The purpose of this study was to investigate some characteristics of aspiration levels of Type A preschoolers. Twenty-two Type A and twenty-one Type B subjects selected from 245 preschoolers were given three tasks: ball-throwing task 1, ball-throwing task 2, and ringtoss task. After investigating some basic characteristics of aspiration levels in a standard situation (ball-throwing task 1), ris...

We assessed the use of a joint activity schedule to increase peer engagement for preschoolers with autism. We taught 3 dyads of preschoolers with autism to follow joint activity schedules that cued both members of the pair to play a sequence of interactive games together. Results indicated that joint activity schedules increased peer engagement and the number of games completed for all dyads. S...

In this paper, we review evidence from infants, toddlers, and preschoolers to tackle the question of how individuals orient preferences and actions toward social partners and how these preferences change over development. We aim at emphasizing the importance of language in guiding categorization relatively to other cues such as age, race and gender. We discuss the importance of language as part...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of the study was to acoustically compare the performance of children who do and do not stutter on diadochokinesis tasks in terms of syllable duration, syllable periods, and peak intensity. METHODS In this case-control study, acoustical analyses were performed on 26 children who stutter and 20 aged-matched normally fluent children (both groups stratified into preschooler...

To examine how young children learn to read new words, we asked preschoolers (N = 115, mean age 4 years, 8 months) to learn and remember novel spellings that made sense based on letter names (e.g. TZ for tease) and spellings that were visually distinctive but phonetically inappropriate. Children who were more knowledgeable about letter names tended to perform better in the name condition than t...

Some grips on the handle of a tool can be planned on the basis of information directly available in the scene. Other grips, however, must be planned on the basis of the final position of the hand. "End-state comfort" grips require an awkward or uncomfortable initial grip so as to later implement the action comfortably and efficiently. From a cognitive perspective, planning for end-state comfort...

Probabilistic models of expected information gain require integrating prior knowledge about causal hypotheses with knowledge about possible actions that might generate data relevant to those hypotheses. Here we looked at whether preschoolers (mean: 54 months) recognize "action possibilities" (affordances) in the environment that allow them to isolate variables when there is information to be ga...

Previous research has shown that young children deny being able to see an agent whose eyes are covered. The current study explored this phenomenon further. In Experiment 1, 3-year-olds denied that they could "see," but affirmed that they could "look at," a doll whose eyes were covered--indicating that they demand mutuality for seeing another but not for looking at another. In Experiment 2, 3.5-...

The current study tested whether preschoolers' moral and social-conventional judgments change under social pressure using Asch's conformity paradigm. A sample of 132 preschoolers (Mage=3.83years, SD=0.85) rated the acceptability of moral and social-conventional events and also completed a visual judgment task (i.e., comparing line length) both independently and after having viewed two peers who...

Educators often use concrete objects to help children understand mathematics concepts. However, findings on the effectiveness of concrete objects are mixed. The present study examined how two factors-perceptual richness and established knowledge of the objects-combine to influence children's counting performance. In two experiments, preschoolers (N = 133; Mage = 3;10) were randomly assigned to ...