No abstract

Drawing and writing are two major representational systems with many common aspects. Each also has its own system of rules, characterized by different degrees of visual realism and conventionality. The relationship between them at their emergence and the contribution of perceptual and motor skills to their development have been under‐investigated, leading to discordant study results. This study investigated the emergence of the ability to draw and write and the association between these two processes in 3‐ to 5‐year‐old preschoolers, controlling for the role played by visual‐motor integration ability. A total of 115 preschoolers were tested for drawing and writing tasks and visual‐motor integration. Variance analysis, correlation analysis, and covariance analysis were performed. The results illustrated a stable association between drawing and writing in the age range considered, which can be traced to their common representational core. Moreover, the weight of visual‐motor coordination is differentiated for the two notational systems.

This randomized trial study aimed to analyze the efficacy of two different school-based interventions—normal preschool literacy teaching, and the PASSI intervention carried out for different durations (12 versus 30 weeks)—on notational knowledge of bilingual language-minority (BLM) preschoolers and their monolingual peers, after controlling their linguistic background and socio- economic status. A total of 251 children aged 4–5 years (M age = 4 years and 8 months; SD age = 6 months; 49% males, 51% females) were recruited from 19 classes in five preschools and randomly assigned to three groups that corresponded to different notational-focused interventions: (1) normal preschool literacy teaching (Condition 1; n = 47); (2) the PASSI intervention carried out for 12 weeks (Condition 2; n = 119); and (3) the PASSI intervention carried out for 30 weeks (Condition 3; n = 85). We collected two waves of data before and after the interventions regarding notational knowledge and phonological skills. Using the mixed ANOVA, we found that the PASSI intervention (both durations of 12 and 30 weeks) led to a significantly higher level of notational knowledge in BLM children and their monolingual peers. In addition, we observed that with the PASSI intervention carried out for 30 weeks, the baseline difference between BLMs and their monolingual peers was nullified. This study demonstrates that well-designed, school-based programs can benefit language-minority children by supporting their emergent notational knowledge. This paper also discusses implications for bilingual education policymaking.

A number of studies suggest a link between musical training and both specific and general cognitive abilities, but despite some positive results, there is disagreement about which abilities are improved. This study aims to investigate the effects of a music education program both on a domain-specific competence (meta-musical awareness), and on general domain competences, that is, cognitive abilities (logical-mathematical) and symbolic-linguistic abilities (notational). Twenty 4- to 6-year-old children participated in the research, divided into two groups (experimental and control) and the measures were administered at two different times, before and after a 6-month music program (for the experimental group) and after a sports training program (for the control group). Children performed meta-musical awareness tasks, logical-mathematical tasks, and emergent-alphabetization tasks. Non-parametric statistics show that a music program significantly improves the development of notational skills and meta-musical awareness while not the development of logical-mathematical skills. These results show that a musical program increases children’s meta-musical awareness, and their ability to acquire the notational ability involved in the invented writing of words and numbers. On the contrary, it does not affect the development of logical skills. The results are discussed in terms of transfer of knowledge processes and of specific versus general domain effects of a musical program.

Aim: This study investigates whether the conditions of bilingual language-minority (BLM) children versus monolingualism have different effects on oral narrative and vocabulary skills in the societal language (SL-Italian) and on the predictive interrelations between the two skills. Methodology: A total of 112 primary school children (44 % BLM L1-Chinese, L2-Italian and 56 % Italian monolinguals) aged 7–11 years ( M age = 113 months, SD = 12.03; 44 girls, 68 boys) performed an oral story-narration task and a vocabulary task. The purpose of the former was to assess the children’s textual (structure, coherence) and language (cohesion, word productivity) competences, while the latter test assessed their ability to define written words by implementing different cognitive-linguistic processes. A parental questionnaire was used to obtain information regarding age, socioeconomic status (SES), and home language exposure. Data analysis: We compared BLM and monolinguals’ lexical competence and oral narrative ability in an independent t-test analysis. We further verified the relationship between the lexical and oral narrative abilities in Spearman bivariate correlations analyses and investigated their interrelations in a stepwise regression model. Age and SES were controlled for. Findings: BLM children fall significantly behind their monolingual peers on textual structure and lexical skills. Meanwhile, their textual and language competences in stories are similar. In the total sample and monolingual group, lexical skills are positively correlated with the text structure. Results of stepwise regression analyses show that lexical skills completely mediate the effect of BLM versus monolingualism on text structure. Originality: Results on school-aged BLM (L1-Chinese, L2-Italian) children’s oral narrative, vocabulary skills, and their relations extend previous research on bilingualism. Significance: The scarce narrative structure in BLM children’s stories is related to limited vocabulary input. High-level textual processing difficulties may result from the high cognitive effort of managing both the choosing of adequate words in L2 and composing an oral story concurrently.