We aimed to longitudinally examine how symbolic distancing affects preschool children's delay tolerance in a delay choice task. We presented children with choices between a smaller immediate reward and a larger delayed reward in conditions with either symbolic stimuli or edible rewards. Overall, symbolic distancing modulated children's delay…

The purpose of this study was to examine the features of the peer culture that a group of preschoolers created in their classroom in the province of Kahramanmaras, Turkey. An ethnographic approach was adopted in this study to obtain an in-depth understanding of children's peer interactions. The data were collected through variety of data…

Young children are surrounded by environmental print on a daily basis. Through their visual exploration of environmental print, coupled with sociocultural experiences, children gain valuable semantic and symbolic knowledge as they make sense of their world. The aim of this review is to examine the question of whether environmental print has value…

Twenty nonhandicapped preschoolers learned either a list of 20 Blissymbols or an identical list of 20 printed words over period of instructional sessions. Blissymbol Ss acquired list significantly faster. Results are discussed in terms of theoretical assumptions made by Blissymbol proponents and the applicability in terms of theoretical…

This study examined the relation between symbolic play training and conservation in 30 middle-class nonconserving 4-year-old children. Results showed that 13 experimental subjects manifested some change in solving conservation problems after symbolic play training while only one control subject showed any change toward conservation on the…

Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to examine the effectiveness of an instructional procedure called "aided language modeling" (ALM) on symbol comprehension and expression in 2 preschool children with autism who used few words functionally. ALM consists of engaging the child in interactive play activities and providing models of use of…

The ability of 24 children with autism (ages 3-12) to comprehend pretend acts, consisting of an experimenter pouring a pretend substance from a container onto a target figure, was explored. There was no significant difference between subjects and controls in ability to identify the pretend substance, predict the actions' pretend outcome, or…

Social and cognitive values of different play materials for 21 normal and 21 handicapped preschool children were examined. Analyses showed that handicapped preschoolers exhibited comparable amounts of symbolic play but lower quality of symbolic play than that shown by nonhandicapped preschoolers. Symbolic play by handicapped children depended much…

Observation indicated that children most frequently represent objects by performing actions appropriate to the represented objects. With increasing age, children represent objects without using functional actions and with objects bearing little physical similarity to the represented objects. (Author/DB)

Three tests were conducted to contrast the ability of bilingual and monolingual children to label and relabel objects. The findings show that bilingual subjects were significantly better than monolingual subjects, supporting the view that preschool bilingual education stimulates children's cognitive development, and enhances their self-concept.…

Forty 3-year-olds learned either 12 standard Blissymbols (SBS) or their enhanced forms (EBS). Results demonstrated that the subjects learned EBS faster than SBS, remembered more EBS than SBS, did not differ in the communicative use of SBS and EBS, and were affected more negatively when presented with the untrained SBS than EBS. (Author/JDD)

Discusses the findings of a recent study concerning the ability of an infant to see an object as a symbol. Reports that infants between 36 and 39 months old significantly outperformed informed infants between 30 and 32 months old on a symbolic task. (TW)

Reports on a study in which the symbolic relation between a scale model and the larger space that it represents was displayed by two groups of young children. Three-year-old children outperformed 2.5-year-olds in finding an object in a room after seeing an analogous object hidden in a model. (TW)

Preschool students were given picture symbol prereading activities instead of traditional prereading activities. Results indicate that picture prereading activities have a positive effect on preschool children's attitudes toward books. (NH)

Discusses development of symbolic thinking in toddlers as a step in language acquisition and skill development. Examines means of encouraging this symbolic problem solving, such as setting the stage for problems, helping children plan problem-solving strategies, and encouraging children in self-evaluating their skills. Examines development of…