Procedural and conceptual changes in young children’s problem solving

This study analysed the different types of arithmetic knowledge that young children utilise when solving a multiple-step addition task. The focus of the research was on the procedural and conceptual changes that occur as children develop their overall problem solving approach. Combining qualitative case study with a micro-genetic approach, clinical interviews were conducted with ten 5–6-year-old children. The aim was to document how children combine knowledge of addition facts, calculation procedures and arithmetic concepts when solving a multiple-step task and how children’s application of different types of knowledge and overall solving approach changes and develops when children engage with solving the task in a series of problem solving sessions. The study documents children’s pathways towards developing a more effective and systematic approach to multiple-step tasks through different phases of their problem solving behaviour. The analysis of changes in children’s overt behaviour reveals a dynamic interplay between children’s developing representation of the task, their improved procedures and gradually their more explicit grasp of the conceptual aspects of their strategy. The findings provide new evidence that supports aspects of the “iterative model” hypothesis of the interaction between procedural and conceptual knowledge and highlight the need for educational approaches and tasks that encourage and trigger the interplay of different types of knowledge in young children’s arithmetic problem solving.     

Maternal Regulation of Children''s Problem-solving Behavior and Its Impact on Children''s Performance

This study focused on a social interaction theory of the development of cognitive self-regulation. Specifically, the effect of mother-child interaction on the child's ability to problem solve was investigated. The general predictions were (1) children who interacted with their mothers throughout a problem-solving task would subsequently exhibit improved independent performance over practice-control children, who received corrective feedback from a female experimenter at the end of the task; (2) mothers would be more responsible for task activities, would more often regulate their child's task behaviors, and offer more specific verbal content when task demands on child competence increased than when they decreased. 60 3- and 5-year-olds either worked with their mothers or practiced alone and were given corrective feedback on a sorting task in which miniature pieces of furniture were placed in a doll house. As predicted, children who interacted with their mothers subsequently created more correct, adult-like groupings independently than children who received corrective feedback. Mothers displayed more task responsibility and regulation with younger children and when task demands on children of both age groups increased. Maternal verbal content became less specific when task demands decreased. Child performance was related to (1) variation in maternal regulation of the child; and (2) degree of specificity of maternal verbal content.     

The child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome

Child victims of sexual abuse face secondary trauma in the crisis of discovery. Their attempts to reconcile their private experiences with the realities of the outer world are assaulted by the disbelief, blame and rejection they experience from adults. The normal coping behavior of the child contradicts the entrenched beliefs and expectations typically held by adults, stigmatizing the child with charges of lying, manipulating or imagining from parents, courts and clinicians. Such abandonment by the very adults most crucial to the child's protection and recovery drives the child deeper into self-blame, self-hate, alienation and revictimization. In contrast, the advocacy of an empathic clinician within a supportive treatment network can provide vital credibility and endorsement for the child. Evaluation of the responses of normal children to sexual assault provides clear evidence that societal definitions of "normal" victim behavior are inappropriate and procrustean, serving adults as mythic insulators against the child's pain. Within this climate of prejudice, the sequential survival options available to the victim further alienate the child from any hope of outside credibility or acceptance. Ironically, the child's inevitable choice of the "wrong" options reinforces and perpetuates the prejudicial myths. The most typical reactions of children are classified in this paper as the child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome. The syndrome is composed of five categories, of which two define basic childhood vulnerability and three are sequentially contingent on sexual assault: (1) secrecy, (2) helplessness, (3) entrapment and accommodation, (4) delayed, unconvincing disclosure, and (5) retraction. The accommodation syndrome is proposed as a simple and logical model for use by clinicians to improve understanding and acceptance of the child's position in the complex and controversial dynamics of sexual victimization. Application of the syndrome tends to challenge entrenched myths and prejudice, providing credibility and advocacy for the child within the home, the courts, and throughout the treatment process. The paper also provides discussion of the child's coping strategies as analogs for subsequent behavioral and psychological problems, including implications for specific modalities of treatment.     

