To determine the effect of verbalization on the acquisition of manipulative skills in young children, a puzzle-assembly experiment was designed. Each of 65 Head Start children between the ages of 47 and 58 months was randomly assigned to one of the four treatment groups: practice with verbalization (PV); practice with no verbalization (PNV);…

Forty preschool Negro children took part in a study to test the effect of oral response versus listening in improving the spoken language of disadvantaged children. It was hypothesized that children who echo and produce sentences in response to an instruction to select the appropriate picture to match a spoken sentence would show greater verbal…

Nineteen Negro children, ages 5 to 5 1/2, were divided into four treatment groups to study the value of feedback to learning. Group I received feedback on correct and incorrect responses on a simple concept identification task. Group II received information only on correct answers. Group III were given the same task as I and II, but received no…

In order to investigate the effect of reinforcement on learning, 21 disadvantaged black children, 4 to 5 years of age, were divided among three treatment groups. Group I children received only feedback (information) as to the correctness or incorrectness of their responses. Group II children received a raisin for each correct response, and group…

In an attempt to explore a systematic approach to language expansion and improved sentence structure, echoic and modeling procedures for language instruction were compared. Four hypotheses were formulated: (1) children who use modeling procedures will produce better structured sentences than children who use echoic prompting, (2) both echoic and…

Sixteen Mexican-American 4-year-olds, classified as culturally disadvantaged, were administered a special program in an attempt to teach them the concept of adjectival comparatives in a short time. The children were divided into two treatment groups. One, the inductive or "discovery" group, was shown a picture of an object (for example,…

This study involved the use of group process techniques in meetings at which parents and teachers were encouraged to express their feelings, frustrations, needs and expectations. The two hypotheses tested were: (1) parents participating in the encounters will evidence more direct concern for their children's preschool education and more favorable…

The effect of a formal, structured approach to language development on preschool children is the subject of this project study. From August 1965 to August 1966, 157 programs administered to 1,663 children explored mental ability, auditory and visual discrimination, language use, vocabulary, and motivation. Children attending day care centers,…

A Head Start research report on ways to improve academic achievement of disadvantaged children describes five projects: (1) a study of sociolinguistic variables in school learning and problem solving when classes are taught in dialect versus standard English; (2) subcultural determinants of cooperative and competitive behavior in preschool…