Young children's use of spatial coordinates

4-6-year-old children were given problems in which they had to decide which 1 of an array of points was in line with 2 coordinate markers. The simplest problems had 4 points to choose between and markers perpendicular to the horizontal and vertical axes. Children of all ages were able to extrapolate lines from both coordinates to solve these problems. The older children were also given more complex problems. In some of these, 1 marker was at 45 degrees to an axis, the other perpendicular: in others the array was increased to 16 points and presented sometimes in a regular, sometimes in an irregular pattern. There were developmental improvements in performance, and the complex problems were more difficult than the simpler ones. However, 5- and 6-year-olds did extremely well even on the complex problems. The results establish that young children's grasp of Euclidean spatial relationships is more adequate than has often been suggested.     

The Internet as a source of information about sexuality

To use the Internet for sex educational purposes and for sex information has been recognised by prior research as benefits of the technological development and important areas to investigate, but few empirical studies have so far been conducted. The purpose of this study was to identify those who use the Internet to seek information about sexual issues and to examine the reasons for using the Internet for this purpose. A total of 1913 respondents completed an online Swedish questionnaire about Internet sexuality and the 1614 who reported using the Internet for sexual purposes were selected for analysis in the current study. More than one-half of these respondents claimed to use the Internet to seek information about sexual issues. The results showed that men and women of all ages used the Internet for this purpose, suggesting that the need for sexual education persists even in the adult years. The reasons for seeking information were primarily to get knowledge about the body, about how to have sex, and out of curiosity. Knowing who seeks information about sexuality on the Internet and the reasons why may be helpful in identifying the needs of different groups of individuals as well as tailoring the information provided, both online and offline.     

The use of video as a teaching resource in a new university

This paper reports on a survey of the use of video as a teaching resource within one British University, drawing on evidence gathered during 1995 from fourteen Schools within its four Faculties. It identifies the factors and issues which influence the use of video in teaching, including management of video resources within the Schools; how video is used to support teaching strategies; and its perceived usefulness as a teaching resource. Findings note the extent to which video is used across the University; the factors that support or discourage its use; and the awareness and expectations that teaching staff have of video as a teaching tool. The discussion offers some recommendations as to how video use may be supported and improved within the University. The research could form the basis for a larger study to establish whether the findings from this survey may be typical of the picture in higher education generally.     

Young children's comprehension of montage

2 studies examined children's comprehension of brief stop-animation televised segments incorporating elements of cinematic montage such as pans, zooms, and cuts. Children reconstructed the action and dialogue in these segments using the same dolls and settings depicted. In Study 1, there was no effect of cinematic techniques on reconstruction performance of 3- and 5-year-olds as compared to control segments filmed without these techniques. The results challenged the assumption that the use of such techniques per se contributes to young children's poor comprehension of television shows. In Study 2, 12 new segments were produced in which comprehending the montage required inferences of character perspective, implied action sequences, spatial relationships, and simultaneity of different actions. Averaging across all segments, 62% of the 4-year-olds and 88% of the 7-year-olds demonstrated clear comprehension of the montage. Inferences concerning implied action sequences were easiest for both ages. Inferences of simultaneity were most difficult for 4-year-olds, whereas inferences of character perspective were most difficult for 7-year-olds. Preschool children are thus capable of understanding cinematic events conveyed through camera techniques and film editing, despite previous assertions to the contrary. This ability nevertheless substantially increases with age.     

Young children's learning and transfer of biological information from picture books to real animals

Preschool children (N = 104) read a book that described and illustrated color camouflage in animals (frogs and lizards). Children were then asked to indicate and explain which of 2 novel animals would be more likely to fall prey to a predatory bird. In Experiment 1, 3- and 4-year-olds were tested with pictures depicting animals in camouflage and noncamouflage settings; in Experiment 2, 4-year-olds were tested with real animals. The results show that by 4 years of age, children can learn new biological facts from a picture book. Of particular importance, transfer from books to real animals was found. These findings point to the importance that early book exposure can play in framing and increasing children's knowledge about the world.     

Young children's perceptionsof scientists: a preliminary study

Background

Since the 1950s, there has been a growing body of research dealing with perceptions children have of scientists. Typically, research studies in this area have utilized children's drawings in an effort to discern what those perceptions are. Studies assessing perceptions children have of scientists have shown that children have stereotypical images of scientists. Although there is no direct evidence to demonstrate the link between children's images of science and scientists with their career choice, several researchers (including this researcher) have assumed that children's attitudes towards science are greatly influenced by their perceptions of science and scientists.

Purpose

This study aimed to find out if there was a difference in the way 5- to 8-year-old children drew scientists, taking account of age, gender and socio-economic status.

