Research into practice: perception and instruction.

Five studies are highlighted in this issue. Four of the studies focus on examining participant perceptions of their learning, involvement in comprehensive intervention, mental health, and strategies for recall. The first study on perceptions is an investigation into children's ability to accurately recall information when presented with an examiner's mental state. The second study is a unique glimpse of children who are identified as socially withdrawn and the implications for mental health programming. The third study documents the full-day service provision of a Head Start program and the successes and challenges that parents and providers perceive as they implement the program. The fourth study provides a rich look into how middle school students utilize humor and characterization to understand literature. The last study included in this issue focuses on the mode of instruction that maximizes the use of alphabet books in kindergarten classrooms. This column briefly summarizes the content of the articles and suggests implications for practice as well as areas for future research.

Resisting Suggestive Questions: Can Theory of Mind Help?

--Chan & Okamoto

Much has been written about young children's perspective-taking abilities, as well as their capabilities to discern their own competence in a given area. Outside influences that affect skills such as these are important to understand, as young children's recall of specific events can be high-stakes in nature, such as in testimony in court cases. The current study assesses children's understanding of mental states of those who question them and how knowing those mental states may provide them with resistance to suggestive questioning. This study examined the two specific mental states of false belief and intention. Research with children who can demonstrate an understanding of false belief has shown that these children are resistant to suggested misinformation. Other research suggests that children are able to utilize mental states to understand a person's behavior; thus, knowledge of one's intention allows the child to predict and understand another's behavior. While there is a great deal of research on older children and adults who have more strategies to resist influence, younger children are more likely to incorporate adult beliefs into their recall if adults whom children perceive as more knowledgeable question their recall.

The participants for the current study were a group of 40 kindergarten children (22 boys and 18 girls). Children were shown a short video clip and then interviewed via a pre-recorded process shown on a laptop computer. This strategy was utilized to ensure that all children were interviewed in the same manner. Children were asked two free-recall questions and a series of 24 closed-ended questions consisting of general information, unbiased-leading questions, and misleading questions. Children were randomly placed into one of four groups that included control, intention, false belief, and combined intention and false belief. Children in the intention group were told that the examiner would try to trick them. Children in the false belief group were told that the interviewer had an incorrect assumption about the actions on the video. Children in the intention and false belief group were told that the examiner would try to trick them and that the examiner had a false belief.

The examiners scored the data from each child, scoring one point for each correct response. In the free-recall portions of the study, there were no differences among the children in the four groups. When responding to the specific questions, children provided more accurate responses when asked unbiased-leading questions rather than when asked misleading questions. Children who were aware of the mental state of the examiner were also more accurate in their responses. A multivariate analysis of variance with post-hoc analysis was conducted and indicated that children in the intention condition were more resistant to suggestive questioning than the control group. These differences were not found when children had the false belief knowledge.

The results of the study add to the research literature about the skills of young children when asked to recall events. How children make sense of their world and how they recall events have important implications for certain events (e.g., testifying in court cases, recalling events in school situations). Future research that examines these constructs with time delay between the actual event and the recall of that event is critical to testing the ability of children to resist suggestive questioning.

Self-Schemas, Anxiety, Somatic, and Depressive Symptoms in Socially Withdrawn Children and Adolescents

--Burgess & Younger

Despite the large amount of research on aggression and disruptive behaviors in children and adolescents, there is a paucity of data on social withdrawal. In addition, children who are socially withdrawn typically have not been considered to be at risk for later psychological or emotional difficulties, such as internalizing disorders like anxiety and depression. The authors of the current study propose a cognitive model of self-schema and information processing as a mechanism to examine social withdrawal and psychological maladjustment.

The participants for the study were drawn from 15 sixth- and seventh-grade classrooms. From a larger sample, a predominantly white sample was selected to form three groups: withdrawn (N = 40), aggressive (N = 41), and normative control (N = 51). Data were collected on the Self-Referent Rating Task, Youth Self-Report, and the Revised Class Play.

