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This study was designed to consider effects of age, sex, intelligence, lateral usage, and lateral awareness on young children's performance of spatial organization tasks. The sample consisted of 79 Caucasian, middle socioeconomic status nursery school children (mean C.A. 57.80, S.D. 4.47 months), 44 boys and 35 girls. Spatial organization was operationally defined as ability to copy patterns by drawing and walking in an expended spatial field and to identify by verbal response the correct spatial position of objects in relation to each other and to self. No association of lateral awareness or lateral usage measures and the spatial organization tasks was identified. A clear sex difference favoring boys was found in pattern copying in an expanded spatial field. Boys had significantly higher objective scores in pattern walking than did girls; they also appeared markedly more task oriented. Findings were consistent with the field dependence-independence construct, and suggest that sex differences in styles of field organization are identifiable by the late preschool age period. Differences in task orientation, cue selection, and cue organization may well be keys to understanding children's strategies of problem solving; these warrant further study. (Author)

Six experiments were designed in order to compare the cooperative and competitive interaction of five-year-olds with that of older children up to age 10. For all experiments, children of the same age and same sex were matched in dyads. The children played various two-person games where they could obtain prizes in a variety of reward contingency conditions. The responsiveness of children to certain situational characteristics was investigated. The need for mutual assistance and the possibility for an equitable outcome were considered as, and were expected to be, situational cues for cooperative behavior. Conflict of interest and the possibility for an inequitable outcome were expected to be cues for competitive behavior. The results supported a general hypothesis that the potential responsiveness of children to both cues for cooperation and cues for competition increases with age. For older children, conflict of interest was a particularly important determinant relative to other determinants of cooperation and competition. For older children, but not for five-year-olds, prior game experiences led to greater cooperation. Sex differences did not generally approach significance. The results suggested that the predisposition of older children to be competitive in conflict of interest situations caused them to interact in maladaptive ways. (Author/DB)

The project reported in this paper has 3 facets and is part of a larger one focused on finding out how to improve the prediction for scholastic success of children from disadvantaged populations. The first paper reports on a pilot study of the effect of parent participation in Head Start on subsequent utilization of community resources. It is also concerned with how parents view Head Start personnel and how individual staff members view each other. While it was demonstrated that parents did change as a result of their participation in the program, the measures used were necessarily crude. An important aspect of the project is concerned with the development and validation of an instrument which will be sensitive to these important changes. The second section reports the rationale and approach to the development of an instrument to measure pre-post changes in parental attitudes, especially in the area of alienation. The third facet is concerned with an experiment to test the value of special instruction in producing more effective modes of home teaching in parents of disadvantaged children. The first step has been the preparation of an instrument of measure parental attitudes toward the Head Start program. This instrument and the description of the study are included as the third report in this section. (Author/MK)

The degree to which children of 2 age groups and different subcultures differ in the amount of cooperative and competitive behavior they exhibit is explored. A game measuring cooperation and competition was played with pairs of Anglo Americans and Mexican Americans who were 4-5 years of age and with Anglo Americans, Mexican Americans, and Mexicans who were 7-9 years old. Cooperative play allowed both pair members to receive rewards; competitive play was irrational, allowing no subject to reach his goal. The number of moves pairs took to reach a goal indicated that younger subjects were more cooperative than older subjects. Among the older children, Mexicans were most cooperative, Mexican Americans next, and Anglo Americans least cooperative. Also among the older children, instructional sets designed to create "I" orientation increased competition whereas sets stressing "we" orientation increased cooperation. Qualitative differences between patterns of play were noted for the cultural and age groups. Sex differences were not found. A list of references, footnotes, 2 tables, and 1 paradigm are also presented. (AL)

The "Tell-And-Find Picture Game" is designed to teach both speaking and listening comprehension skills to preschool children. The game is arranged to provide a cooperative experience for two players who take turns in the role of a speaker and of a listener. In order to test the effectiveness of the game in encouraging cognitive gains, a pilot study was run in which the game was adapted to provide specific instruction on a number of spatial concepts. Thirty 4-year-old black Head Start children were pretested on these spatial concepts, and the 10 children who made the most errors were selected for the pilot study. These children played the game for 20 minutes on each of six days. On the seventh day, posttests, which were identical with the pretests, were administered. The children were also tested for affective response to the game. The outcome of these tests indicated that the children both enjoyed the game and improved their language skills of listening comprehension and verbal expression as a result of it. The emphasis on cooperation seemed to be a good feature. The study also suggested certain improvements in the game, some of which would decrease the dependence on the experimenter and make the players more autonomous. (MH)

