Do home numeracy and literacy practices of Greek and Canadian parents predict the numeracy skills of kindergarten children?

Children’s experiences with early numeracy and literacy activities are a likely source of individual differences in their preparation for academic learning in school. What factors predict differences in children’s experiences? We hypothesised that relations between parents’ practices and children’s numeracy skills would mediate the relations between numeracy skills and parents’ education, attitudes and expectations. Parents of Greek (N = 100) and Canadian (N = 104) five‐year‐old children completed a survey about parents’ home practices, academic expectations and attitudes; their children were tested on two numeracy measures (i.e., KeyMath‐Revised Numeration and next number generation). Greek parents reported numeracy and literacy activities less frequently than Canadian parents; however, the frequency of home numeracy activities that involved direct experiences with numbers or mathematical content (e.g., learning simple sums, mental math) was related to children’s numeracy skills in both countries. For Greek children, home literacy experiences (i.e., storybook exposure) also predicted numeracy outcomes. The mediation model was supported for Greek children, but for Canadian children, the parent factors had both direct and mediated relations with home practices.     

Generation Conservation: Children’s Developing Folkbiological and Moral Conceptions of Protecting Endangered Species

Research Findings: This study investigated folkbiological concepts that structure children’s moral reasoning regarding conservation. Participants (N = 52; 7- and 10-year-olds, gender balanced) were interviewed regarding their values, moral obligations, and rights concerns for endangered and extinct animals. Across the 2 ages, children drew on the animal’s living status and teleology, as well as ecological relations, to ground their moral reasoning. Developmentally speaking, the younger children employed both nature-centered and human-centered moral reasoning, whereas the older children employed a complex form of moral reasoning that integrated human models of moral thinking with distinct biological understanding. Practice or Policy: The findings can improve education and policy that supports the next generation of conservationists. Educators can draw on these findings to develop class material and activities that teach children about ecological relations—knowledge children can employ to construct their moral arguments for conservation and protecting the environment. The findings revealed that children think about and value endangered animals in deep and beautiful ways. Policymakers can draw on the findings to frame their decision making—drawing more deeply on children’s values of the natural world to inform policy decisions. Drawing on children’s values in the development of environmental policy engages them in the policy process.     

Using Animals to Teach Children Biology: Exploring the Use of Biological Explanations in Children’s Anthropomorphic Storybooks

Research Findings: Anthropomorphism—the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman entities—has long been a staple of children’s media. However, children’s experiences with anthropomorphic media may interfere with biological reasoning instead encouraging an anthropocentric view of the natural world. To date, little research has addressed the typical content of children’s storybooks about animals: Do these storybooks present factual information that may support early developing biological reasoning, or do they instead focus on human-centered, psychological information that may encourage anthropocentrism? We analyzed the types of causal explanatory information that commercial storybooks about animals provide to children about 2 biological concepts that have been extensively studied in the experimental literature: biological inheritance and the transmission of illness. Using coding schemes similar to those used in prior experimental literature to assess preschool-age children’s biological reasoning, we found that none of the anthropomorphized books presented children with scientifically accurate causal mechanisms. These books focused almost exclusively on social-emotional experiences as opposed to biological explanations, which may inadvertently encourage anthropocentric reasoning. Practice or Policy: Understanding more about the content of informal sources of early learning can help inform educators on how to best support developing knowledge about the natural world and biological properties.     

Parental Nurturance Promotes Reading Acquisition in Low Socioeconomic Status Children

Research Findings: Children require cognitive skills (e.g., phoneme awareness, verbal intelligence) and environmental resources (e.g., stimulation, print exposure) to acquire reading. This investigation examined the additional contribution of parental nurturance to literacy development during the transition from preschool to elementary school. Participants were 77 children attending Head Start, their primary caregivers, and their teachers. A variety of methods were used to measure nurturance (e.g., self-report, laboratory observation, home observation) and reading achievement (e.g., standardized testing and teacher report). Approximately 3½ years later, 52 families and 39 teachers were available for repeat assessments of children's reading achievement. After controlling for the variance accounted for by prior reading ability, phonological awareness, verbal reasoning ability, and home academic stimulation, parental nurturance made a significant unique contribution to children's growth in reading achievement. Results supported the hypothesis that caregiver nurturance can be an important ingredient in the recipe for literacy.

Practice: The findings have important implications for the design of interventions for children with low reading achievement. By understanding the various ways in which parents foster reading, interventions can be developed to bolster parental nurturance and support the role of nurturance in promoting children's development in all areas, including intellectual and academic functioning.     

