The oral re-telling of traditional tales, modelled by a storyteller and taught to children in school, can be understood as 'non-instrumental' practice in speaking and listening that emphasises oral language over the reading and writing of stories. While oral storytelling has significant benefits to children's education and development, it is…

Despite the popularity of task-based language teaching (TBLT) in foreign language (FL) education at elementary school, it remains unclear how young learners' FL abilities can best be evaluated with tasks. The present study seeks to understand developmental differences in interactions among elementary-school students during task-based language…

Results of two experiments support the finding of developmental change in the role of representation in perspective-taking tasks. Experiment 1, which involved 80 first-grade students with a mean age of 6.5 years, crossed task characteristics and response modes. Subjects either imagined an observer's movement around a fixed array or imagined an…

Tested children's ability to compute perspectives from locational and structural descriptions of scenes. Children from 4 to 10 years of age were given perspective-taking problems that involved abstract multicomponent scenes; responses entailed the reconstruction of alternate views. Four-year olds were unsuccessful; 10-year olds were successful…

Examined preschoolers' and second and fifth graders' development of two types of perspective taking: (1) perspective taking based on differences in the information available to two people; and (2) perspective taking based on differences in weighting the same information. (RH)

The primary goal of this study was to assess the ability of maltreated school-age children and adolescents to understand the thoughts, feelings, and points of view of others. Level of egocentrism and social perspective-taking coordination were assessed in a group of 49 maltreated and 49 demographically matched nonmaltreated children. Twenty-six…

Used a data analytic strategy that was novel to the M-space literature to examine the mental capacity prerequisites of social-cognitive development of 99 students in grades one, three, and five. Used a structural equations analysis to determine whether M-power was a significant predictor of role-taking development. (RH)

Seventy preschoolers, first, and third graders (average ages of 4 1/2, 6 1/2 and 8 1/2 years, respectively) participated in interviews which used stories and pictures to assess their perceptions of the sources of self-knowledge (self-observation, social feedback, and social comparison). Assessments were made of level of role-taking and salience,…

Used the rational facet approach to examine the relationship between age and perceptions of subconstructs of prosocial behavior on the part of second, fourth, sixth, and eighth graders and adult teachers. Differentiation of subconstructs of prosocial behavior increased with age. (Author/BB)