ERIC Number: ED198917
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1980-Sep
Pages: 227
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Early Intervention, Maternal Development and Children's Play.
Slaughter, Diana T.
The purposes of this longitudinal study of early intervention with 83 black mother-child dyads were (a) to test the thesis that sociocultural transmission influences childhood development in educationally significant ways, and (b) to describe the process through which such transmission can occur. Two social intervention programs were contrasted; the Levenstein Toy Demonstration Program (TD), and the Auerbach-Badger Discussion Group Program (DG). While the TD program promotes children's cognitive development by encouraging verbal interaction between mothers and their children, the DG program emphasizes the mother as a primary participant by providing her with information concerning child rearing, home and family life, and "personhood." Subjects for this study were randomly selected from three lower income housing project sites in the Chicago area. Fifty-six of the subject dyads participated in either the TD or the DG programs. The remainder served as a control group. All mothers were interviewed at the beginning and end of the study and their interaction with their children was observed and recorded. Children's cognitive development was measured when they were 21 and 41 months old. Among the results, the DG mothers were significantly superior on the Loevinger Scale of Ego Development, on a measure of Expressed Social Values, and on observational measures of maternal teaching style. Children in the TD program were superior to control children on the McCarthy Verbal Subscale at the time of final testing. Additionally, during play, discussion, but not demonstration, children verbalized more often. A coding manual for selected maternal interview data and item stems from the Loevinger Sentence Completion Test coded for the present study are among the materials appended. (Author/MP)
Publication Type: Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Inst. of Child Health and Human Development (NIH), Bethesda, MD. Human Learning and Behavior Branch.
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A