Effects of perceptual training on the salience of information in a recall problem

Kindergarten children were given a salience-assessment task to determine each child's salience hierarchy for the dimensions of form, color, and position. The children were then assigned to either a control condition or one of 3 conditions providing different types of perceptual training with the child's least salient dimension. In a subsequent location recall task, children in all 3 training groups made significantly fewer errors recalling values of their least salient dimension than children in the control group. The results indicated that perceptual exposure alone was sufficient to increase the perceptual salience of the least salient dimension and its subsequent conceptual evaluation.     

The relation of conceptual tempo to aggression and its control.

The relationship of conceptual tempo to fantasy and overt aggression and its control was examined in order to test the generalizability of this cognitive style to domains of social and personality functioning. Fifth-grade boys and girls were administered the Matching Familiar Figures Test and a projective measure of fantasy aggression and its control and were rated sociometrically by peers and teachers on physical, verbal, and indirect forms of overt aggression. While reflective and impulsive children did not differ in degree of fantasy aggression expressed, impulsive children, especially boys, were found to exercise less control over their aggressive thoughts than the other 3 conceptual tempo groups. Impulsive and slow-inaccurate children were also more overtly aggressive, especially in comparison with fast-accurates. In addition, fantasy aggression predicted overt aggression in impulsives but not in reflectives. This study presents new evidence that conceptual tempo relates to areas beyond problem solving involving the child's social-emotional makeup.     

Problem solving, recall, and mapping relations in isomorphic transfer and nonisomorphic transfer among preschoolers and elementary school children

Analogical problem-solving processes were studied in 4 experiments using 5- and 7-move scheduling problems. Subjects were preschool and elementary school children. On each acquisition trial, the child heard a list of statements representing the exact series of moves necessary to solve the problem and was immediately asked to recall the list. Physical materials representing the problem were then produced and the child was asked to solve it. In transfer only setting/constraint information was provided prior to problem solving. In the first study, mapping processes were explored in nonisomorphic transfer tasks with different constraints and problem spaces. Mapping processes were very good, except when a feature of the base was mapped to a misleading cue in the transfer problems. The second study revealed that combining the problem-solving task with the recall task facilitated isomorphic transfer but not nonisomorphic transfer. The 2 remaining studies revealed that preschool children show excellent isomorphic transfer in both 5- and 7-move problems. The major developmental difference was in how the children ordered the propositions in their recall protocols. The findings were discussed in terms of problem spaces, flexibility of transfer, and developmental theory.     

The sexual nature of sexual abuse. A review of the literature

The growing literature on sexual abuse within the family is reviewed within the context of a simple model which emphasises the role of sexual factors and de-emphasises some of the more "dynamic" factors which many other authors have stressed. Evidence from a number of studies is quoted and found to support the view that fathers engaging in sexual activity with their daughters often have unfulfilled sexual needs. They often find the child or children sexually attractive and use a variety of strategies both to deal with their own inhibitions against sexual involvement with the child and to overcome the child's own potential resistance. Furthermore, these parents often find themselves in situations which provide a special opportunity for undetected abuse and they also strive to arrange such circumstances. A view of sexual abuse as primarily fulfilling sexual needs could well lead to a significant change in the management of cases in which sexual abuse has already occurred or is seen as likely to occur.     

Children's disclosures of sexual abuse: learning from direct inquiry

Objectives

Published protocols for forensic interviewing for child sexual abuse do not include specific questions about what prompted children to tell about sexual abuse or what made them wait to tell. We, therefore, aimed to: (1) add direct inquiry about the process of a child's disclosure to a forensic interview protocol; (2) determine if children will, in fact, discuss the process that led them to tell about sexual abuse; and (3) describe the factors that children identify as either having led them to tell about sexual abuse or caused them to delay a disclosure.

Methods

Forensic interviewers were asked to incorporate questions about telling into an existing forensic interview protocol. Over a 1-year period, 191 consecutive forensic interviews of child sexual abuse victims aged 3-18 years old in which children spoke about the reasons they told about abuse or waited to tell about abuse were reviewed. Interview content related to the children's reasons for telling or for waiting to tell about abuse was extracted and analyzed using a qualitative methodology in order to capture themes directly from the children's words.