A multivariate analysis of variance was conducted to examine differences among socially withdrawn, aggressive, and normative control groups on positive self-perceptions, negative self-perceptions, number of negative words recalled, number of positive words recalled, internalizing scores, and externalizing scores. No differences were found by gender or grade. Children who were identified as socially withdrawn were significantly different than the other two groups and endorsed a higher number of negative words and a lower number of positive words. This group of children also had higher internalizing scores than the control or aggressive groups. Analyses also indicated that children who were withdrawn had significantly higher scores on anxious/depressive symptoms, somatic complaints, and shy/withdrawn behavior than the normative control group. Children in the withdrawn group appeared to show less positive bias and more of an inability to maintain a positive or non-depressed state.

These data caution us to explore the lack of positive self-perceptions as well as the typically examined negative self-perceptions of adolescents who present concerns. These data may be linked to a likelihood that children who are socially withdrawn may be at more risk for the development of internalizing disorders. While the entire hypothesis of the study was not supported, in that the socially withdrawn group was not clinically identified as depressed, the fact that these children were exhibiting somatic symptoms in a natural school setting may necessitate school-based interventions.

The results of this study caution the reader that there are groups of children in elementary and middle schools that may be overlooked in identification, treatment, and intervention. Because children who typically present more outward presentations of concerns by their behavior receive intervention, future research is needed that focuses on children who are socially withdrawn and the interventions that might support them.

Head Start-Operated Full-Day Services: Successes, Challenges, and Issues

--Ceglowski

Families in the United States have an array of child care choices available to them. While there is considerable variability in the quality and availability of specific types of child care arrangements, children who live in economically disadvantaged families have more limited choices and more limited access than their more affluent peers. With the expansion of comprehensive early childhood education services, such as the federally funded Early Head Start program, the early childhood field has expressed more interest in, as well as advocacy for, the provision of full-day child care services for children who live below the federal poverty line. Wrap-around child care programs have been the focus of empirical investigations and policy papers specifically focused on examining how families can move from poverty to self-sufficiency.

The current study is an examination of three full-day Head Start programs with additional child care support funded by the state of Minnesota. Parents, staff, and child care administrators from two rural and one urban Head Start participated in interviews. Among the three centers, one provided center-based child care at a technical college as well as family child care homes, another had Head Start teachers co-located in full-day child care centers, and another brokered services with community child care centers. A series of focus groups were conducted with various participants in the study.

Analysis of the data suggested that parents were generally pleased with the full-day services that were provided, noting that the quality of the program was contingent on the staff of the program. Parents noted that because of the full-day services, they could pursue their postsecondary training and begin to reach self-sufficiency for their families. If parents were not pursuing higher education but rather were working in lower wage jobs, the families did not seem as optimistic about their potential to gain their own self-sufficiency. Parents were also queried about their options, which included the full-day programs. For some parents, there was confusion about the subsidy policies and the variety of program options. Transportation to the program and program location also posed some issues for some parents. Because the full-day program did not provide transportation to and from the program, at times parents opted not to select the full-day program in lieu of a half-day program that provided transportation.

Head Start and family and center child care staff and administrators perceived that the full-day programs provided families with needed services. The benefits to families included fewer transitions and increased quality in child care settings. While a number of benefits were found, Head Start providers also noted some barriers, including lack of programmatic and philosophical agreement between Head Start and the partnering child care centers.

Each center offered an approach to meet the needs of the Head Start families they served by providing different full-day services. While the participants in the study had overwhelming positive responses to their involvement in the programs, some family needs were not met by all available options. Parents who required care during non-standard hours had needs that were not met by the program options. This study speaks to the need for a variety of approaches to meet the needs of families who are economically disadvantaged. Future research that examines options that include individualized approaches for families in Head Start is necessary.