Sample

For this study a convenience sample of 30 young children was used. Participants included young children between the ages of 5 and 8 years from a public elementary school in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey. Although the sample of the study was obtained from one school in a metropolitan area, children involved in this preliminary study were from very different socio-economic backgrounds. As the sample size is very small for making comparisons, it was intended to have a similar number of children from different age groups and socio-economic backgrounds and both genders.

Design and methods

The researcher worked individually with each child who participated in this study in an interview setting. Although each child was asked a set of standard questions, and given a standard set of directions, each interview session was informal enough to allow the researcher to gain additional information about children's drawings and to clarify any of their responses. During the interview sessions, children's responses were noted by the researcher. Before the children were asked to draw their picture of a scientist, they were offered a set of coloured pencils or crayons and told to feel free to colour their drawing or any parts of it they would like to accentuate. At the end of the interview and drawing sessions, the researcher went through all the drawings and notes to get a ‘feel’ for and ascertain what was being said, identifying key themes in each drawing.

Results

The most common scientist type drawn in this study was the stereotypical scientist type: someone who conducts research, or someone who tries to invent a new material. But unlike previous studies, around 35% of the scientist figures drawn (n = 15) were of the social scientist type. Stereotypical images drawn by the current study participants included symbols of research, such as scientific instruments and laboratory equipment of all kinds, and symbols of knowledge, principally books and cabinets, technology and the products of science. An interesting finding of this study was that perceptions of young children differed due to their age. Children at the age of 8 years drew non-stereotypical scientist images, and they drew more detail than did their younger peers. When children were compared in terms of their gender, no significant differences were observed between girls and boys. But on the other hand, none of the boys drew female scientists, and five out of 30 children who were girls drew female scientists. While children of parents with lower socio-economic status drew more stereotypical scientist images, children of parents with higher economic status drew different images of scientists, a result which showed us that the scientist perceptions of young children differ with socio-economic status.

Conclusions

Emergent from this research has been a non-stereotypical perception of scientists, and some evidence exists that such a non-stereotypical perception differs due to age and socio-economic status. While these images may seem amusing, they also provide a reflection of the image that children have about what a scientist looks like. These images may have a powerful impact on present functioning and future plans of young children.     

Young children's understanding of random phenomena

2 experiments on the development of the understanding of random phenomena are reported. Of interest was whether children understand the characteristic uncertainty in the physical nature of random phenomena as well as the unpredictability of outcomes. Children were asked, for both a random and a determined phenomenon, whether they knew what its next outcome would be and why. In Experiment 1, 4-, 5-, and 7-year-olds correctly differentiated their responses to the question of outcome predictability; the 2 older groups also mentioned appropriate characteristics of the random mechanism in explaining why they did not know what its outcome would be. Although 3-year-olds did not differentiate the random and determined phenomena, neither did they treat both phenomena as predictable. This latter result is inconsistent with Piaget and Inhelder's characterization of an early stage of development. Experiment 2 was designed to control for the possibility that children in Experiment 1 learned how to respond on the basis of pretest experience with the 2 different phenomena. 5- and 7-year-olds performed at a comparable level to the same-aged children in Experiment 1. Results suggest an earlier understanding of random phenomena than previously has been reported and support results in the literature indicating an early understanding of causality.     

Young children's understanding of counting and cardinality

4-year-old's knowledge of counting and cardinality--the last count word reached represents the numerosity of the set--was tested in 2 experiments. Experiment 1 investigated the nature of early cardinality responses by presenting different forms of the cardinality question before, after, and before and after the child counted. Both type and time of question has large effects. Experiment 2 examined whether children of this age could recognize errors in 4 counting procedures and whether they would reject a cardinality response arrived at through a mistaken counting procedure. The children were very good at recognizing a standard counting procedure as correct. They had only limited success at treating procedures that violated the stable order of count words or violated the one-one correspondence between count word and object as incorrect. They lacked an understanding of the order irrelevance in that they judged valid, nonstandard counting orders as incorrect. The children did not seem to link their evaluation of a cardinality response with their evaluation of the counting procedure used to reach that response. The results do not indicate that counting principles initially govern the child's acquisition of counting knowledge. They are consistent with the suggestion that early cardinality responses are last-word responses.     

Young children's recognition of the intentionality of teaching

Two studies examined the role of intention in preschoolers' understanding of teaching. Three- to 5-year-olds judged stories in which there was an intention to teach or not (teaching vs. imitation) for 4 different learning outcomes (successful, partial, failed, and unknown). They also judged 2 stories with embedded instructional intent (e.g., guided discovery learning) and several standard theory of mind tasks. There was an age-related change in the understanding of teaching. Five-year-olds distinguished teaching from imitation and recognized guided discovery learning. Understanding of imitation and false belief was related. The findings indicate that theory of mind is relevant to other means of knowledge acquisition besides perceptual access and that understanding intention could help young children to recognize instruction and identify its different forms.     

