on her thinking.

Both the environment and genetics are likely to influence the development of cognitive talent during the preschool years. It is not known to what degree or how these influences differ from those throughout the range of ability. 1943 twin pairs were assessed at 2, 3 and 4 years of age using diverse verbal and nonverbal cognitive measures. Consistently high scoring children were selected on a general cognitive factor. From behavioural genetic model fitting analyses, substantial shared environmental (70%) and modest genetic influences (20%) were found in the high group and this matched the aetiology of the entire sample. Strong genetic predisposition was not apparent. Individual differences in cognitive ability and high ability is largely due to shared environment during the preschool years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young children sometimes act inappropriately despite appearing to know what to do. Dissociations of this kind raise important questions about the organization and development of knowledge and action systems. The present study investigated a knowledge–action dissociation in 6–year–olds performing a speech interpretation task and tested the hypothesis that knowledge–action dissociations stem from a general difficulty resolving conflicting cues. When knowledge and action measures were equated in terms of the amount of conflict that needed to be resolved for a correct response, children’s knowledge no longer appeared to outstrip their ability to act appropriately. Implications of the findings for competing views of knowledge representation and knowledge–action system organization are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT. The authors investigated the relation between mental rotation (MR) and computer game-playing experience. Third grade boys (n = 24) and girls (n = 23) completed a 2-dimensional MR test before and after playing computer games (during 11 separate 30-min sessions), which either involved the use of MR skills (the experimental group) or did not involve the use of MR skills (the control group). The experimental group outperformed the control group on the MR posttest but not on the pretest. Boys outperformed girls on the pretest but not on the posttest. Children whose initial MR performance was low improved after playing computer games that entailed MR skills. The findings imply that computer-based instructional activities can be used in schools to enhance children's spatial abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about the way in which children learn the rules of literacy. We argue that children’s learning about orthographic rules can be the result of their own constructions. We provide longitudinal evidence on Greek children’s understanding of the morphophonemic rules for the spelling of the /o/ and /e/ vowel sounds in stems and inflections. These sounds can be spelled with more than one phonetically acceptable grapheme. When the vowel sound represents part of an inflection or the inflection itself, the grammatical status of the word is the key to the right choice between the alternative spellings. In contrast, no such morphemic rule applies when the sound is part of the stem morpheme. The spelling of each of these vowel sounds in the stem must rely on rote learning. Our results suggest that children go through a three-step developmental sequence in learning how to spell /o/ and /e/ in inflections: initially they adopt only one spelling for each vowel sound. Later, when they add the alternative spelling to their repertoire, they overgeneralize it to inappropriate words. Eventually, they restrict the alternative spellings to the grammatically appropriate words. We argue that these overgeneralizations, which have also been found in English, French and Portuguese spelling, indicate that children at first try to extend an existing rule, based on grapheme–phoneme conversion, for the new spelling. This slight change produces new experiences for them which allow them to construct a higher-level morphophonemic spelling rule. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This research investigates young children’s reasoning about the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction. We argue that this investigation is necessary before asserting that preschoolers have a full understanding of addition and subtraction and use arithmetic principles. From the current models of quantification in infancy, we also propose that the children’s earliest ability to add and subtract is based on representations combining and separating sets of objects without arithmetical operations. In an initial study, 2- to 5-year-old children was tested on addition (2+1), subtraction (3−1) and inversion problems (2+1−1) by using of possible and impossible events. Only the oldest age group (4–5 years) succeeded on the inverse problem. In a follow-up study, 3- to 4-year-old children were given a brief training intervention in which they performed adding and subtracting transformations by manipulating small sets of objects without counting. The beneficial effects of the training support the claim that preschoolers respond to the inverse problem on the basis of object representations and not on the basis of numerical representations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Explores the ways in which pupils from varying institutional contexts chose to deal with competing or complementary constructions of ability. Examination of the potential acceptance or resistance to institutional modelling; Potential tensions in the external and internal dialectic of self; Contextualization of pupul ability identity with regard to policy in the educational system of Great Britain.