"It Is More Than Just Laughing": Middle School Students Protect Characters During Talk

--Onofrey

Limited research connects humor, adolescence, and reader response theory. Indeed, a review of the literature suggests that humor is not always appreciated nor recognized for its literary value in middle schools. The current qualitative case study utilizes young adolescent literature and discussion in middle school literature circles to explore the ways that young adolescents interpret humor in literature. The study suggests that through an understanding of how authors utilize humor, adolescents are provided with new and varied perspectives of text. The study is situated within the theoretical framework of reader response theory, which for the purpose of this study is defined as sharing a concern with how readers make meaning from their experience with text. Within the reader response perspective, five categories of responses are connected to the views of the participants. These include textual, experiential, psychological, social, and cultural responses.

The case study was conducted with five middle school students (3 boys, 2 girls), who attended an honors literature course. The intent of the study was to examine humor and characterization in adolescent literature according to reader response theory and to assess how adolescents made this connection. Through interviews with the individual participants, as well as videotaped and audiotaped literature circle discussions, the author provided rich examples of how the individual students made meaning out of text passages. In addition, the literature circle discussion that generated interaction among the adolescents in the study allowed the researcher to see that the adolescents were able to broaden their definitions of humor.

Specifically, if the adolescents perceived that the character in the literature would be hurt or disappointed, or if their reading suggested that a negative change in the character's development would occur, they would not engage in humor in their interpretation of the piece. When adolescents could identify with the characters in the literature by associating their experiences with their own, humor was utilized only after careful deliberation. Finally, if the adolescents perceived the characters as resilient and unaffected, students were willing to laugh.

This research creatively combines the construct of humor with the unique needs of adolescents. By pushing adolescents out of a typical curricular experience through the exploration of humor and characterization, this study demonstrated that readers utilize their experience by "living through" literature to create meaning. Curricular implications are presented and challenge the consumers of the research to utilize such approaches to broaden adolescents' understanding of humor and characterization, foster engagement among students, and build on adolescents' skills and desire to read more complex literature. As this study only centered on a small number of adolescents, future research that continues this line of research is needed. The curricular implications and potential use of literature in intervention may be powerful products of such inquiry.

Reading Alphabet Books in Kindergarten: Effects of Instructional Emphasis and Media Practice

--Brabham, Murray, & Bowden

The use of alphabet books in literacy instruction for young children is a common practice. While there is a scarcity of research on the effectiveness of the use of alphabet books in the development of letter-sound knowledge as well as vocabulary, awareness of phonemes at the onset of reading is an extremely important predictor of later reading achievement. The current study tests the usefulness of an explicit alphabet book instructional strategy, followed by child use of an audiotaped version of the alphabet text or the use of a CD-ROM program.

Kindergarten children (N = 152) and teachers (N = 12) were recruited from three rural and predominantly low-income school systems in the southeast. Teachers were trained by the authors of the study to utilize alphabet books in two read-aloud instructional approaches. The first of these approaches was reading aloud, with an emphasis on the meaning of the vocabulary words that were highlighted in the alphabet book. The second approach was to read the alphabet book aloud with an emphasis on presenting the phonemes of the given letter. Teachers were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups and an accompanying follow-up instructional strategy (e.g., audiotaped book or CD-ROM). For a four-week period, teachers introduced Dr. Seuss's ABC book and then a different alphabet book for a period of two weeks. Then, for another two weeks, one alphabet book was reread every day. Fidelity of the treatment was ensured through observations by the schools' reading coaches.

Children were individually assessed with Clay's letter identification task on the lower case letters, phonetic cue reading, phonetic identities, and an author-developed vocabulary measure. Data were analyzed through an analysis of variance strategy after tests were conducted that demonstrated that there were no differences among groups on the pretest measure. Analyses indicated that there were statistically significant improvements in children's ability to identify letters and phonemes, to use letters as phonetic cures for word identification, and to know vocabulary. The analyses on the strategy used to read the alphabet books suggested that the use of the phoneme emphasis while reading produced significantly greater gains than reading with a meaning emphasis. While these differences were significant, the effect sizes were small, ranging from .033 to .046.

Additional research that extends the time of the intervention or utilizes a design that has a pure control group is needed. With the emphasis on the early acquisition of literacy skills, instructional approaches that maximize the learning of young children and additional research that documents the effect of those instructional strategies is warranted.

Stacey Neuharth-Pritchett

The University of Georgia