The Relation of Certain Home Environment Factors to the Thinking Abilities of Three-Year-Old Children. Final Report.

This study investigated (1) three kinds of mental operation in children: divergent production, convergent production, and cognitive thinking manifested in 3- to 4-year-olds and compared the results to results of a study of 4- to 5-year-olds, and (2) the relationship between children's abilities and their parents' level of education, children's sex and age, parents' occupations, the amount of time the father spends in the home and the mother spends reading and playing with her 3-year-old, and the type of nursery school attended. Mother interviews and test protocols were obtained for 416 children between the ages 3-0 and 3-11. Results indicated the most striking relationships between level of education, environmental experience, and aspects of thinking ability. Children with mothers at home full-time were less able in visual and spatial manipulation. Children with professional fathers showed less ability but scored higher in ideational fluency. Children of fathers who attended college were more able in convergent figural thinking. Mothers' education was related to verbal tasks as well as figural. Some geographic differences were found. It was evident that 3- and 4-year-olds showed "types" of thinking ability. (Author/DR)