This Head Start study sought to determine whether or not increased communication among the four groups of adults most influential in the child's transition from preschool to kindergarten would lead to a greater similarity of goals and attitudes among these groups, and thus help the child to bridge the gap between preschool and school. The four groups of adults are the parents, kindergarten teachers, Head Start teachers, and day care teachers. Eight monthly meetings were scheduled for these groups with parents and teachers meeting separately. It was hoped that through these meetings parents and teachers would demonstrate a greater similarity in goals and attitudes. A control group had no such meetings. The groups were pre- and posttested on the ADRES (an alienation questionnaire, Attitude Differences Related to Economic Status) and the TEACH Scale (an assessment of achievement goals for 5-year-old pupils, Teacher Expectations of Achievement for Children in Head Start). Pretest differences between groups were highly significant, showing a gap between the educational values of the groups. Pre-post analysis of TEACH revealed a trend toward similarity in goals among members of the experimental group, although the small sample and poor parent attendance render the results statistically undependable. (MH)

Compared to other children, Mexican-American children seem less responsive in test-taking and classroom situations. This behavior may be due to a generalized tendency to be conservative risk-takers. This study investigates aspects of this problem by testing four hypotheses: (1) that Mexican-American preschoolers would take fewer chances on a risk-taking test than their Anglo-American or Negro peers, (2) that this inter-group difference would increase as the material value of the reward (candy, rather than praise) increased, (3) that fewer chances would be taken following failure than following success, and (4) that boys would take more chances than girls, regardless of ethnicity or reward. The subjects, 60 Negro, 79 Mexican-American, and 25 Anglo-American Head Start children, were all given a risk-taking task developed for this study. The subjects were assigned on a stratified random basis to one of three treatment groups based on reward: beads, candy, or verbal praise. Analysis of the data showed no significant differences between ethnic groups, sexes, treatments, or for effects of failure and success. However, as predicted, Mexican-Americans took significantly fewer chances with candy reward, while Negro and Anglo-Americans took fewer chances with bead and praise reward. (MH)

Two experiments to study the development of the meaning of laughter in children are reported. A pilot study presented recorded audio tapes with both humorous and nonhumorous episodes, some with accompanying canned laughter, to 24 boys between the ages of 4 and 6 years. Observers recorded durations of laughter and smiling. Results showed that both responses reflect social context, and occur more in a group situation. Four-year-olds smiled more when alone than 6-year-olds who smiled most when in the group situation. The two groups gave different responses in rating stimuli as humorous. Humor responses and ratings were not correlated. In the second study, 48 4- and 6-year-old boys, in groups of three, listened to two audio tapes which contained essentially nonverbal humorous and nonhumorous stimuli. On one tape the third stimulus was followed by 10 seconds of silence, on the second tape by 5 seconds of laughter and 5 of silence. Videotapes showed that 6-year-olds laughed and smiled with the laugh track more than 4-year-olds. Laughter and smiling were significantly related at age 4 but not at age 6. This study supports the hypothesis that the social mirth response, in terms of both live group and recorded laughter, is developmental in nature. (DR)

This study assessed the value of teaching young children the relevant attributes of a concept and the conceptual rule by which the attributes are organized. It was hypothesized that only if children had prior knowledge of both components could they follow instructions designed to teach a new concept. It was further hypothesized that children who learned to follow instructions involving a new rule would be superior at discovering this rule in a concept identification or inductive learning problem. Sixty Head Start 4-year-olds who could follow directions but did not know the components to be taught were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 treatment groups: (1) learned the new rule, (2) learned new attributes, (3) learned both rule and attributes, and (4) control. Results of pre- and post-tests on concept utilization and concept identification indicated that the experimental groups performed better than the control group if and only if the children had learned both components before or during the experiment. Transfer of the new rule to the concept identification problem was demonstrated for the Rule Learning group, but not for the Rule and Attribute Learning group. (MH)

