Young children's explanations of pictoral humor: a preliminary study

One aspect of child humor development -- children's explanations of pictoral humor -- was examined in relation to the Visual Humor Categories, a 4-category system to describe humor responses. Thirty children aged 4, and 30 children aged 6, explained what they found to be funny in 2 humorous pictures. Results indicated that all explanations were accommodated by the Visual Humor Categories, and that the explanations differed by category type for the two age groups. Surprisingly, the explanations also differed by gender. It is concluded that the Visual Humor Categories is a useful developmental approach for examining children's understanding of pictoral humor, and further study is recommended.     

Elementary school-aged children's reports of their health: A cognitive interviewing study

There are no standard methods for assessing the quality of young children's perceptions of their health and well-being and their ability to comprehend the tasks involved in reporting their health. This research involved three cross-sectional studies using cognitive interviews of 5–11-year-old children (N = 114) to determine their ability to respond to various presentations of pictorially illustrated questions about their health. The samples had a predominance of children in the 5–7-year-old range and families of lower and middle socio-economic status. The research questions in Study 1 involved children's ability to convert their health experiences into scaled responses and relate them to illustrated items (n = 35); Study 2 focused on the type of response format most effectively used by children (n = 19); and Study 3 involved testing children's understanding of health-related terms and use of a specific recall period (n = 60). The results of Study 1 showed that children identified with the cartoon drawing of a child depicted in the illustrated items, typically responding that the child was at or near their own age and of the same gender, with no differences related to race. Study 2 results indicated that children responded effectively to circles of graduated sizes to indicate their response and preferred them to same-size circles or a visual analogue scale. Tests of three-, four-, and five-point response formats demonstrated that children could use them all without confusion. In Study 3, expected age-related differences in understanding were obtained. In fact, the 5-year-old children were unable to understand a sufficient number of items to adequately describe their health. Virtually all children 8 years of age and older were able to fully understand the key terms and presentation of items, used the full five-point range of response options, and accurately used a 4-week recall period. Six- and seven-year-olds were more likely than older children to use only the extreme and middle responses on a five-point scale. No pattern of gender differences in understanding or in use of response options was found. We conclude that children as young as eight are able to report on all aspects of their health experiences and can use a five-point response format. Children aged 6–7 had difficulty with some health-related terms and tended to use extreme responses, but they understood the basic task requirements and were able to report on their health experiences. These results provide the guidance needed to develop and test a pediatric health status questionnaire for children 6–11 years old.     

Children's humor: Implications for teaching

Humorous play appears to enhance the development of young children. Major characteristics of early humor based on the child's level of developmental mastery, are described in an extensive review of the literature. Characteristics of playfulness, experimentation, and incongruous comparisons are discussed as well as, the area of social conditions comprised of safety cues, play cues, group contagion and playful models. A conceptual model of humorous play is proposed to portray the interaction of major characteristics as children engage in their humorous productions. Teachers may use the Humorous Play Assessment Chart presented in the paper to help determine the extent areas of their own early childhood programs foster humorous play.     

Young children's divergent movement ability: a study revisited

The effectiveness of Mosston and Ashworth's [2008. Teaching physical education (1st online ed.). Retrieved September 10, 2010, from http://www.spectrumofteachingstyles.org/ebook] divergent discovery style of teaching on eight-year-old children's critical thinking was explored in this study. The participants (N?=?58) were randomly assigned to a treatment group (divergent discovery, n?=?29) or a control group (no instruction, n?=?29). The same skill themes and movement concepts were taught to the learners in both groups (20 45-minute lessons). Three fundamental movement tasks were employed to measure divergent movement ability (DMA), an aspect of critical thinking, prior to and after instructional intervention. A 2?×?2 (group?×?gender) analysis of variance on the post-test scores showed that there was a significant difference between the two groups favouring the treatment group (p?<?0.041) and no significant gender effect or interactive effect. A separate 2?×?2 (group?×?test) repeated measures analysis of variance showed a significant improvement of DMA for the treatment group (p?<?0.001). The study supports certain tenets set forth by Mosston and Ashworth (2008) for the divergent discovery style.     

Young children's explorations: young children's research?

‘Exploration' is recognised as research behaviour; anecdotally, as an early years' teacher, I witnessed many young children exploring. However, young children's self-initiated explorations are rarely regarded as research by adult researchers and policy-makers. The exclusion of young children's autonomous explorations from recognition as research conflicts with ‘new sociology’ perspectives positioning children as social actors. These tensions have driven a small-scale interpretive study, developed with children aged four to eight years in three ‘good’ schools in England to investigate (1) Do children aged four to eight years in three Early Childhood Education and Care settings explore?; (2) If so, what are their explorations and what effects and affects them?; and (3) Do young children's explorations count as epistemology? Findings indicate that in settings where ‘free-flow’ play characterised practice, four- to five-year-old children engaged in exploration, but its quality was affected by several factors, including variable levels of children's autonomy. Seven- to eight-year-old children in a teacher-directed setting explored less than the four- to five-year-old children, but were frequently observed ‘off-task’, pursuing self-initiated explorations.     

