The Influence of the Kindergarten Teacher on Sex Differences in Behavior

The effect of the teacher on choice of activities of boys and girls in a German kindergarten is examined and her differential attraction for boys and girls is considered. The results indicate that the presence of the kindergarten teacher has a marked impact on boys' and girls' activity choices, thereby reducing the differences in boys' and girls' preferences for certain activities. The data also suggest that the teacher has a stronger attraction for girls than for boys. Possible influencing factors are discussed. The presence of the teacher is suggested to be a variable worth considering in kindergarten studies to give us further insights into children's behavior.

Play in juvenile mink: litter effects, stability over time, and motivational heterogeneity

Mink are potentially ideal for investigating the functions of play: deleterious effects of early social isolation suggest a crucial developmental role for play; and huge numbers of highly playful juvenile subjects can be studied on farms. We collected descriptive data on 186 pairs from 93 litters, half provided with play-eliciting environmental enrichment objects in their home cages, to test three hypotheses: (1) play frequency is subject to litter effects; (2) relative playfulness is stable over time; (3) play sub-types share a single, common motivational basis. We found weak litter effects that were driven by stronger litter effects on general activity, and weakly stable individual differences in both total and rough-and-tumble play. Experimentally increasing object play did not inhibit rough-and-tumble play, showing these sub-types are not motivational substitutes. Frequencies of these sub-types were also uncorrelated, and changed differently with time of day and age, further supporting this conclusion.

Variation in children's classroom engagement throughout a day in preschool: Relations to classroom and child factors

This study examined sources of variability in preschool children's positive and negative engagement with teachers, peers, and tasks, and how that variability was related to both classroom activity settings (e.g., teacher-structured time, outdoor time, transitions) and child factors (age, gender). Participants were 283 socioeconomically and linguistically diverse children drawn from 84 classrooms, 34 to 63 months old (M = 50.8, SD = 6.5). Each child's engagement was observed and rated multiple times within a single day. Results suggested that children's engagement varied significantly across the preschool day. Activity settings that provided children with a greater degree of choice (free choice and outdoor time) were associated with more positive engagement with peers and tasks, while teacher-structured activities were associated with more positive engagement with teachers. Transitions emerged as a difficult part of the day, associated with less positive engagement with teachers and tasks. Older children were rated higher on peer and task engagement. These findings, together with previous research, suggest that both characteristics of the classroom setting and child factors are associated with children's classroom engagement throughout a day in preschool.

The child-psychoanalytic play interview: a technique for studying thematic content

Child psychoanalysts have long viewed play as a reflection of children's inner lives and have used the themes children represent in play for diagnostic and therapeutic work. Given the central role children's play has for clinical work, few studies have addressed play empirically. This paper presents a technique for studying the thematic content of children's play as it emerges during a play session with a child analyst. We report the steps involved in developing this investigative technique and describe the interobserver agreement among four rates using the technique with videotaped play sessions. Implications for future research using such an approach are discussed.

Teacher questionnaire compared with observational data on effects of sex and sibling status on preschool behaviour

Teacher questionnaires are used to assess children's social behaviour in a variety of contexts. Here questionnaire data are compared with observational data for agreement: (i) over sex and sibling status group differences; and (ii) over individual rank orders on more specific behavioural items. A principal component analysis of the teachers' ratings yielded four components--sociability, aggressiveness, perseverance and calmness. Boys were seen as more sociable and aggressive, girls more persevering. Firstborns were more sociable, aggressive and calm than secondborns, who were seen as more persevering than firstborns. Some differences between children with brothers and with sisters, and between children with same-sex and different-sex sibs were also found. These differences were in general in harmony with the observational data. Comparisons of questionnaire items with observational data on the same children indicated (a) that for the majority of items there was good agreement; (b) that agreement was better for the more behaviourally defined questions; (c) that teachers rated more on the children's behaviour with their peers than on their behaviour with the teachers; (d) that agreement was better at 42 months, soon after school entry, than at 50 months; and (e) that teachers' assessments may have been more influenced by the child's interactional style with themselves at the later age.

Lateral specialization and social-verbal development in preschool children

Forty-two 2 1/2- to 5 1/2-year-old children's social and verbal behaviors were observed during free play in a preschool. A test measuring lateral specialization of verbal function and a standardized psychometric test of verbal ability were also administered. Analysis of variance indicated that the right ear (left hemisphere) is predominant in processing verbal stimuli in children as young as 2 1/2. Multiple regression analyses revealed significant relations between the right ear accuracy score for dichotically presented verbal stimuli and both psychometrically measured verbal ability and a social-verbal factor score derived from play behavior. After the increase related to age was statistically partialled out from both verbal ability and social-verbal scores, verbal expression, length of verbal utterances, time spent in conversation, and peer social interactions increased and parallel play decreased as a function of right ear (left hemisphere) accuracy for verbal stimuli. The relationship between left ear (right hemisphere) accuracy scores for verbal stimuli and social-verbal behavior, however, was not linear. Very high and very low levels of left ear recall predicted an increase in the frequency of parallel play and low social-verbal behavior while moderate levels of left ear accuracy scores predicted the reverse.