发展认知神经科学视野中的学前第二语言教学

幼儿园外语教学热方兴未艾.本文从发展认知神经科学的角度出发,通过利用脑成像技术得到的研究成果,分析了学前儿童语言习得的特点及第二语言学习和脑的关系,进而分析了发展认知神经科学对学前第二语言教学的启示.     

Infant and Toddler Child-Care Quality and Stability in Relation to Proximal and Distal Academic and Social Outcomes

This study considered the quality and stability of infant and toddler nonparental child care from 6 to 36 months in relation to language, social, and academic skills measured proximally at 36 months and distally at kindergarten. Quality was measured separately as caregiver–child verbal interactions and caregiver sensitivity, and stability was measured as having fewer sequential child-care caregivers. This longitudinal examination involved a subsample (N = 1,055) from the Family Life Project, a representative sample of families living in rural counties in the United States. Structural equation modeling revealed that children who experienced more positive caregiver–child verbal interactions had higher 36-month language skills, which indirectly led to higher kindergarten academic and social skills. Children who experienced more caregiver stability had higher kindergarten social skills.     

幼儿同伴侵害与社会能力、问题行为的关系

使用教师评定法对279名3-5岁儿童进行研究,探讨幼儿同伴侵害现象及其与社会能力、适应问题的关系。结果发现:幼儿中存在身体侵害和关系侵害现象,部分儿童同时受身体和关系两种形式的侵害,身体侵害的稳定性随年龄增长而变化;与不受侵害的儿童相比,受侵害儿童的外化问题明显偏多;问题行为在儿童社会能力和半年后身体侵害之间起到完全中介作用,而在儿童社会能力和半年后关系侵害之间起到部分中介作用。     

社会退缩与儿童发展关系研究的回顾与展望

已有研究表明，儿童社会退缩具有从低到中等程度的稳定性，会对儿童发展与社会适应产生消极影响。这种消极影响同时会受到儿童年龄、性别与所处文化背景的制约。未来关于社会退缩的研究将着重从积极行为和文化的角度探讨社会退缩的影响，     

儿童阅读障碍的生成与诊治研究综述

阅读障碍是学习障碍中最常见的一种障碍。1993年的一项统计资料表明，有80%的学习障碍儿童出现阅读方面的困难。另据统计，美国在发展方面存在障碍的儿童占儿童总数的5.25%，在学习障碍儿童中有至少50%是阅读障碍儿童。可见，阅读障碍儿童所占比例之大。那么，到底什么是阅读障碍呢？所谓“阅读障碍”是指对阅读技能的掌握落后于年龄常模，而落后的原因又不是智力落后、重大脑损伤或严重的情绪不稳定”。（［美］E.J.Gibson）儿童阅读障碍主要包括认字和理解两大部分。具有阅读障碍的儿童在学习过程中一般会出现以下特征：①阅读速度慢，…     

Child Care Quality and Cognitive Development: Trajectories Leading to Better Preacademic Skills

The associations between trajectories of child care quality from ages 2 to 4 years and children's cognitive performance at 4 years (n = 250) were tested. Distinct quality trajectories were identified: low and high ascending Teaching and Interactions trajectory; low and high Provision for Learning trajectory. Membership in the high ascending Teaching and Interactions trajectory was associated with better numeracy (effect size [ES] = .39, confidence interval [CI] = .21–.66), receptive vocabulary (ES = .41, CI = .14–.68), and school readiness (ES = .32, CI = .06–.58). The results suggest that a pattern of increasing quality of teacher–child interactions during the preschool years, particularly with regard to supporting the development of language, has a moderate impact on children's cognitive development.     

The Relation of Gender Understanding to Children''s Sex-typed Preferences and Gender Stereotypes

Our goal was to explore how children's understanding of gender as a social category relates to their acquisition of sex-typed knowledge and preferences. Children's gender concepts, sex-typed preferences, and stereotyped knowledge were measured in 61 boys and girls (3-5 years). Gender concept measures included ability to identify and to discriminate the sexes, understanding gender group membership, temporal stability of gender, and gender consistency over situational changes. Children improved with age on most of the measures except gender consistency. With the exception of consistency, measures of gender concept understanding were found to be related to children's stereotyped toy and clothing knowledge and/or to their sex-typed toy preferences (with age controlled). It was shown that only rudimentary gender understanding is needed prior to children learning about sex stereotypes and prior to showing strong sex-typed preferences for peers or toys. The roles of gender identity, stability, consistency, and group membership in the sex-typing process are discussed.     

我国贫困地区农村儿童早期发展与学前教育质量思考

我国贫困地区农村学前儿童的入学认知准备总体情况不客乐观,农村学前儿童入学认知准备与其学前教育经历密切相关,对其未来的学业成绩具有预测性.因此,帮助学前儿童做好入学准备是现阶段我国贫困地区农村学前教育发展的核心问题.贫困地区农村学前教育事业发展的重点是快速普及学前一年教育.政府应重视并抓好学前一年教育的课程与教材建设,重构农村学前教育管理与培训体系,通过各种方式提高贫困地区农村儿童早期发展和学前教育的质量.     