Principles in the use of experiential learning as a source of prior knowledge

The importance of experience and experiential learning is investigated in this report. An attempt is made to chart this concept and attention is paid to the manner in which experience can be measured and be used within the system of higher education. Since distance education attracts many mature adults with experiential learning, an indication is given of the direction that developments should take within Dutch higher education, and in the Open University in particular, in order to make an optimal use of this experience.     

Young readers' use of phonological information: phonological awareness, memory, and comprehension

In this study, we explored the relationship between beginning readers' phonological awareness and other aspects of phonological processing, specifically as manifested in short-term memory and comprehension tasks. The theoretical questions underlying the study were (a) what roles phonological processes play in children's beginning reading, from word identification through sentence comprehension, and (b) whether those roles are sufficiently related that potential difficulties at one level directly affect processing at other levels. Phonologically induced effects were observed for word-list memory and for sentence judgments for both novice readers (at the end of kindergarten) and relatively more experienced readers (end of Grades 1 and 2). For both age groups, correlational analyses revealed relationships among phonological awareness, phonological processing in list memory, and word reading. However, phonological processing in sentence comprehension was not related to other types of phonological processing. These results indicate that although phonology plays a role during comprehension, phonological processing may not be as limiting a factor in comprehension as in word reading.     

Young children's attribution of action to beliefs and desires

When and how children understand beliefs and desires is central to whether they are ever childhood realists and when they evidence a theory of mind. Adults typically construe human action as resulting from an actor's beliefs and desires, a mentalistic interpretation that represents a common and fundamental form of psychological explanation. We investigated children's ability to do likewise. In Experiment 1, 60 subjects were asked to explain why story characters performed simple actions, such as looking under a piano for a kitten. Both preschoolers and adults gave predominantly psychological explanations, attributing the actions to the actor's beliefs and desires. Even 3-year-olds attributed actions to beliefs and false beliefs, demonstrating an understanding of belief not evident in previous research. In Experiment 2, 24 3-year-olds were tested further on their understanding of false belief. They were given both false belief prediction and explanation tasks. Children performed well on explanation taks, attributing an anomalous action to the actor's false belief, even when they failed to predict correctly what action would follow from a false belief. We concluded that 3-year-olds and adults share a fundamentally similar construal of human action in terms of beliefs and desires, even false beliefs.     

Young children's explorations of average through informal inferential reasoning

This study situates children's early notions of average within an inquiry classroom to investigate the rich inferential reasoning that young children drew on to make sense of the questions: Is there a typical height for a student in year 3? If so, what is it? Based on their deliberations over several lessons, students' ideas about average and typicality evolved as meaning reasonable, contrary to atypical, most common (value or interval), middle, normative, and representative of the population. The case study reported here documents a new direction for the development of children's conceptions of average in a classroom designed to elicit their informal inferential reasoning about data.     

Reflection-impulsivity as a predictor of children's academic achievement

To examine the implications of differences in reflection-impulsivity for later academic achievement, 70 children were administered the Matching Familiar Figures test (MFF) in grade 4 and the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills (CTBS) in grades 4, 5, and 6. Children identified as reflective based on grade 4 MFF performance scored significantly higher on the CTBS achievement battery at all grade levels than those classified as impulsive. However, the 2 groups did not differ on the grade 5 or grade 6 achievement measures when scores were adjusted for initial differences in grade 4 CTBS. Similarly, while each of the continuous variables MFF error score and MFF response latency was significantly predictive of grade 5 and grade 6 achievement test scores, neither of the MFF variables significantly improved the prediction of academic performance when current level of achievement was statistically accounted for. Sex differences in the relations between the MFF variables and the achievement measures were identified; MFF error score was more strongly related to later academic achievement for boys than for girls, while MFF response latency was a better predictor of academic achievement for girls than for boys.     

博物馆信息化服务功能的开发途径

信息时代要求博物馆实现自身的信息化,以更有效的方式服务大众.博物馆信息化服务功能的开发主要从4个方面入手:藏品管理的信息化、文物展示的数字化、馆藏资源的网络共享化和工作人员的现代化.     

Primary school children's use of ICT

This article reports on a study of 267 primary children (Year 2 and 6) in five schools in South and Mid Wales. It examines their use of information and communications technology (ICT) both in school and at home using a combination of interview and questionnaire data. These data reveal that although the vast majority of children are making some use of computers in school, patterns of sustained and varied engagement with ICT are rare; with educational use of computers curtailed by a variety of classroom factors. Moreover, although many children could be considered to be sophisticated and knowledgeable consumers of ICT, their outside-of-school access to technology is varied. The findings raise questions about the nature of ICT use in primary classrooms and the need to ensure meaningful and regular access to technology in school for all children.