Young Children and Research

     Research involving children could prove to be quite an adventure particularly in the school setting. Children can be unpredictable, especially young children. Many years ago my Head Start agency would allow school psychology majors to work in the classrooms to observe, implement behavioral interventions, and collect general data on the experiences of children ages 3-5.  One of the many items they collected research on was letter fluency and number fluency.  They had a very prescribed way of administering the fluency tests from which they could not deviate.  If you have ever administered fluency tests of any sort to a three year old, you can imagine how well this went on occasion. For the most part, the children were cooperative and really tried to perform well.  I was highly entertained when a child who was clearly wanting to do something besides this fluency test would derail the testing by talking, rolling around in the chair, refusing to speak, laughing or performing any other number of avoidance techniques.  I would often intervene and insist that the child be released and tested later.  Most of the time, the children were just avoiding this task by entertaining themselves, but occasionally, I would find one under genuine stress because they knew they were producing incorrect answers.  These children were certainly in no danger physically or emotionally, but the process was fun to watch. Children are going to do whatever children want to do! Often, I would administer the fluency tests myself once the student was gone; the children always did better with someone they knew.

                                            

      So what were the benefits of this stringent yet entertaining research?  We were the low-income preschool environment with higher risk children. Our children were healthy, cared for, and heavily monitored but certainly had some disadvantages in life. There was another test group in a higher income childcare/preschool facility with significantly less rigorous academic standards than Head Start. None-the-less, our children scored much lower on a consistent basis.  This was one of many studies that supports the importance of high-quality early childhood education to bridge the knowledge gap that exists across income levels. Regardless of the academic exposure, nurturing school environment, and 6 hours a day in a safe learning environment, our children still had deficits not seen in higher-income children. I would argue, however, that this research focused on an extremely narrow area of development (letter and number fluency). Luckily, this was internal data that was used solely by the university students and was not published.

                                        

     This school year, we are venturing into another research project with the University of Cincinnati called First Steps Next. The goal of this research is to prove that a twenty day intensive behavioral modification technique involving whole class instruction that promotes pro-social behaviors in a target child while also incorporating visual cues for said child will reverse negative behaviors. The theory is that with an intense enough intervention delivered in a systematic and consistent manner will quickly reverse behavioral habits in a child with extreme behaviors.  This program is not meant to teach children why they need to act in a pro social manner. This program is meant to only bring the child to a level where they can be taught the reasons and benefits of pro-social behaviors. Let's face it: we do occasionally encounter that child that is resistant to the best of our techniques. It's difficult to work with a child when they are running in circles or throwing chairs. This program is meant to decrease these behaviors to allow the target child to function in a productive way. We will begin First Step Next at the beginning of October. I'll let you all know how it goes! This program has been around for 20 plus years but is gaining steam across the United States. I have included a webinar link below. If it works, we will incorporate this technique on an on-going basis outside of the research group.



                                                

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SupK3sIIQs


References

Pacific Northwest Publishers. (2016). First Step Next webinar. Retrieved                                                      from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SupK3sIIQs