图画故事书与学前儿童的发展

图画故事书是学前儿童阅读的起点,是儿童人生的第一本书.图画故事书通过文字和图画共同传达故事信息,有别于其他形式的语言或视觉艺术,它独特的表达系统比较契合儿童心理特点.同时,图画故事书阅读又是一种复杂的心理过程,需要学前儿童具备大量的知识、经验和策略.因此,对学前儿童的语言、想象、思维、情感、社会化及审美能力发展都具有重要的价值.     

Mothers' and Child-Care Providers' Cognitive,Affective, and Behavioral Responses to Children's Misbehavior

This study compared mothers' and caregivers' attributions for children's misconduct and their corresponding affective and behavioral responses. Forty mothers of 4-year-olds and 40 caregivers employed in childcare settings responded to a series of hypothetical incidents in which a 4-year-old child engaged in a norm violation such as aggression or failed to be altruistic. ANCOVA analyses indicated that mothers and caregivers differed in their causal attributions for children's misbehavior. Mothers and caregivers also differed in their affective and behavioral responses to children's failures to be altruistic, but not in their responses to children's norm violations. Regression analyses performed on the combined scores of mothers and caregivers found that attributions to the stability of the behavior predicted use of induction and a greater emphasis on responding to the misbehavior. A power assertive response was particularly likely if a respondent believed that a behavior was caused by stable personality factors. The documentation of linkage between causal attributions and socialization behavior has implications for parent training and early childhood education. Increasing parents' awareness of developmental processes and external factors that affect a child's behavior may result in a less punitive approach to discipline. Early childhood curricula that encourages examination of adult biases in analyzing children's behavior may assist caregivers to become more reflective and self-aware in interactions with young children.     

Mothers' and Child-Care Providers' Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Responses to Children's Misbehavior

This study compared mothers' and caregivers' attributions for children's misconduct and their corresponding affective and behavioral responses. Forty mothers of 4-year-olds and 40 caregivers employed in childcare settings responded to a series of hypothetical incidents in which a 4-year-old child engaged in a norm violation such as aggression or failed to be altruistic. ANCOVA analyses indicated that mothers and caregivers differed in their causal attributions for children's misbehavior. Mothers and caregivers also differed in their affective and behavioral responses to children's failures to be altruistic, but not in their responses to children's norm violations. Regression analyses performed on the combined scores of mothers and caregivers found that attributions to the stability of the behavior predicted use of induction and a greater emphasis on responding to the misbehavior. A power assertive response was particularly likely if a respondent believed that a behavior was caused by stable personality factors. The documentation of linkage between causal attributions and socialization behavior has implications for parent training and early childhood education. Increasing parents' awareness of developmental processes and external factors that affect a child's behavior may result in a less punitive approach to discipline. Early childhood curricula that encourages examination of adult biases in analyzing children's behavior may assist caregivers to become more reflective and self-aware in interactions with young children.     

The Relations of Regulation and Negative Emotionality to Indonesian Children''s Social Functioning

The purpose of this study was to examine the relations of individual differences in regulation and negative emotionality to 127 third-grade Indonesian children's social skills/low externalizing problem behavior, sociometric status, and shyness. Parents and multiple teachers provided information on children's regulation, negative emotionality, and social functioning; peer sociometric information on liking and social behavior was obtained; and children reported on their self-regulation. In general, children's low socially appropriate behavior/ high problem behavior and rejected peer status were related to low dispositional regulation and high negative emotionality (intense emotions and anger), and regulation and negative emotionality (especially teacher rated) sometimes accounted for unique (additive) variance in children's social functioning. Adult-reported shyness was related to low peer nominations of disliked/fights (although shy children were not especially liked), low adult-reported regulation, and (to a lesser degree) low teacher-rated negative emotionality. Findings are compared with work on regulation, negative emotionality, social competence, and shyness in other countries.     

Transition to School: Developmental Trajectories and School Experiences

Because of the premium now placed on a formal education as well as the changing demographics of American society, school failure is now more costly than ever. Given that academic difficulties experienced by children are traceable to problems in underachievement that begin during the first years of early schooling, a thorough understanding of the transition-to-school process is needed. We suggest two principal assumptions in examining this transition-to-kindergarten period. First, multiple risk factors associated with certain child, family, and child care characteristics are expected to predict early school experience, both in and out of the classroom, and, thereby, social and academic success and failure in the early school years. Secondly, it is expected that day-to-day experiences in the classroom and on the playground will exacerbate or mitigate risk, resulting in some children performing better than would otherwise be expected and others functioning worse than anticipated. Thus, a critically important problem involves the identification of child, family, child care, and schooling factors and processes which account for risk being realized or not realized with regard to subsequent academic and school performance.     