“Inhabitants of the Earth”: Reasoning About Folkbiological Concepts in Wichi Children and Adults

Across the world, people form folkbiological categories to capture their commonsense organization of the natural world. Structured in accordance with universal principles, folkbiological categories are also shaped by experience. Here we provide new evidence from the Wichi—an understudied indigenous community who live in the Chaco rainforest and speak their heritage language. A total of 44 Wichi (6- to 8-year-olds, 9- to 12-year-olds, adults) participated in an induction task designed to identify how broadly they attribute an invisible biological property (e.g., an internal organ) from 1 individual (either a human, nonhuman animal, or plant) to other humans, nonhuman animals, plants, natural kinds, and artifacts. Research Findings: These results (a) clarify the content of the Wichi’s categories and the words they use to describe them, (b) showcase the power of covert (unnamed) categories, and (c) fortify the view that human-centered reasoning is not a universal starting point for reasoning about nature. Practice or Policy: Implications of these findings for early science education are discussed. In particular, we discuss (a) how the Wichi’s construal of the natural world may be best integrated when they reach the (Western science–inspired) classroom and (b) how the current results bear on central issues in early science education more broadly.     

Culturally Embedded Measurement of Latino Caregivers’ Engagement in Head Start: A Tale of Two Forms of Engagement

Practice and Policy: The preschool years represent a critical time to foster family engagement in education for children growing up in poverty. Yet the ways in which Latino families with lower levels of income engage with their children’s education at home and at school might look different from how middle-income parents from the dominant U.S. culture do, depending on cultural values and beliefs about best ways to support children’s learning as well as on socioeconomic realities that present barriers for traditional forms of engagement. This study sought to examine further the psychometric functioning of a promising new measure of family engagement, developed with and for Latino Head Start families. Research Findings: Results of this study supported continued use of this measure, with clear caveats and directions for future research. Findings suggested that the ways Latino Head Start parents engage with children’s learning and development at home (e.g., supporting children’s social awareness and behavior, connection to cultural heritage, academic skills) might be a more culturally nuanced and salient form of engagement, while school-based engagement (e.g., volunteering at school, communicating with teachers) might be a more universal form. Findings contribute to understandings of Latino family engagement as well as to methodological considerations for culture-specific measurement development efforts, with relevance for early education researchers and professionals.     

Social Competence and Oral Language Development for Young Children of Latino Immigrants

Research Findings: In this study we analyze how parent and teacher ratings of young Latino children’s social competencies in rural California are associated with children’s oral language development. We find (a) that there is considerable incongruence between parent and teacher ratings of child social competence, (b) that both parent and teacher ratings account for meaningful variation in children’s oral language development, and (c) that incongruence between parent and teacher ratings is associated with oral language above and beyond the effects of parent and teacher ratings alone. Practice or Policy: Young Latino children’s social competencies contribute to their oral language development. These competencies represent an important, though to date underutilized, asset for building stronger academic/language functioning. Part of the paradoxical development of Latino children (i.e., strong social though weak academic/language competence) could be attributable to cultural differences that underlie teacher and parent perceptions of social competence. Teachers of young Latino children should (a) be aware of the cultural nature of social competence and (b) explore culturally responsive ways of interacting in classrooms to build stronger oral language functioning.     

Robin Hood or Matthew? Children’s Reasoning About Redistributive Justice in the Context of Economic Inequalities

How should one respond to ubiquitous economic inequalities? The legend Robin Hood suggests to take away from the wealthy to benefit the poor, whereas another strategy holds the opposite (Matthew effect). Here, 3- to 8-year-old children (N = 140) witnessed protagonists performing redistributions (e.g., Robin Hood, Matthew) of necessary and luxury resources between a wealthy and a poor child. Results showed that, with age, children increasingly approved of Robin Hood and increasingly disapproved of Matthew. In addition, reasoning about others’ welfare mediated the effect of age on children’s evaluation of Robin Hood, but only for necessary resources. This suggests that children regard restorative justice actions as a strategy to address social inequalities when it increases the welfare of disadvantaged agents.     

A Longitudinal Investigation of Siblings’ and Friends’ Features of Connectedness and Interaction Quality During Play

The present study examined features of sibling and friend dyads’ connectedness (e.g., length and emotional tone of connected sequences) and the quality of the dyads’ interactions during play from early to middle childhood. Forty-four families with a 4-year-old focal child were observed at Time 1 (T1) and again at Time 2 (T2) at age 7 in two separate play sessions (i.e., sibling and friend). Play sessions were coded for interaction quality (i.e., conflict, cooperation). Based on previous research, features of the sequences (i.e., emotional tone, length of sequence) were compared across relationship and time. Research Findings: Findings revealed similarities in the dyads’ interaction quality, with both siblings and friends increasing in cooperation over time. Similarly, the emotional tone of siblings’ and friends’ connected sequences was more likely to be positive than negative; however, siblings’ sequences were short rather than long, whereas friends’ sequences were more likely to be long than short. Practice or Policy: These findings provide new insights into children’s connectedness in child-child relationships and changes in connectedness across development from early to middle childhood. The study highlights the importance of observing the dyad when using a relationships theory framework to examine children’s interactions.     

