The purpose of this study was to explore pre-readers' comprehension of a story with competing character goals. Fifty-eight children in three age groups (2½-3 years; 3-4 years; and 4-5 years) were read a story in which the protagonist's goal was unstated and conflicted with the goal of the secondary character. Understanding of explicit story…

Research has documented various family and individual risk factors associated with severe conduct problems, but little is known about the developmental origins of children who engage in both aggressive and prosocial interactions with others. The present study utilized growth-mixture modeling to identify distinct trajectories of physical aggression…

Presents research findings about the development of metalinguistic awareness (MLA) in young children. Discusses MLA and reading readiness, and the implications for beginning reading instruction. Suggests various reading methods which allow children with both high and low levels of MLA to develop literacy. (MM)

Investigates the significance of the parent's role in reading aloud familiar or unfamiliar stories to their children. Concludes that, although the nature of the interaction between parent and child did not differ with respect to the parent's gender, there were differences in the kinds of interaction strategies used in familiar versus unfamiliar…

Ten French-speaking preschool children in Quebec with intellectual disabilities received either an intervention program based on the emergent literacy paradigm involving modeling, exploration, and interaction with an adult, or a comparison intervention. Pre- and post-test comparisons with a control group found the only item on which experimental…

Examines teaching rime analogy or letter recoding reading strategies to prereaders. Results reveal that experience with rime analogy increased letter recoding ability, but teaching in letter recoding did not enhance rime analogy. Children learned to read with a rime analogy or letter recoding reading strategy, and many developed new reading…

This booklet presents a reading and writing intervention program for French Canadian preschool children with developmental delays, to be implemented by parents or collaboratively by parents and teachers. The program calls for children to have frequent contacts with written language, in order to facilitate the development of a positive attitude…

A study of 39 rural kindergarten students and their parents examined the relationships between parental print exposure, socioeconomic status (SES), and children's early language and literacy skills. Results suggest that SES had minimal impact on children's literacy and that parental print exposure strongly influenced children's vocabulary and…