Alternate form reliability of the PPVT-R for white and black preschool children

Alternate forms of the PPVT-R were compared for 72 preschool children. Pearson product moment correlation coefficients for whites, blacks, males, females, and for the total sample were significant; values ranged from .74 to .86. Using standard scores for analyses, differences between Form L and Form M mean scores were nonsignificant for whites, males, females, and for the total group. However, for black preschoolers, Form L was apparently more difficult to complete successfully than Form M.     

Some issues regarding the introduction of preschool enrichment programmes for black South African children

A nationwide preschool enrichment programme is currently being designed for black South African preschoolers, with a view to reducing the high rate of failure in the first few years of schooling. This paper challenges some of the assumptions underlying this programme. Consideration is given to the implications of applying First World enrichment programmes in developing countries, to the relevance of western models of deprivation and cognitive deficit, and to the assumption that black South African preschoolers are cognitively disadvantaged. It is concluded that considerably more research is required before effective forms of intervention can be designed.     

Effects of race and social class on preschool performance on the developmental test of visual-motor integration

The visual-motor integration of preschool children who varied in terms of race, sex, and socioeconomic status was assessed using the Beery-Buktenica Test of Visual-Motor Integration (VMI). An analysis of covariance revealed that there were significant main effects for race, sex, and socioeconomic status. Since, at the three- and four-year level, the VMI was normed only on white suburban children, the results of this study seemed to indicate the need for norms for black children at the preschool level. Thus, the second part of this paper reports normative data for black preschool children on the VMI.     

Intrachild variabilities: Will curtailment of testing harm minority children?

Compared intrachild variability of five-year-old children (49 black, 34 white) on the Primary Mental Abilities Test when subjects reached their fifth birthday after completing at least two years of preschool enrichment. Conclusions, although qualified on the basis of limited sample size, revealed wider intrachild variability with minority children. This suggests that abandonment of testing may increase instructional problems and possibly lower the quality of instruction provided minority and poor children.     

Effects of parenting style and preschool experience on children's verbal attainment: Results of a British longitudinal study

In order to assess the relative strengths of mothers' education, parenting styles, and children's experience of preschool in predicting children's verbal attainment scores, this study made use of data derived from a cohort of children born in England, Wales, and Scotland in March of 1946 (N = 5,362). The parenting styles of cohort members have been studied from the time members' firstborn children were 4 years old. Tests administered when these second-generation children were 8 years old assessed children's abilities in vocabulary, reading, and sentence completion. Although preschool experience was an independent and significant predictor of verbal attainment scores, its power was small when compared with mothers' education. In addition, preschool attendance had no significance in predicting the scores of children whose mothers were relatively understimulating.     

Arts enrichment and school readiness for children at risk

Arts enrichment provides varied channels for acquiring school readiness skills and may offer important educational opportunities for students from diverse backgrounds and with diverse needs. Study 1 examined achievement within an arts enrichment preschool that served low-income children. Results indicated that students practiced school readiness skills through early learning, music, creative movement, and visual arts classes. Students who attended the preschool for 2 years demonstrated higher achievement than those who attended for 1 year, suggesting that maturation alone did not account for achievement gains. Across 2 years of program attendance and four time points of assessment, students improved in school readiness skills, and there were no significant effects of race/ethnicity or developmental level on achievement growth. Study 2 compared students attending the arts enrichment preschool to those attending a nearby alternative on a measure of receptive vocabulary that has been found to predict school success. At the end of 1 year of attendance, students in the arts program showed greater receptive vocabulary than those at the comparison preschool. Results suggest that arts enrichment may advance educational outcomes for children at risk.     

The Relationship Between Body Weight and Motor Skill Competence in Hispanic Low-SES Preschool Children

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between motor competence and BMI in Hispanic preschool children from low SES backgrounds. One hundred and forty-eight Hispanic low SES preschool children (male = 81, female = 67 participated in this study. All children were measured on gross and fine motor competence using the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales-2 (PDMS-2). Body Mass Index (BMI) was calculated for all participants. A Pearson correlation was used to analyze the relationship between the preschool children’s BMI and PDMS-2 performance. A 2 (gender) × 3 (BMI) MANOVA was conducted to assess the gender and BMI differences on each PDMS-2 subtest. Nearly one-third of children in the study demonstrated gross and fine motor delays and slightly over one-third of the children were classified as overweight or obese. A significant negative correlation was found between BMI and visual motor integration scores. The MANOVA analysis showed that low SES Hispanic boys were significantly better in gross motor skill competence and girls were more advanced in fine motor performance. These findings will make a significant contribution to the literature in identifying relationship between motor competence and children’s body weight. This study is also beneficial to practitioners and educators in designing intervention and preschool curriculum to improve children identified with motor delays and to reduce BMI through physical activity.     

