Deborah L. Holmes

Children at Risk for Early Academic Problems: The Role of Learning-Related Social Skills

Abstract Increasing evidence suggests that aspects of children’s learning-related social skills (including interpersonal skills and work-related skills) contribute to early school performance. The present investigation examined the association of work-related skills to academic outcomes at the beginning of kindergarten and at the end of second grade as well as characteristics of children with low work-related skills. Children were selected from a sample of 540 children based on low work-related skills scores on the Cooper-Farran Behavioral Rating Scales, a teacher-rated scale. Results indicated that work-related skills predicted unique variance in academic outcomes at school entry and at the end of second grade, after controlling for kindergarten academic score and important background variables. In addition, children with poor work-related skills ( n = 82) were found to differ from the overall sample on a number of child, family, and sociocultural variables including: significantly lower IQs, more behavior difficulties, and more medical problems, such as hearing and language problems. Finally, children with low work-related skills scored lower on academic outcomes at the beginning of kindergarten and at the end of second grade. Findings highlight the importance of early work-related skills in understanding successful school transition and early academic achievement.

The potential of children as eyewitnesses

This study examined childrens capabilities in an eyewitness task. Subjects aged five to twenty-two years viewed a confederate interacting with the experimenter and later were asked to tell what had happened, to answer objective questions (including a leading question), and to identify the confederate from 6 photos. The results indicated that although young children were unable to freely narrate what they had observed as thoroughly as adults, they were as accurate as adults in answering objective questions and in identifying the confederate from 6 photos. Additionally, there were no age differences in susceptibility to leading questions.

Peripheral visual processing

An attempt was made to examine the development of the ability to identify stimuli presented to peripheral vision in several different tasks. Five- and 8-year-old children and college adults saw, for 20 msec, either a single figure at 1°, 2°, 4°, or 6° of visual angle from the fovea (singleform condition) or an off-foveal figure with an additional figure at the fovea (double-form condition). In the double-form conditions, the subjects were required to identify either the peripheral figure only (double-form presentation) or both figures (double-form report). The main effects of Age, Distance, and Form Condition were significant. Accuracy improved with increasing age and with decreasing distance. The Form Condition effect reflected lower accuracy in the two double-form conditions than in the single-form condition. Interestingly, there was no difference between the two double-form conditions, suggesting that the mere presence of a foveal stimulus, with instructions to ignore it, produces as much decrement in peripheral performance as when subjects are told to fully process and report the foveal stimulus. Also, there was no interaction between Form Condition and Distance, suggesting that the label “tunnel vision” may be misleading, since the presence of the foveal stimulus seems to have an equal effect on all peripheral locations and does not really “restrict” the size of the effective visual field.

A methodological note on the use of a priori cluster scores for the Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (BNBAS)

The Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale was administered to 44 infants at their time of discharge from the hospital. Attempts to categorize their performance into the Sostek and Anders (1977) modification of the Als (1978) a priori clusters indicated that it was not possible to unequivocally score the protocols of 19 of the 44 infants. Upon closer analysis, a number of structural problems in the scoring system were detected that were responsible for the scoring problems.

SEARCHING FOR MULTIPLE TARGETS SIMULTANEOUSLY: IS IT REALLY POSSIBLE?

In an attempt to clarify the findings of Neisser and his associates with respect to parallel processing of multiple target items in a visual search task, subjects were tested in a multiple-target search situation in which the various target sets were not nested. 20 sessions were run for each subject with 12 trials per day. The targets used were geometric forms, allowing for manipulation of the number of features in each form. The results do not confirm those of Neisser, in fact, the interaction of session × target-set size was in a direction opposite to that predicted by a parallel scan model. These findings indicate that what Neisser reported as parallel preattentive processing may in fact have reflected a tendency for subjects to scan for a master set of targets, regardless of which subset of that set was actually present on a given set.

Foveal task effects on same-different judgments in the visual periphery

An attempt was made to examine the extent to which the presence of a foveal stimulus affects same-different judgments regarding the horizontal-vertical orientation of two lines located in peripheral vision. The results of the study indicated that accuracy in reporting peripheral visual stimuli is determined not only by the nature of those stimuli, but also by whether other stimuli are presented foveally. The simultaneous presence of another stimulus in foveal vision reduces accuracy in reporting peripheral stimuli, independent of instructions to ignore, detect, or identify the foveal stimulus.

USE OF CONSTANT TARGET SETS IN VISUAL SEARCH TASKS

54 subjects participated in a visual scanning study in which each subject was provided with only a single target set (of 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, or 10 letters in length). Eight sessions of 30 trials each were completed for each subject. Although there were slight differences in the rate at which performance improved over trials, this was not systematically related to size of target set. Moreover, even in the last session, there were large differences in performance in the different target sets. These findings suggest that Neissers evidence for parallel preattentive processing in such tasks may have been confounded by his use of nested target sets and a within-subjects design.