Children’s Home Numeracy Environment Predicts Growth of their Early Mathematical Skills in Kindergarten

This study investigated the longitudinal associations between children’s early mathematics and their home numeracy environment (HNE). Chilean children from families who varied widely in socioeconomic status were assessed at the beginning and end of prekindergarten in 2016 (N = 419, M_age = 4:7 [years:months]), and at the end of kindergarten in 2017 (N = 368, M_age = 5:10). Children whose parents provided frequent operational numeracy activities (e.g., learning simple sums) at prekindergarten showed better arithmetic performance and growth in nonsymbolic and symbolic number comparison at the end of kindergarten. Parents’ knowledge of number-related games predicted children’s arithmetic skills and growth in nonsymbolic number comparison. These findings underscore the persistent relations between the HNE and the development of children’s mathematical skills.     

Preschool Teachers’ Explanations for Hygiene Habits and Young Children’s Biological Awareness of Contamination

Research Findings: Preschools have many norms and rules children are supposed to follow. Among them, behavioral norms associated with mealtime are of great consequence because eating is an essential life function. The present study examined young Japanese children’s understanding of hygiene norms and rules at mealtime from the standpoint of their awareness of contamination. Previous studies on contamination sensitivity have mainly focused on children’s knowledge itself and have paid little attention to the origins of such knowledge. However, the present study examined how adults talk to children about contamination as 1 possible source of children’s knowledge. Practice or Policy: Study 1 involved 32 days of observations during lunchtime at 3 Tokyo preschools. The teachers frequently told children to adhere to hygiene habits such as washing their hands. Although preschool teachers attached much weight to hygiene, their explanations were not precise. They often used 1-word or 1-phrase directions (e.g., “Dirty”) or just input-output explanations such as “Please wash your hands, or you’ll get sick.” Explanations of why breaking hygiene norms would lead to sickness were seldom offered to children. In Study 2, 26 children age 3 (M age = 3.7) and 22 children age 5 (M age = 5.7) were asked to explain why breaking hygiene norms would lead to sickness. In contrast with teachers’ simple expressions in Study 1, even 3-year-old children frequently generated contamination mechanism explanations (e.g., referring to germs and disgust transmission spontaneously).     

Family Routines and School Readiness During the Transition to Kindergarten

Research Findings: Using data from 3,250 participants in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort, we used structural equation modeling to investigate whether family routines (e.g., bedtime routine, reading routine) established in preschool predict children’s school readiness (i.e., academic skills, social-emotional skills, and physical health) in kindergarten, a foundational year for establishing children’s academic trajectories. Analyses revealed that higher levels of routines in preschool were associated with greater declines in teacher-reported conduct problems and hyperactive/inattentive behavior and greater gains in prosocial behaviors from preschool to kindergarten. Higher routines also predicted greater gains in both reading and mathematics scores as well as greater improvements in physical health. Telling stories appears to be the most salient routine for children’s social-emotional outcomes, whereas bedtime routines most strongly predicts differences in children’s academic skills and health outcomes. Practice or Policy: The results suggest that family routines may be an important tool for preparing and supporting children and parents for the kindergarten transition even before school entry.     

Mexican Mothers’ English Proficiency and Children's School Readiness: Mediation Through Home Literacy Involvement

Research Findings: Home literacy involvement (e.g., shared book reading) has been linked to enhanced cognitive development and school readiness during early childhood. Furthermore, precursory reading and math skills are key predictors of high school achievement. This study examined prospective relations between Mexican mothers’ English proficiency, their home literacy involvement, and their children's school readiness (i.e., preschool reading and math scores). A large, nationally representative sample of preschool-age Mexican American children (N = 826) was used to test a theoretically derived path analysis that demonstrated that mother-reported home literacy involvement mediated the relation between mother-reported English proficiency and children's reading achievement, but not math. Results were evident even after key family and child characteristics were controlled. Practice or Policy: Findings suggest that Mexican American children's early education and development may be enriched by family literacy programs that enhance their mothers’ English proficiency and increase the frequency of home literacy activities.     

The Development of Children's Prelife Reasoning: Evidence From Two Cultures

Two studies investigated children's reasoning about their mental and bodily states during the time prior to biological conception—“prelife.” By exploring prelife beliefs in 5‐ to 12‐year‐olds (N = 283) from two distinct cultures (urban Ecuadorians, rural indigenous Shuar), the studies aimed to uncover children's untutored intuitions about the essential features of persons. Results showed that with age, children judged fewer mental and bodily states to be functional during prelife. However, children from both cultures continued to privilege the functionality of certain mental states (i.e., emotions, desires) relative to bodily states (i.e., biological, psychobiological, perceptual states). Results converge with afterlife research and suggest that there is an unlearned cognitive tendency to view emotions and desires as the eternal core of personhood.     

Morphological Processing Before and During Children’s Spelling

ABSTRACT

Our understanding of spelling development has largely been gleaned from analysis of children’s accuracy at spelling words under varying conditions and the nature of their errors. Here, we consider whether handwriting durations can inform us about the time course with which children use morphological information to produce accurate spellings of root morphemes. Six- to 7-year-old (n = 23) and 8- to 11-year-old (n = 25) children produced 28 target spellings in a spelling-to-dictation task. Target words were matched quadruplets of base, control, inflected, and derived words beginning with the same letters (e.g., rock, rocket, rocking, rocky). Both groups of children showed evidence of morphological processing as they prepared their spelling; writing onset latencies were shorter for two-morpheme words than control words. The findings are consistent with statistical learning theories of spelling development and theories of lexical quality that include a role of morphology.     

Experience and maturation: The contribution of co-occurrence regularities in language to the development of semantic organization

With development knowledge becomes organized according to semantic links, including early-developing associative (e.g., juicy–apple) and gradually developing taxonomic links (e.g., apple–pear). Word co-occurrence regularities may foster these links: Associative links may form from direct co-occurrence (e.g., juicy–apple), and taxonomic links from shared co-occurrence (e.g., apple and pear co-occur with juicy). Four experiments (2017–2020) investigated this possibility with 4- to 8-year-olds (N = 148, 82 female) and adults (N = 116, 35 female) in a U.S. city with 58.6% White; 29.0% Black, and 5.8% Asian demographics. Results revealed earlier development of the abilities to form direct (ds > 0.536) than the abilities to form shared co-occurrence-based links (ds > 1.291). We argue that the asynchronous development of abilities to form co-occurrence-based links may explain developmental changes in semantic organization.     

Longitudinal Predictors of Vocabulary Knowledge in Turkish Children: The Role of Maternal Warmth,Inductive Reasoning,and Children’s Inhibitory Control

Research Findings: The present study investigated the social and cognitive precursors of vocabulary knowledge in 239 Turkish preschoolers both concurrently (Time 1 [T1] Mage = 53.29 months, SD = 10.19) and subsequently 1 year later (Time 2 [T2] Mage = 65.40 months, SD = 10.55). We examined the role of parenting behaviors by focusing on emotional and stimulation aspects of parenting (maternal warmth and inductive reasoning) and children’s inhibitory control skills in vocabulary comprehension. The results showed that T1 maternal warmth was linked with neither concurrent nor subsequent vocabulary knowledge, whereas T1 maternal inductive reasoning predicted vocabulary knowledge 1 year later. On the other hand, T1 inhibitory control predicted vocabulary knowledge at both time points, even when the child’s age and SES were controlled. T1 vocabulary knowledge mediated the links from T1 inhibitory control and SES to T2 vocabulary knowledge. The findings highlighted that parenting, children’s regulation skills, and broader contextual variables (SES) are all involved in the development of children’s vocabulary knowledge. Practice or Policy: The findings provided a nuanced understanding of the relation between aspects of parenting and vocabulary knowledge by showing that not maternal warmth but inductive reasoning is crucial for enhancing word comprehension of preschoolers.     

Children’s Cognitive and Behavioral Reactions to an Autonomous Versus Controlled Social Robot Dog

Research Findings: Interactive technology has become ubiquitous in young children’s lives, but little is known about how children incorporate such technologies into their intuitive biological theories. Here we explore how the manner in which technology is introduced to young children impacts their biological reasoning, moral regard, and prosocial behavior toward it. We asked 5- and 7-year-old children to interact with a robot dog that was described either as moving autonomously or as remote controlled. Compared with a controlled robot, the autonomous robot caused children to ascribe higher emotional and physical sentience to the robot, to reference the robot as having desires and physiological states, and to reference moral concerns as applying to the robot. Children who owned a dog at home were more likely to behave prosocially toward the autonomous robot than those who did not. Practice or Policy: Recent work has begun to use robots as learning tools. Our results suggest that the manner in which robots are introduced to young children may differentially impact children’s learning. Presenting robots as autonomous agents may help promote children’s social-emotional development, whereas presenting robots as human controlled may help promote robots as purely cognitive educational tools.