The effects of verbal scaffolding instruction on young children's private speech and problem-solving capabilities

This investigation examined the efficacy of a verbal scaffolding instructional program designed to teach young children how to use private speech while working on school tasks and problems. Two different contexts for solving problems were used; common school tasks and analogical reasoning problems. Thirty-four 5-year olds who attended public school kindergartens were assigned to either the comparison group or the treatment group. Comparison group subjects were presented with a series of 8 lessons which focused on a cognitive strategy to be used in the solutions of geometric analogy problems. Treatment group subjects were presented with a series of 8 lessons which employed cognitive self-instruction in a verbal scaffolding format. After initial instruction using self-verbalizations, treatment group subjects were shown how to apply the cognitive self-instruction to routine school tasks and geometric analogy problems. The data analysis revealed that there was an effect on the treatment group's use of 3 of the 4 levels of private speech. When the two groups were compared, the treatment group used significantly less task irrelevant private speech and significantly more task relevant private speech. There were no significant differences between the two groups on the post-assessment of geometric analogy reasoning. Additionally, when the two groups were compared there were positive effects of the instructional program on the treatment group's classroom behavior (near transfer) and locus of control scores (far transfer). The results of this study provide support for the use of cognitive self-instruction to improve young children's problem-solving private speech in the context of a public school classroom.Portions of this paper were presented at the 2nd Annual European Congress of Psychology, Budapest Hungary, July 1991 by the first author.This paper was presented at the 1993 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Atlanta, GA.