Results

Forensic interviewers asked children about how they came to tell about sexual abuse and if children waited to tell about abuse, and the children gave specific answers to these questions. The reasons children identified for why they chose to tell were classified into three domains: (1) disclosure as a result of internal stimuli (e.g., the child had nightmares), (2) disclosure facilitated by outside influences (e.g., the child was questioned), and (3) disclosure due to direct evidence of abuse (e.g., the child's abuse was witnessed). The barriers to disclosure identified by the children were categorized into five groups: (1) threats made by the perpetrator (e.g., the child was told (s)he would get in trouble if (s)he told), (2) fears (e.g., the child was afraid something bad would happen if (s)he told), (3) lack of opportunity (e.g., the child felt the opportunity to disclose never presented), (4) lack of understanding (e.g., the child failed to recognize abusive behavior as unacceptable), and (5) relationship with the perpetrator (e.g., the child thought the perpetrator was a friend).

Conclusions

Specific reasons that individual children identify for why they told and why they waited to tell about sexual abuse can be obtained by direct inquiry during forensic interviews for suspected child sexual abuse.

Practice implications

When asked, children identified the first person they told and offered varied and specific reasons for why they told and why they waited to tell about sexual abuse. Understanding why children disclose their abuse and why they wait to disclose will assist both professionals and families. Investigators and those who care for sexually abused children will gain insight into the specific barrier that the sexually abused child overcame to disclose. Prosecutors will be able to use this information to explain to juries why the child may have delayed his or her disclosure. Parents who struggle to understand why their child disclosed to someone else or waited to disclose will have a better understanding of their child's decisions.     

Language problems in children with learning disabilities: do they interfere with maternal communication?

In this study, parent-child interaction in two carefully matched subgroups-school-age boys with learning disabilities (LD) who showed a discrepancy between their verbal IQ and performance IQ and had more extensive difficulties in higher-level language abilities (VIQ < PIQ, n = 8) and boys with LD who did not manifest a discrepancy between verbal IQ and performance IQ (VIQ = PIQ, n = 8), were investigated. The effects of the child's language problems on child task performance and on the quality of maternal communication were analyzed in a mother-child problem solving task. Children in the VIQ < PIQ group were found to be less successful on the task than children in the VIQ = PIQ group, and their mothers exhibited lower communication clarity in their instructions than the mothers of the children in the VIQ = PIQ group. An interesting interaction effect was found for communication deviances. For mothers in the VIQ < PIQ group the extent of deficient communication increased from the monologue to the dialogue situation, whereas communication deviances decreased for mothers in the VIQ = PIQ group. Three possible models are discussed in light of the differences between the subgroups.     

幼儿园课程要关注幼儿的生活质量

关注和提高幼儿的生活质量是时代赋予教育的使命。关注与提高幼儿的生活质量是幼儿园课程的价值追求。要关注幼儿的生活质量,就要关注幼儿对生活的体验与感受,关注幼儿在教育生活中的独特学习方式,关注幼儿个体在教育活动中的发展。幼儿教育与幼儿的生活密不可分,幼儿教育必须关注幼儿的生活质量。     

Openness in Adoption and the Level of Child Participation

There is great controversy regarding the impact of openness in adoption, especially the impact of such an arrangement on adopted children. Three indicators of the level of child participation in the openness arrangement were examined: ( a ) level of openness reported by adoptive parents, ( b ) level of information adopted children reported having about their birthparents, and ( c ) whether adoptive parents have withheld any pertinent information gained through communication with the birthmother from the adopted child. 171 children (90 males, 81 females; mean age = 7.99) were studied to assess how that participation influenced their conceptual understanding of what adoption means, general self-worth, satisfaction with level of openness, and curiosity about birthparents. Overall it does not appear that providing information about a child's birthparents will confuse the child about the meaning of adoption or lower the child's self-esteem, but neither will it move them to levels of understanding that are beyond their cognitive capabilities to reach.     