The Factors Related to Preschool Children and Their Mothers on Children’s Intuitional Mathematics Abilities

The aim of this study is to assess the factors that are related to preschool children and their mothers on children’s’ intuitional mathematics abilities. Results of the study showed that there were significant differences in children’s intuitional mathematics abilities when children are given the opportunity to think intuitionally and to make estimations, and when their mothers believe in the importance of providing such opportunities in the home setting. Children who tended to think fast and to examine details of objects had significantly higher scores. Also, the working mothers aimed to give opportunities to their children more often than non-working mothers. The mothers whose children received preschool education tended to give more opportunities to their children to think intuitionally and to make estimations. When incorrect intuitional answers or estimations were made by children, lower-educated mothers tended to scold their children much more than higher educated mothers. Mothers having at least a university degree explained more often to the children why they were in error than did the less-educated mothers.     

Evidence of alphabetic knowledge in writing: connections to letter and word identification skills in preschool and kindergarten

The writing skills of 286 children (157 female and 129 male) were studied by comparing name writing and letter writing scores from preschool to kindergarten with letter and word reading scores over the same time period. Two rubrics for scoring writing were compared to determine if scores based on multiple components (i.e., letter formation, orientation on the vertical axis, left–right orientation, and correct letter sequencing) would better reflect differences in children’s writing knowledge in preschool and kindergarten than rubrics composed of one component (i.e., letter formation only). While developmental changes in writing scores were found, little additional information was provided by multiple component scoring rubrics compared to the single component rubric. Letter writing scores were more strongly related to letter and word reading scores than name writing scores but neither writing score was predictive of growth. Implications of the findings for intentional/systematic writing instruction in preschool curricula are discussed.     

Preschool intellectual assessment with the ammons quick test

The Quick Test, Form 1 (QT) and the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, Form L-M (SB) were administered to 70 preschool children. A low significant correlation of.36 for the MA scores and.39 for the IQ scores were found. However, the mean IQ achieved on the QT was 73 which is at the borderline intellectual level, while the mean IQ achieved on the SB was 111, which falls in the bright-normal range of intelligence. This 38-point difference is highly significant. These findings raise serious doubt about the validity of the QT for the intellectual estimation of preschool children with above average functioning. Further research with a group that also includes children of below average intelligence is indicated.     

Precision of age norms in tests used to assess preschool children

This study investigated normative precision in 14 preschool tests representing four domains: cognitive, language, adaptive behavior, and early academic skills. The purpose was to explore the consequences of using tests with more‐ vs. less‐precise age norms to identify disabilities in preschool children. As expected, on tests with more precise norms, standard scores associated with the same raw score shifted gradually across age groups. On the other hand, tests with less precise norms showed more dramatic standard score shifts across age groups. Examination of the degree of shift found in each test indicated that many preschool tests have norm tables that are potentially problematic for diagnosing disabilities, particularly for children near norm group cut‐off ages. On high stakes tests, an optimal span is one to three months. This standard can be achieved by using interpolation and/or increasing the size of norming samples at the preschool level. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Development of phonological awareness during the preschool year: the influence of gender and socio-economic status

Phonological awareness is a critical enabling skill in learning to read, often developed outside the context of formal reading instruction. More than 2,000 6-year-old children were tested on phonological awareness at two occasions during the preschool year in two cohorts. Between the assessments, a training program was implemented. A two-level path model was applied. More frequent training sessions were connected to higher gains of test scores especially for children with low initial scores in the first cohort. A clear gender effect was also observed. There were more boys with very low initial scores and more girls among the top scorers. A clear SES-effect indicated the influence of early language stimulation. Children who already at the beginning of the preschool year had grasped the alphabetic code had the highest initial scores on the test.     

Preschooler Sleep Patterns Related to Cognitive and Adaptive Functioning

Research Findings: Preschoolers’ sleep patterns were examined related to cognitive and adaptive functioning. The sample consisted of 874 typically developing preschool children with a mean age of 40.01 months. Parent/caregiver reports of children's sleep pattern factors, Stanford-Binet 5 intelligence scale scores, and Behavior Assessment System for Children, Second Edition, adaptive behavior composite scores were examined. The results provided evidence of the interaction among preschoolers’ sleep factors, cognitive variations across performance areas, and adaptive functioning. Practice or Policy: Sleep needs vary according to the child, and maintaining optimal sleep habits will help preschool performance and skills acquisition. Practical implications for prevention, early intervention, education, and policy are discussed.     

What are the characteristics of nature preschools in Norway,and how do they organize their daily activities?

This study provides basic information about how Norwegian nature preschools differ from other Norwegian preschools and how they organize their daily activities. Fifty-six nature preschools and 52 other preschools were included in the study. A total of 106 headmasters and 98 pedagogical leaders filled out questionnaires about the characteristics of their preschool and the characteristics of their preschool’s outdoor activities. Two women and four men from nature preschools were interviewed about organizing a nature preschool. Most nature preschools are private and have less children and staff than other preschools. Nature preschools have more reference areas in nature and visit these areas more frequently than other preschools. Nature preschools spend a large amount of time in nature and have routines and rules that allow the children a significant amount of trust.     

Young children's enactments of human rights in early childhood education

This paper explores ways in which human rights become part of and affect young children's everyday practices in early childhood education and, more particularly, how very young children enact human rights in the preschool setting. The study is conducted in a Swedish preschool through observations of the everyday practices of a group of children aged between 1 and 3 years. With a child view based on human rights theory and childhood sociology, an action-based methodology for seeking children's perspective is used to analyse the observation data. Three rights areas are identified in which children frequently deal with human rights in their actions and where they enact a range of possible rights holder positions: ownership, influence and equal value. These rights areas, and the children's various enactments of the rights, are reflected against the preschool context as a co-constructor to the actions of the participants.     

Frequency analyses of prephonological spellings as predictors of success in conventional spelling

The present study explored how children's prephonological writing foretells differential learning outcomes in primary school. The authors asked Portuguese-speaking preschool children in Brazil (mean age 4 year 3 months) to spell 12 words. Monte Carlo tests were used to identify the 31 children whose writing was not based on spellings or sounds of the target words. Two and a half years later, the children took a standardized spelling test. The more closely the digram (two-letter sequence) frequencies in the preschool task correlated with those in children's books, the better scores the children had in primary school, and the more preschoolers used letters from their own name, the lower their subsequent scores. Thus, preschoolers whose prephonological writing revealed attentiveness to the statistical properties of text subsequently performed better in conventional spelling. These analytic techniques may help in the early identification of children at risk for spelling difficulties.     

Comparison of California Test of Mental Maturity and WISC-R IQs among children suspected of being EMR or LD

The California Test of Mental Maturity, Short Form (CTMM-SF) and the WISC-R were compared in a sample of black and white children, ages 6-8 to 15-2 years, referred for learning problems. A 2 × 2 mixed ANOVA (Ethnicity and Test) indicated that ethnicity was the only significant effect, with black children obtaining lower scores than white children. All correlations between the two tests were significant, although they were higher for white children than for black children. The results indicate that the CTMM-SF has adequate criterion-related validity.     

Motor Skill Performance by Low SES Preschool and Typically Developing Children on the PDMS-2

The purpose of this study was to compare the motor skill performance of preschool children from low socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds to their age matched typically developing peers using the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales-2 (PDMS-2). Sixty-eight children (34 low SES and 34 typically developing; ages 3–5) performed the PDMS-2. Standard scores from each subtest (i.e., stationary, locomotion, object manipulation, grasping, and visual-motor integration) and three quotient scores were calculated for the children identified as low SES and typically developing children. A MANOVA was used to analyze the PDMS-2 standard score and quotient score differences between the children identified as low SES and the typically developing children. All preschool children identified as low SES scored at average or lower on total motor quotient scores. Specifically, 88.2 % of children identified as low SES were classified as average, and 11.8 % of children were in the below average performance category. The MANOVA analysis showed that children identified as low SES scored significantly lower than the typically developing children on the visual-motor integration subtest, F(1,64) = 7.232, p = .009; locomotion subtest, F(1,64) = 11.449, p = .001; and TMQ, F(1,64) = 4.732, p = .033. Children identified as low SES were significantly delayed in both fine and gross motor skill areas when compared to their typically developing age and gender matched peers. Researchers are recommended to provide comprehensive assessments for preschool children and to include motor tasks when designing early intervention programs.     

Reliability of the peabody picture vocabulary test: A review of 32 selected research studies published between 1965 and 1974

This report is a review of reliability data on the PPVT obtained from 32 research studies published between 1965 and 1974. Much of the research was done on Head Start children. Overall, the median of reliability coefficients reported here (0.72) has remained remarkably close to the original median of 0.77 found in standardizing the test. Unexpectedly, elapsed time between test and retest had only a slight effect on the reliability coefficients. However, as expected, the greater range in ages and ability levels of subjects, the higher were the reliabilities. For average children in the elementary grades, and for retarded people of all ages, PPVT scores remained relatively stable over time and there was close equivalence between alternate forms. Scores were least stable for preschool children, especially from minority groups. Black preschool girls were more variable in their performance on the PPVT than boys, and preschool girls generally were more responsive than boys to play periods conducted before testing was begun. A number of variables associated with examiners and setting affected the scores on the test. As expected, raw scores tended to yield slightly higher reliabilities than MA and considerably higher reliabilities than IQ scores.