This study examined (a) developmental stability and change in children's private speech during the preschool years, (b) across-task consistency in children's self-speech, and (c) across-setting relations between children's private speech in the laboratory and their behaviour at home and in the preschool classroom. A group of 32 normally developing three- and four-year-old children was observed twice (six month inter-observation interval) while engaging in the same individual problem-solving tasks. Measures of private speech were collected from transcribed videotapes. Naturalistic observations of children's behaviour in the preschool classroom were conducted, and teachers and parents reported on children's behaviour at home and school. Individual differences in preschool children's private speech use were generally stable across tasks and time and related to children's observed and reported behaviour at school and home. Children whose private speech was more partially internalized had fewer externalizing behaviour problems and better social skills as reported by parents and teachers. Children whose private speech was largely task-irrelevant engaged in less goal-directed behaviour in the classroom, expressed more negative affect in the classroom, and rated as having poorer social skills and more behaviour problems. Developmental change occurred during the preschool years in children's use and internalization of private speech during problem-solving in the form of a reduction over time in the total number of social speech utterances, a decrease in the average number of words per utterance, and an increase in the proportion of private speech that was partially internalized.
The methods from which one can choose when preparing for the GRE Verbal Analogies include books, software, audiotapes, and formal classroom instruction. What teaching method will work best for a given individual? To begin the search for an answer, Gray's test of reasoning ability was given to 28 undergraduates who also answered a questionnaire detailing their experience with analogies. They were randomly assigned to teaching conditions ranging from self-directed workbook study to intensive interactive assistance. No teaching method was superior overall, but interactions showed that (1) students who scored worst on the pretest improved the most, (2) those higher in cognitive functioning and experience performed better after intensive interactive assistance, and (3) those lower in both cognitive functioning and experience did significantly better with self-paced workbooks. This preliminary work suggests that it may be profitable to assess the prior experience and reasoning of potential students and adopt the methods for teaching formal operational thought found empirically to be most suitable.
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