Joint attention and early language

This paper reports 2 studies that explore the role of joint attentional processes in the child's acquisition of language. In the first study, 24 children were videotaped at 15 and 21 months of age in naturalistic interaction with their mothers. Episodes of joint attentional focus between mother and child--for example, joint play with an object--were identified. Inside, as opposed to outside, these episodes both mothers and children produced more utterances, mothers used shorter sentences and more comments, and dyads engaged in longer conversations. Inside joint episodes maternal references to objects that were already the child's focus of attention were positively correlated with the child's vocabulary at 21 months, while object references that attempted to redirect the child's attention were negatively correlated. No measures from outside these episodes related to child language. In an experimental study, an adult attempted to teach novel words to 10 17-month-old children. Words referring to objects on which the child's attention was already focused were learned better than words presented in an attempt to redirect the child's attentional focus.     

Responsibilities of a Teacher in a Harmonic Cycle of Problem Solving and Problem Posing

Early math experiences can be challenging for young children. Although it seems that planning a lesson on solving and posing a problem for a young child is a daunting task, it is actually simple if a harmonic cycle is exercised. This harmonic cycle, in fact, embeds within in it a variety of teacher’s responsibilities that can expand our understanding of what a teacher needs to attend to when it comes to planning, teaching, and evaluating a child’s progress. This article will present responsibilities that a teacher has in a harmonic cycle, which is reflected through an interaction between a teacher and a child on problem posing and problem solving.     

Dynamic testing in indigenous and ethnic minority children

Our study aim was to examine whether ethnic-minority children would show different change patterns to indigenous children when presented with a seriation task within a dynamic testing context based on graduated prompt-techniques. We hypothesized that both Dutch-indigenous and ethnic-minority children would employ more sophisticated strategies after graduated prompt-training compared with untrained control-group children, and that trained ethnicity groups would show different progression paths from pre- to posttest. We also hypothesized that ethnic-minority and Dutch-indigenous children would progress differently in types of strategies over the course of their training, and that they would differ in number and type of instructions needed; i.e., whether various learning patterns could be detected. We further examined which variables predicted strategy-level best. Dynamically tested children changed their strategy behavior into the direction of a more advanced strategy; this change was the largest for the initial weaker scoring ethnic-minority children. These children also initially needed more but progressively needed less cognitive hints than Dutch-indigenous children during training. The graduated prompts approach we made use of clearly unfolds possibilities to detect and describe strong and weaker points in each child's solving processes before, during and after training. With a short intervention it appeared possible to describe how many prompts when and what type of prompts a child needed during training, i.e. to describe “the learning while tested” process.     

Experiences Situating Mathematical Problem Solving at the Core of Early Childhood Classrooms

Our goal in this article is to discuss the importance of problems in early childhood education for the child’s development and engagement with the mathematics existing in childhood culture. Our assumption is that an important task for young children’s education is to create a democratic and critical environment, in which multiplicity of perspectives is celebrated, along with diversity of concepts and practices, with movement between imaginary and real worlds. In light of this, the goal of this article is to defend a perspective for curriculum and for the role of the mathematics educator, promoting the learning of mathematics through problem solving in early childhood years. In order to discuss and illustrate this perspective we describe the pedagogical practices of two teachers who teach 4- and 5-years-olds, who create for their students an environment rich in problem solving and investigations. In both classrooms, all children individually succeeded in sharing their unique solutions and new knowledge constructed as a result of their inquiries. The experience provides evidence that problem solving affords children the opportunity to raise conjectures, to discuss possibilities and to draw conclusions, even if partial ones, that are then vetted by the group as the authors share their solutions. In this way, the work with problem solving nurtures cooperative learning and promotes the exploration of a diversity of ideas.     

Refutation texts and argumentation for conceptual change: A winning or a redundant combination?

