A Longitudinal Study of the Cognitive Development of 3-5 Year Old Rural Children in the State of Nebraska, U.S.A.

Autor/in	Kalyan-Masih, Violet
Titel	A Longitudinal Study of the Cognitive Development of 3-5 Year Old Rural Children in the State of Nebraska, U.S.A.
Quelle	(1979), (15 Seiten)Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; Monographie
Schlagwörter	Age Differences; Cognitive Development; Cognitive Processes; Concept Formation; Developmental Stages; Longitudinal Studies; Preschool Children; Rural Areas; Task Performance; Nebraska + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Age; Difference; Age difference; Altersunterschied; Kognitive Entwicklung; Cognitive process; Kognitiver Prozess; Concept learning; Begriffsbildung; Longitudinal study; Longitudinal method; Longitudinal methods; Längsschnittuntersuchung; Pre-school age; Preschool age; Child; Children; Pre-school education; Preschool education; Vorschulalter; Kind; Kinder; Vorschulkind; Vorschulkinder; Vorschulerziehung; Vorschule; Rural area; Ländlicher Raum
Abstract	This study is part of a longitudinal research project which investigated the cognitive and social development of rural children (ages 3-5, 6-8, and 9-11 years) in eight states of the U.S.A. This paper, however, reports only the cognitive development of 3- to 5-year-old subjects in rural Nebraska from 1976-1978. The longitudinal sample plus control cohorts added in 1977 and 1978 consisted of 40 3-year-old, 57 4-year-old, and 75 5-year-old children. Six Piagetian tasks from the Nebraska-Wisconsin Cognitive Assessment Battery (NWCAB) were used to collect data: (1) relations task 1 (RT1) - determines how the child seriates with one variable; (2) relations task 2 (RT2) - measures a child's ability to seriate with two variables; (3) classification task 1 (CT1) - assesses the child's ability according to his freely chosen criterion and according to a given specified criterion; (4) number-length 1 (NLT 1) - assesses the child's understanding of the conservation of number; (5) number-length 2 (NLT2) - assesses the child's mastery of conservation of length in the identity format; and (6) number-length 3 (NLT3) - assesses the child's mastery of conservation of length in the equivalent format. These tasks were administered to the three-year longitudinal sample in 1976, 1977, and 1978; to the two-year sample, in 1977 and 1978; and to the control-cohort in 1978 only. Among the results it was found that: (1) NLT2 and NLT3 proved too difficult for this age group (they were excluded from the data analysis); (2) scaled scoring on the NWCAB tasks for 3- to 5-year-old children reflected a progression from preoperational intuitive reasoning to a somewhat higher level of thinking. These findings tentatively support the Piagetian theory of cognitive structural change between the early and middle preoperational periods. (Author/MP)
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC