This article describes the interplay between age and children's resources during the transition from Finnish early childhood education and care (ECEC) to pre-primary education. We describe how age operates in the structures of ECEC during the time before the actual transition. We approach the transition to pre-primary education and the relation…

Background: The elaborated environmental stress hypothesis (EESH) provides a framework that describes how motor skills may indirectly cause internalizing problems through various mediating psychosocial factors. While there is evidence to support this framework, little is known about how the proposed relationships may vary across different stages…

The response set effect has been observed in a number of developmental tasks that are proposed to required inhibition. This effect has been interpreted as evidence that the specific responses children plan to make in these tasks become prepotent. Here we investigated whether there is a response set effect in the hand game. In this task, children…

This qualitative case study approaches early childhood education and care practices from a socio-spatial point of view. One Finnish daycare group for one- to three-year-olds participated in the study. The ethnographic observations from the practices are analyzed together with the ECE practitioners' audio-recorded team meetings and video-elicited…

Investigates the knowledge of thematic and taxonomic relations of 15 children of 26 months and 24 children of 34 months. Both age groups were able to identify thematic matches. However, 34-month-olds were able to recognize a wider range of thematic associations than 26-month-olds. (RJC)

Children of 15-33 months of age were presented with tasks measuring 2 facets of self: as the object of knowledge and as the subject of experience. Relations between tasks are discussed in terms of changes from the processing of immediate and visible features to the processing of more enduring and nonvisible features of the self during the toddler…

A proposed study of the differences in the way children perceive, approach, and behave in problem-solving situations is described. The behavioral measure to be used is "glancing," which has been related to outerdirectedness. Children will be given two sets of two puzzles to put together. On the basis of the number of glances and the situation in…

Piaget and Inhelder, in The Child's Conception of Space (1956), described the coordination of viewpoints (CV) spatial operation as one of the prerequisites to the development of the rotation and development (RD) spatial operation. This study investigated this developmental dependency notion and also evaluated the effects of age and sex on the…

Examined drawings and transcripts of accompanying narratives made by 3- to 7-year-old children in a preschool setting. Analyzed the symbolism of the pictures and the children's stories about them that formed a background or explanation of each picture, noting developmental differences between the age groups. (JPB)

A total of 270 children from 3 ethnic groups were tested for understanding of concepts of heating and cooling. A strong horizontal decalage effect was seen, with children of all ethnic groups using more sophisticated explanations at earlier ages for heating than cooling. Implications for developmental theory are discussed. (SLD)

Reports on a study of young children's abilities to discriminate between two chords played as the accompaniment of a melody and played alone with no melody. Finds that age, type of stimulus, and the interaction of these two variables affected children's performance significantly. (CFR)

In order to verify claims made by Genevan researchers that linguistic production but not comprehension capabilities distinguish seriators from nonseriators, three tasks were administered to children between the ages of four and eight. Subjects were asked to arrange in order objects varying in size, to describe how the objects differed from each…

Forty-eight middle-income children, equally divided as to sex, looked at a sequence of animated films in which a pair of male figures underwent a change in facial affect. Three questions were posed: (1) Could a qualitative-structural analysis be applied to the kinds of explanations given by the children to account for changes in facial affect? (2)…

Presents guidelines for providing suitable play and learning spaces for children from birth to 3 years old. Argues that toddlers have developmental needs different from those of older preschoolers, and that environments must be designed appropriately. Recommends that room arrangements for toddlers provide simplicity, options for seclusion and…

This study examined variables related to problem-solving approaches of young children, using the theoretical framework provided by Zigler and his collaborators in their work on outerdirectedness. Four aspects of outerdirectedness were examined: developmental trends, effects of different types of reinforcement, effects of task difficulty, and pride…