Effective instruction for conceptual change should aim to reduce the interference of irrelevant knowledge structures, as well as to improve sense-making of counterintuitive scientific notions. Refutation texts are designed to support such processes, yet evidence for its effect on individual conceptual change of robust, complex misconceptions has not been equivocal. In the present work, we examine whether effects of refutation text reading on conceptual change in biological evolution can be augmented with subsequent peer argumentation activities. Hundred undergraduates read a refutation text followed by either peer argumentation on erroneous worked-out solutions or by standard, individual problem solving. Control group subjects read an expository text followed by individual problem solving. Results showed strong effects for the refutation text. Surprisingly, subsequent peer argumentation did not further improve learning gains after refutation text reading. Dialogue protocols analyses showed that gaining dyads were more likely to be symmetrical and to discuss core conceptual principles.     

Stepping stones to others' minds: maternal talk relates to child mental state language and emotion understanding at 15, 24, and 33 months

This continuation of a previous study (Taumoepeau & Ruffman, 2006) examined the longitudinal relation between maternal mental state talk to 15- and 24-month-olds and their later mental state language and emotion understanding (N= 74). The previous study found that maternal talk about the child's desires to 15-month-old children uniquely predicted children's mental state language and emotion task performance at 24 months. In the present study, at 24 months of age, mothers' reference to others' thoughts and knowledge was the most consistent predictor of children's later mental state language at 33 months. Vygotsky's zone of proximal development provides a framework within which maternal talk, first, about the child's desires and then about others' thoughts and knowledge scaffolds children's social understanding.     

Early literacy and parental writing mediation in young children with and without ADHD

The study compared early literacy of Israeli children aged five to six years with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), contrasted parental writing mediation in the two groups and tested the relations between parents’ mediation characteristics and children’s early literacy skills. Each of 62 parent‐child dyads (32 with ADHD) was videotaped at home while writing words. Videotapes were transcribed and analysed for mediation (specific writing task measures, emotional measures typical of problem‐solving tasks, and general measures of interactions). Children’s early literacy (word writing, letter knowledge and phonological awareness) was assessed at home. Results showed that children with ADHD already exhibited lower literacy achievements at ages five to six compared to their peers without ADHD. Parents of children with ADHD scored lower than parents of children without ADHD on the writing‐specific, emotional and general mediation measures. In both groups, the specific writing mediation measures correlated significantly with children’s early literacy. More emotional mediation measures correlated significantly with children’s early literacy in the ADHD than in the non‐ADHD group. Discussion focused on parent‐child writing interactions as a context of early literacy development among young children with ADHD.     

Beliefs about Children: A Comparative Study of Mothers, Teachers, Peers, and Self

This study was designed to clarify findings from the parents' beliefs literature concerning the nature and the effects of parental accuracy. Subjects were 60 second- and fifth-grade children (mean ages = 8–5 and 11–5, respectively), their mothers, and teachers. Each child responded to 4 cognitive tasks, predicted how he or she would perform on each task, made self-assessments of preferences and personality traits, and predicted the response of 2 peers to all of the measures. Both the child's mother and the child's teacher were shown the tasks and made similar predictions of the child's probable response. As in previous studies, mothers were above chance but far from perfect in predicting their children's cognitive performance and preferences and traits. Teachers were as accurate as mothers in judging cognitive abilities; they were less successful, however, on the preference and personality items. The children's predictions, whether for self or peers, were less accurate than those of the adults on all tasks. The accuracy of the mothers' predictions correlated positively with external measures of the child's cognitive performance. This finding is compatible with the Hunt "match hypothesis," although other bases for the correlations also exist.     

Marital birth and early child outcomes: the moderating influence of marriage propensity

Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study, the present study tested whether the benefits of a marital birth for early child development diminish as parents' risk of having a nonmarital birth increases (N = 2,285). It was hypothesized that a child's likelihood of being born to unmarried parents is partly a function of father characteristics that predict his capacity to promote child development. Results partially supported hypothesis. A positive association emerged between parental marriage and cognitive outcomes at age 3 only for children whose parents were likely to be married at the child's birth, suggesting average differences between children in married and unmarried families may overestimate the benefit of marriage in subpopulations most impacted by nonmarital birth.