Young children's written language development and oral and written language awareness

The purposes of this study were (1) to describe and examine the development of young children's reading and writing behaviors and (2) to examine young children's oral and written language awareness development. This study has shown that young children ages from 3 to 5 years have several preconventional reading and writing behaviors. They cannot fully discriminate between oral and written language, so that they use mixed forms of oral and written languages. The following findings support Sulzby's (1985) claim that literacy develops only in a certain sociocultural context: (1) the contents of the message being delivered influence the use of oral and written language and (2) the age factor is significant for the level of reading and writing development and the degree of decontextuali-zation. On the other hand, young children experience more difficulty in using written language in the task situation of constructing messages for themselves in block building than in the task situation of delivering messages from a book. These phenomena suggest that written language development is not only the result of simple imitations in a sociocultural context but also the result of cognitive development.     

African American and non-Hispanic white children's health: integrating alternative explanations

Objectives. Three questions were examined: does a structural equation model (SEM) of the links among family resources (socioeconomic status, SES), sociocultural (perception of quality of care), structural (health insurance coverage and health care utilization), parental psychological resources (parental depression and perception of quality of parenting), and child health apply similarly across blacks and whites? Do the items used to indicate the factors exhibit differences across groups? Is race/ethnicity associated with differences in structural paths?

Design. Data on 18,092 black and white children (ages 0–11) from the 2002 National Survey of American Families data set was used. A two-stage, eight-step multigroup SEM was used to examine the associations among family resources, sociocultural, structural, parental psychological resources and child health status.

Results. First, the patterning of the structural model applied similarly to black and whites. Second, there were some differences in factor loadings across groups. Third, although sociocultural, structural, and parental psychological resources mediated the link between SES and health status, the effects of SES on these mediators differed between blacks and whites; but there was no difference between groups in the effects of SES on health status. Fourth, perception of quality of care and health care use mediated the effects of health insurance on health and the effects of parental depression and quality of parenting on health status, respectively. Fifth, health care use mediated the effects of perception of quality of care on health status. Finally, health insurance was linked with a greater increase in health care use among blacks than whites; and perception of quality of care was strongly associated with better health for blacks than for whites.

Conclusions. When sociocultural, structural, and parental psychological constructs are adjusted for, there are no significant differences in SES effects on health status between groups. Perception of quality of care is an important determinant of health care utilization, given health insurance coverage and SES. Finally, parental depression and behaviors also determine perception of care and health care utilization decisions.     

Cognitive development, philosophy and children's literature

The child is bom with rudimentary thinking ability and develops this throughout life. However, not all thinking is good thinking, and educators should be aiming to encourage the best thinking possible. I consider the key educational factors in assisting the development of good thinking, based on theories of the social construction of thinking through dialogue. After considering the prevalent approach of teachers to using dialogue to encourage thinking, a model of education for quality thought is developed which springs from this theory. Finally, I introduce the reader to practical books and materials based on this model.     

认知训练和心理治疗综合干预儿童学习障碍的效果分析

目的:探讨视、听认知训练和心理治疗综合干预儿童学习障碍的效果。方法:对26例学习障碍儿童采用系统化的视、听认知训练方案和心理治疗、药物治疗进行综合干预,治疗前后分别运用学习障碍儿童视、听认知训练软件、Conners量表父母症状问卷(PSQ)评估,进行治疗前后比较。结果:接受治疗的学习障碍儿童在治疗后的认知训练测验正确率有明显提高(P<0.01),Conners量表PSQ各因子分明显降低。结论:视、听认知训练和心理治疗综合干预能有效地治疗儿童学习困难。     

Parent-child interaction and children's number learning

Two groups of Chinese four-year-olds and their parents' interaction in joint activities were analyzed and compared. The children in Group 1 were high scorers in written number skills and the children in Group 2 were low scorers. Eighty-five dyads participated in four separate 15-minute joint activities such as book reading, mathematical worksheets, blank paper and blocks. A mini-questionnaire was also administered. The results indicated that a wide variety of mathematics and interactive strategies were involved in the activities, that there was no difference in the frequency of mathematical events occurring in the activities between the two groups, that more parents in Group 1 used several more positive strategies than the parents in Group 2, that more children in Group 2 had trouble remaining engaged in the activity, and that the frequency and the quality of parent-child joint activities at home, such as book reading and mathematical worksheets, were possible contributors to children's development of mathematics.     