Transition to School: Developmental Trajectories and School Experiences

Because of the premium now placed on a formal education as well as the changing demographics of American society, school failure is now more costly than ever. Given that academic difficulties experienced by children are traceable to problems in underachievement that begin during the first years of early schooling, a thorough understanding of the transition-to-school process is needed. We suggest two principal assumptions in examining this transition-to-kindergarten period. First, multiple risk factors associated with certain child, family, and child care characteristics are expected to predict early school experience, both in and out of the classroom, and, thereby, social and academic success and failure in the early school years. Secondly, it is expected that day-to-day experiences in the classroom and on the playground will exacerbate or mitigate risk, resulting in some children performing better than would otherwise be expected and others functioning worse than anticipated. Thus, a critically important problem involves the identification of child, family, child care, and schooling factors and processes which account for risk being realized or not realized with regard to subsequent academic and school performance.     

Associations Between Low-Income Children's Fine Motor Skills in Preschool and Academic Performance in Second Grade

Research Findings: Given the growing literature pertaining to the importance of fine motor skills for later academic achievement (D. W. Grissmer, K. J. Grimm, S. M. Aiyer, W. M. Murrah, &; J. S. Steele, 2010 Grissmer , D. W. , Grimm , K. J. , Aiyer , S. M. , Murrah , W. M. , &; Steele , J. S. ( 2010 ). Fine motor skills and early comprehension of the world: Two new school readiness indicators . Developmental Psychology , 46 , 1008 – 1017 .[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), the current study examines whether the fine motor skills of economically disadvantaged preschool students predict later academic performance in 2nd grade. More specifically, we expand on the current literature and evaluate whether 2 types of fine motor skills—fine motor object manipulation and fine motor writing—predict academic achievement above and beyond the effects of demographic characteristics and early language and cognition skills. Results indicate that performance on both fine motor writing and object manipulation tasks had significant effects on 2nd-grade reading and math achievement, as measured by grades and standardized test scores. Stronger effects were yielded for writing tasks compared to object manipulation tasks. Practice or Policy: Implications for researchers and early childhood practitioners are discussed.     

Longitudinal twin study of early literacy development: Preschool through Grade 1

Grade 1 literacy skills of twin children in Australia (New South Wales) and the United States (Colorado) were explored in a genetically sensitive design (N = 319 pairs). Analyses indicated strong genetic influence on word and nonword identification, reading comprehension, and spelling. Rapid naming showed more modest, though reliable, genetic influence. Phonological awareness was subject to high nonshared environment and no reliable genetic effects, and individual measures of memory and learning were also less affected by genes than nonshared environment. Multivariate analyses showed that the same genes affected word identification, reading comprehension, and spelling. Country comparisons indicated that the patterns of genetic influence on reading and spelling in Grade 1 were similar, though for the U.S. but not the Australian children new genes came on stream in the move from kindergarten to Grade 1. We suggest that this is because the more intensive kindergarten literacy curriculum in New South Wales compared with Colorado, consistent with the mean differences between the two countries, means that more of the genes are “online” sooner in Australia because of accelerated overall reading development.     

Predicting Adolescents’ Bullying Participation from Developmental Trajectories of Social Status and Behavior

The aim of this study was to determine how trajectory clusters of social status (social preference and perceived popularity) and behavior (direct aggression and prosocial behavior) from age 9 to age 14 predicted adolescents’ bullying participant roles at age 16 and 17 (n = 266). Clusters were identified with multivariate growth mixture modeling (GMM). The findings showed that participants’ developmental trajectories of social status and social behavior across childhood and early adolescence predicted their bullying participant role involvement in adolescence. Practical implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

Social Networks of Children With Developmental Language Disorder in Inclusive Preschool Programs

This study takes an ecological approach to examine how children with developmental language disorder (DLD) interact with their classmates within early childhood special education (ECSE) inclusive classrooms. Participants were 124 children with DLD, 56 children with other disabilities, and 247 typically developing children (M_age = 52.42 months, SD = 6.27) from 56 ECSE inclusive classrooms. Results of social network analysis showed that children with DLD had significantly smaller peer social networks and were more likely to be isolated. Children tended to interact with peers with the same DLD status. These effects of children's DLD status were above and beyond the effects of children's social pragmatics skills.     

Contributions of Children's Temperament to Teachers' Judgments of Social Competence From Kindergarten Through Second Grade

Research Findings: Children's social competence has been linked to successful transition to formal school. The purpose of this study was to examine the contributions of children's temperament to teachers' ratings of their social competence from kindergarten through 2nd grade. Children (N = 1,364) from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network participated in this study. Mothers rated children's shyness, attentional focusing, and inhibitory control with the Children's Behavior Questionnaire at 4½ years, and teachers rated children's social competence with three subscales (cooperation, assertion, and self-control) of the Social Skills Rating System at kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grade. Latent growth curve analysis indicated that both shyness and effortful control contributed to children's social competence. Bolder children were likely to have higher assertion ratings, and shyer children with greater attentional focusing were likely to have higher assertion ratings. Shyer children and children with greater inhibitory control and attentional focusing were likely to have higher teacher ratings of self-control and cooperation. Practice or Policy: Findings highlight the importance of considering child temperament characteristics when understanding children's social competence and successful adjustment to kindergarten. Information may help parents, preschool teachers, and early elementary teachers prepare children who may be at particular risk for lower social competence.