The development of an instrument (TEACH) which would relate the variables of teacher goals, classroom activities, and children's achievement is fully described. A search of the literature, attitude inventories, and other teacher measures produced a pool of value statements about educational goals which were placed in traditional categories. Descriptions of behaviors indicative of the achievement of a given goal were devised. The item presentation format required two separate responses to the same set of items. The first response was a rating of the importance of the item and the second was a rating of expected level of performance. An unmodified version of the instrument was first administered to head teachers and assistant teachers of 24 Head Start classes during an orientation session and again approximately 8 months later. Results indicated that developmental or readiness factors (emotional, social, situational) had higher rank orders than academic skill factors and that Expectancy scores were generally higher than Importance ratings. There were no significant differences between pre- and post-test ratings, suggesting that the sampled teachers maintained stable feelings about goals. However, the degree of correspondence between Importance and Expectancy increased during the year. The present instrument is long (7 factors; 100 items) and modification is necessary, while its discriminative ability has yet to be established. Examples of the items and tables of mean scores are included in the appendix. (PR)

Identification is a learning process important to the development of self-concept and to the role behavior of an individual. This study investigated the degree of race and sex identification and preference in both black and white disadvantaged preschool children. The measurement instrument developed was a 96-item paired picture selection task consisting of 13 sub-series of items that examined race and sex identification, race and sex preference, race labeling, color labeling and preference, and the dominance of race or sex criteria in subjects' response patterns. The sample was comprised of 168 4-year-old black and white children from Head Start and day care centers. The data revealed that: (1) white children identified with their own sex more than did black children, (2) white children and black children both identified with and preferred the white race, (3) black examiners didn't increase the black children's preference for the black race, (4) boys preferred their own sex less than did girls, with no difference between the races, (5) sex was the dominant selection criterion for all groups, (6) no relationship appeared between preference for the white race and expressed preference for color, and (7) half the subjects pointed to the same picture whether it was labeled "good" or "bad." (Author/MH)

The purpose of this study was to find out whether systematic evaluation feedback to teachers would result in: (1) development of more favorable attitudes toward evaluation, as measured by Teacher Attitudes Toward Evaluation (TATE), and increased teacher use of a variety of curricula and materials, (2) greater correspondence between teachers' expectations and children's performance, as measured by Teachers Expectations for Achievement of Children in Head Start (TEACH), and (3) greater gains on cognitive and affective measures for children in feedback classes. 183 children were tested on a variety of measures. Data were also collected from classroom observations and parent interviews. Of the 24 classes in the study, 10 classes (20 teachers) were in the feedback group, which attended monthly meetings where they were informed about children's test results, test instruments, and classroom observations. Teachers also viewed video tapes of their own classes. Although children showed consistent gains, teachers given feedback were not measurably more successful in remediating deficiencies than those not receiving feedback. With reference to teacher attitudes, the intervention was more effective, as shown by TEACH and TATE scores and by increased understanding and rapport between teachers and evaluators. (NH)

To aid in providing remediation for the language and cognitive skills of disadvantaged children, the UCLA Head Start Research and Evaluation Center compared three language programs: the UCLA Preschool Language Program, the Behavioral Research Laboratories' Readiness for Language Arts Program, and an unstructured Placebo Program. Each of the subjects, 163 4-year-old Head Start children, was randomly assigned by sex to one of the programs. A no-treatment Head Start group was used for control. Subjects were pre- and posttested on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, the Caldwell Preschool Inventory, the Gumpgookies, the Behavioral Research Laboratories #1, the Visual Discrimination Inventory, and the UCLA Early Childhood Language Tests for Four-Year-Olds. Experimental treatment extended over 24 weeks, 12 in each of 2 semesters. Testing results (104 subjects) revealed that the subjects in the two task-oriented structured language programs were superior in performance to both Placebo and Control groups. Although the UCLA and BRL programs differed in content, activities, and materials, results were similar. Afro-Americans did less well than Anglo- or Mexican-Americans, girls slightly better than boys, and subjects with experienced teachers did better than those with inexperienced teachers. Appendixes comprise four-fifths of this report. (MH/Author)