Young children's food preferences: a comparison of three modalities of food stimuli

Food preferences are widely agreed to be important determinants of eating behaviour in young children. Existing studies of methods of assessing preferences have suggested tasting and ranking foods can generate reliable responses with young children, but there have been few attempts to assess other methods which might provide a more convenient alternative in situations where the use of real foods could be difficult (e.g. outside the laboratory), or tasting could be undesirable (e.g. if there are large numbers of foods, or foods which children would be unwilling to taste). The present study is a comparison of the reliability of preferences measured using: (i) real foods; (ii) food photographs; and (iii) food models, in 3 to 5-year-old children. The results showed that the tasting method produced good results, replicating existing data from U.S. samples. Food photographs came a close second in reliability but food models produced unreliable rankings, especially in the youngest group. Five-year-olds produced significantly more consistent results than the younger children. These results indicate that using real foods as the stimuli produces the most reliable taste preferences with children in this young age range, but photographs may provide a convenient alternative with adequate reliability.     

Thimerosal-containing vaccines and deficit in child development: Population-based study in southern Brazil

BackgroundThe discussion on the safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCVs) and their impact on child development it́s very relevant. Methods: This is a cohort study with mother-child dyads who received prenatal care in the Unified Health System. The domains of motor, cognitive and language development were evaluated in children between 24 and 36 months of age. Data on vaccination were obtained through the child's immunization record. A linear regression analysis was carried out considering possible confounders. Results: In bivariate analyses, motor and language development were associated with TCVs (p < 0.05). However, in the multivariate analysis, this association was not maintained (p > 0.05). These results indicate that the use of TCVs is not associated with child development. The importance of this study is summarized in transmitting relevant information regarding public health, based on reliable data.     

学龄期儿童偏头痛影响因素的临床研究

目的探讨学龄期儿童偏头痛的影响因素,为采取预防措施提供依据。方法36例儿童偏头痛病例均详细询问病史和进行一系列理化检查,排除了上呼吸道感、中枢神经系统等器质性疾病引起的头痛,并排除了眼、耳鼻喉科疾病。收集了全部偏头痛儿童的病史、生活饮食习惯、心理因素、家庭环境因素等,并进行非条件logistic多元回归分析。结果按α=0.05水平入选logistic回归模型的因素有过度疲劳、睡眠不足、心理因素、使用电脑或看电视过久、头痛家族史、环境因素,均有统计学意义。结论针对影响儿童偏头痛的主要因素,临床采取心理治疗、养成良好的学习生活习惯等措施,有助于缓解儿童偏头痛的症状。     

Fathering attitudes and practices: Influences on children's development

This study examined direct and indirect influences of fathers' reported parenting beliefs and practices on children's development. Participants included 525 fathers and mothers of toddlers enrolled in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project in 14 communities across the United States. Results show that fathers' modernity defined as endorsing more child-directed versus adult-directed parenting attitudes was a correlate of maternal beliefs and maternal supportiveness, and was directly associated with higher cognitive scores for the focus child. The importance of the parental transaction was also observed in the combined effects of paternal and maternal modernity on child development.     

The development and testing of a module on child functioning for identifying children with disabilities on surveys. II: Question development and pretesting

Background

This paper is part of a series of articles documenting the development of a module on child functioning by UNICEF in collaboration with the Washington Group on Disability Statistics (WG). This paper documents the contribution of Cognitive Interview (CI) question evaluation methods to the development of the final module.

Young children's metacognition in the context of telling a written story

This study examines young children's metacognition in the context of telling a written story. The participants were 36 children: 12 preschoolers, 12 kindergarteners, and 12 first graders in a kindergarten and a nearby elementary school in a northwestern city in Taiwan. Each child was asked to ‘read’ a 13-page wordless picture book and tell a story that will be transcribed for others to read. Once each child finished telling the story, the scribe asked whether the child wished to revise it; the children's revisions were taken as indicative of metacognitive abilities. Results indicate that 33 out of 36 children demonstrated metacognition as they revised their stories. A significant difference with regards to the accuracy of the revisions was found among the three groups of children, with first graders producing significantly more accurate revisions than did the preschoolers. The implications for future research and practices for teachers are discussed.     

Peer persuasion: a study of children's dominance strategies

This study sought to identify the ways in which four and five year old children attempt to exert dominance over their peers. Twenty children between the ages of four and five years old were studied in a child care center in southeast Ohio. Over a six week period, the researchers recorded observations which were later categorized as verbal assertiveness, physical assertiveness, and the use of theme plays. Verbal assertiveness was the most frequently employed dominance strategy. This strategy was successful when the dominator attempted to make commands but was otherwise generally not successful. Physical assertiveness was successful when a child exhibited athletic superiority. The use of theme plays was the most successful strategy in eliciting a submissive response from peers. Suggestions are offered to explain why theme plays were so successful.