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A study of environmental stimulation: An orphanage preschool project.Language.

A study of environmental stimulation: An orphanage preschool project.: Language. The study presented in this book examines the effects of preschool education on the development of children living in an orphanage. This chapter compares the language development of the children who attended preschool and those who did not. Language development was studied both in terms of general achievement and vocabulary. The results on general language development were obtained in terms of the Little-Williams Language Achievement Scale. This scale gives credit for achievement in speech sounds, intelligibility, and sentence organization. Increasing losses in language quotient for both groups were found for the three intervals studied, six, twelve, and eighteen months. The control group losses were the greater. Fairly significant differences between the mean achievement of the groups were found for all three intervals. Analysis by repeated tests on the same children yielded similar results. There would seem to be little question that the orphanage environment was, as a whole, unfavorable to the development of language achievement as here measured. Preschool attendance did not seem to have succeeded to any degree in counteracting the losses. Vocabulary development of preschool and control children was measured by the Smith-Williams vocabulary test. Preschool children were superior to control children in vocabulary score at each half-year age level from two and one-half to six years. Control children were superior at age six and one-half years. The most outstanding result of the study of language development is the retardation of both groups when compared with other children of the same ages. In the case of vocabulary this retardation was extreme. It would appear that both preschool and control children were living under very unfavorable circumstances so far as adequate language was concerned. The language environment of the orphanage children was definitely atypical. The evidence presented has shown that the efforts of the preschool teachers were successful in improving the vocabulary development of the children attending preschool. That they did not succeed in bringing the children up to average accomplishment is not surprising in view of the handicaps against which they worked. The preschool was only slightly effective in modifying the language achievements. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A study of environmental stimulation: An orphanage preschool project.Language.

Skeels, Harold M.; Updegraff, Ruth; Wellman, Beth L.; Williams, Harold M.
American Psychological Association — Dec 12, 2011
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Publisher
University of Iowa
Copyright
Copyright © 1938 American Psychological Association
Pages
75 –121
DOI
10.1037/13507-005
Publisher site
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Abstract

The study presented in this book examines the effects of preschool education on the development of children living in an orphanage. This chapter compares the language development of the children who attended preschool and those who did not. Language development was studied both in terms of general achievement and vocabulary. The results on general language development were obtained in terms of the Little-Williams Language Achievement Scale. This scale gives credit for achievement in speech sounds, intelligibility, and sentence organization. Increasing losses in language quotient for both groups were found for the three intervals studied, six, twelve, and eighteen months. The control group losses were the greater. Fairly significant differences between the mean achievement of the groups were found for all three intervals. Analysis by repeated tests on the same children yielded similar results. There would seem to be little question that the orphanage environment was, as a whole, unfavorable to the development of language achievement as here measured. Preschool attendance did not seem to have succeeded to any degree in counteracting the losses. Vocabulary development of preschool and control children was measured by the Smith-Williams vocabulary test. Preschool children were superior to control children in vocabulary score at each half-year age level from two and one-half to six years. Control children were superior at age six and one-half years. The most outstanding result of the study of language development is the retardation of both groups when compared with other children of the same ages. In the case of vocabulary this retardation was extreme. It would appear that both preschool and control children were living under very unfavorable circumstances so far as adequate language was concerned. The language environment of the orphanage children was definitely atypical. The evidence presented has shown that the efforts of the preschool teachers were successful in improving the vocabulary development of the children attending preschool. That they did not succeed in bringing the children up to average accomplishment is not surprising in view of the handicaps against which they worked. The preschool was only slightly effective in modifying the language achievements. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Published: Dec 12, 2011

Keywords: preschool education; orphanages; language achievement; environment; language development; children; vocabulary

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