IN ORDER TO TEST THE EFFICACY OF METHODS USED BY VARIOUS RESEARCHERS FOR GENERATING SPONTANEOUS SPEECH FROM UNDERPRIVILEGED CHILDREN, 20 THREE- TO FOUR-YEAR-OLD GIRLS WERE SELECTED AT RANDOM FROM A HEADSTART-TYPE PROGRAM AT HOWARD UNIVERSITY FOR TESTING. ALL WERE NEGROES AND FROM A TARGET AREA FOR POVERTY PROGRAMS. THE CHILDREN WERE TESTED…

CLASSROOM OBSERVATIONS OF 38 HEADSTART TEACHERS, TAKEN ON FOUR OCCASIONS BY FOUR DIFFERENT OBSERVERS, WERE SCORED FOR SUCH CONTENT CHARACTERISTICS AS (1) AMOUNT AND KIND OF COMMUNICATION WITH THE CHILDREN, (2) STRESS ON OBEDIENCE OR INTELLECTUAL VALUES, AND (3) PHYSICAL-MOTOR SKILLS. THESE SCORES WERE COMPARED WITH THE CHILDREN'S INTELLECTUAL…

THE WORD ASSOCIATIONS OF URBAN SLUM CHILDREN, BOTH NEGRO AND WHITE, WERE STUDIED TO DETERMINE WHAT IMPACT EXTREME SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS DIFFERENCES HAVE ON LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT. THIS STUDY OF CHILDREN FROM THE LOWEST EXTREME OF THE SOCIOECONOMIC SCALE WAS MADE AS A FOLLOWUP TO AN EARLIER STUDY OF CHILDREN REPRESENTING VARIOUS CULTURAL AND…

Suggests that disadvantaged children may be verbally illiterate but have a high degree of visual literacy. Work with visual signs, compositions, and experiences through the child's use of a camera seems to improve the child's verbal development and also may improve his written composition. Bibliography. (RW)

The Word Meaning section of the Metropolitan Readiness Test, Form A, was questioned as a true measure of the capabilities of culturally disadvantaged children. Therefore, an attempt was made to compare the Metropolitan Reading Readiness Test with a test in which as many objects as possible were renamed to coincide with the language of the students…

This paper suggests that the main reason for the failure of many children to learn to read may be that reading programs often require the child to begin reading before he has developed oral language skills. By 3 years of age the child has acquired almost all the linguistic rules needed to produce basic, or kernel, sentences, which consist of…

PATTERNS OF THE LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN OF DIFFERENT SOCIOECONOMIC ENVIRONMENTS WERE DETERMINED BY A STUDY OF WORD ASSOCIATIONS. THE RELATION OF RESIDENTIAL AREA, SOCIAL CLASS, OR SUBCULTURAL GROUP MEMBERSHIP TO LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT WAS THE MAIN CONCERN OF THE STUDY. EACH MEMBERSHIP GROUP WAS FURTHER CATEGORIZED ACCORDING TO IQ LEVEL,…

Strengthening and changing the curriculum to meet the needs of the inner-city child must be done by recognizing both the cultural aspects of the child's environment and the actual problems that he faces rather than by imposing traditional middle-class values, activities, and language. Steps suggested to both the teacher and the parent for…

This study investigated the effects of a program of mother-child interaction using children's books on the verbal skills of culturally disadvantaged 3-year-olds. A total of 47 subjects were involved in the study, with white and black children, males and females equally represented in experimental, placebo and control groups. After only three…

IN A SPECIALLY ORGANIZED NURSERY SCHOOL SETTING, DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN BETWEEN TWO AND ONE-HALF AND THREE AND ONE-HALF YEARS OF AGE, EXPERIENCED CONTINGENCY MANAGEMENT (CM) PROCEDURES TO MODIFY VERBAL BEHAVIOR. IN ONE ROOM OF A LARGE, PRIVATE DWELLING CONVERTED INTO A NURSERY SCHOOL, REQUISITE ANTECEDENT BEHAVIORS (RAB) WERE ESTABLISHED IN EACH…

After taking base rate measures of verbal behavior, using a specially devised Story Telling Test and selected sub-tests from the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities, 34 children with a mean age of 4-4, attending a year-round Head Start program, were assigned to matched experimental and control groups. The children in the experimental group…

Concerned with educational problems associated with low socioeconomic status, this pilot study in linguistic ecology was designed to substitute hard data for speculation about the nature and frequency of verbal behavior in the world of the poor child. To avoid self-consciousness and any restrictions on movement of the subjects, a small…

In an attempt to explore a systematic approach to language expansion and improved sentence structure, echoic and modeling procedures for language instruction were compared. Four hypotheses were formulated: (1) children who use modeling procedures will produce better structured sentences than children who use echoic prompting, (2) both echoic and…

Because of the vast differences between the ghetto child and the middle class child in home environment, parental models, language development, and the ability and desire to communicate, an elementary school language program which will educate both must differ radically from traditional orientations and practices. Such a program should provide the…

To produce and evaluate a language development program for culturally deprived preschool children based on characteristics of Piaget's theory of intelligence, a 6-week experimental study was carried out in Project Headstart, Starkville, Mississippi. Randomly-selected, 45 Negro Headstart enrollees made up three groups--two were taught the…