This article presents a cultural-developmental framework for the analysis of children's mathematics in collective practices and illustrates the heuristic value of the framework through the analysis of videotaped episodes drawn from a middle-school classroom. The framework is presented in 2 related parts. The first targets the children's emerging mathematical goals in collective practices, with a particular focus on the complex role that artifacts play in children's emerging goals. The second part focuses on children's developing mathematics that takes form in their goal-directed activities: (a) Microgenetic analyses concern the process whereby children structure cultural forms like artifacts to serve particular functions as they accomplish emerging mathematical goals; (b) sociogenetic analyses concern the spread or travel of mathematical forms and associated functions within a community of individuals; and (c) ontogenetic analyses concern the interplay between the forms that children use and the functions that they serve over the course of children's development. The analyses of the classroom episodes points to the promise (and limitations) of the framework as a method for furthering our understanding of the interplay between social and developmental processes in children's mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the effects of parental overprotection on the developmental level and ability of the child. Symptom of depression; Increase of oppositional behavior; Decrease of preadolescent decision-making autonomy.

Focuses on the importance of nurturing the ability of children to determine whether a mathematical statement or fact is true. Use of schemes in describing the thinking of students; Difficulty of students in justifying their answers; Types of external justification sources, textbooks and authority figures.

The new national mandate in the United States to assess every child in reading and mathematics in grades 3 through 8 will increase public awareness of differences in the academic achievement of all groups, but it is likely that the comparisons of girls' and boys' achievement scores will generate the most contentious debate. There is a huge body of literature showing that girls obtain higher average scores on most standardized tests administered in this age group, and girls also receive higher classroom grades in most subject areas. The subject areas where boys tend to excel the physical sciences, mechanical reasoning, geopolitical topics, and advanced mathematics with spatial components are not routinely assessed until high school or college. Given different average patterns of academic achievement for boys and girls that vary in size and direction throughout childhood, recommendations are offered for assessments that are fair, valid, and meaningful for both sexes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modifies the stop signal task in order to ascertain whether the task design masks the detection of inhibitory skills in young children. Sensitive time for the development of inhibitory skills; Measures of inhibitory control.

Background. Scoring systems to evaluate children's human drawings for intellectual maturity have been found to have good intra- and inter-scorer reliability. However, there is some evidence (McCarthy, 1944) that such scores may not be stable over time. Aim. The aim of the study was to investigate raters and occasions as potential sources of error in children's Draw-a-Person scores using generalisability and classical test theory. Sample. The sample consisted of 85 school children (45 girls and 40 boys) aged between 8 years 1 month to 9 years and 7 months. Method. The Koppitz Draw-A-Person (1968) test was administered as a class test on two occasions with exactly a two-week interval between the occasions. All the children's drawings were scored by the same four raters. Results. Generalisability analyses of the Koppitz scores indicated that the variance component for raters and its interaction with both persons and occasions was very small, suggesting that very little measurement error was associated with the raters. However, the estimated variance component for the interaction of persons by occasions was substantial. With four raters and two occasions the generalisability coefficient was .47. These results were consistent with the classical test theory analysis which indicated generally high inter-rater reliabilities but a low test-retest reliability, based on a composite of the four raters. Conclusion. If satisfactory levels of reliability/generalisability are to be achieved with the Koppitz scoring system children have to be tested on several occasions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Child Evaluation Measure (CEM) for preschool children was developed to provide an inclusive assessment instrument that covers primary academic content areas (reading, literacy, mathematics, and science), domains of child development (social, emotional, and physical/motor skills), and other areas foundational for optimal development of the young child in today's society (music and creative arts, health and wellness, character education, and technology applications). The present study investigated CEM score validity on the 12 subscales and the total measure using data for 301 children assessed on each of two occasions. Both score reliability and score validity analyses were conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the speed with which children with specific language impairment (SLI) respond on a range of tasks. Evidence for generalized slowing; Comparison of models of slowing in children with language impairment; Comparison of individuals and subgroups of children with SLI.

Focuses on differential outcome effect (DOE) as useful tool to improve conditional discrimination learning in children. Increase in speed of acquisition and terminal accuracy; Rise in task difficulty; Expansion of DOE to early stages of development.

Assesses the causal impact of externally imposed goals on children's ability to extend their mathematical knowledge beyond an instructed procedure. Reasons why externally imposed goals influenced conceptual knowledge gain and transfer on children; Children's problem representations; Ability of children to transfer newly acquired knowledge to problems.