ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Young children show poor judgment when asked to select a safe place to cross the road, frequently considering dangerous sites to be safe. Correspondingly, child pedestrian accidents are over-represented at such locations. Increasing the child's ability to recognise such dangers is a central challenge for road safety education. AIMS: Practical training methods have proved effective in improving such judgments but are labour-intensive, time-consuming and therefore difficult to implement on a realistic scale. The study examined the possibility that volunteers from the local community might be capable of using such methods to promote children's pedestrian competence. SAMPLE: Sixty children from the Primary 1 (Reception) classes of three Glasgow schools took part. Volunteers were ordinary parents from the same areas. None had 'formal' experience of working with children other than through being parents. METHOD: Volunteers received experience of training children at courses organised in each school. Children learned in small groups, receiving two sessions of roadside training followed by four on a table-top model. Pre- and post-tests allowed the effectiveness of training to be assessed. RESULTS: Significant improvements relative to controls were found in all children following training. Improvements proved robust and no deterioration was observed two months after the programme ended. Comparison with a previous study in which training was undertaken by highly qualified staff showed that the volunteers were as effective as 'expert' trainers. CONCLUSIONS: Parent volunteers can significantly increase the pedestrian competence of children as young as five years. They constitute a most valuable 'resource' in road safety education. The opportunities afforded by involving the local community in educational interventions should be further explored.
Subject(s)
Accidents, Traffic/prevention & control , Health Education/methods , Parents/education , Adult , Child , Child, Preschool , Female , Humans , Male , Scotland , Volunteers/educationABSTRACT
The aim of this study was to determine whether children's perceptions of their own competence levels reflected their actual strengths and weaknesses (Specificity Hypothesis) or transcended these (Generality Hypothesis). Harter and Pike's measure of self-perception was administered to 163 prematurely born 6-year-olds with or without motor co-ordination and/or reading problems. Associations between children's self-perceptions and their scores on standardised tests of motor co-ordination and reading were assessed in three distinct ways. These analyses produced converging results: self-perceptions of physical competence were associated specifically with performance on the Movement ABC Test, and self-perceptions of cognitive competence were associated specifically with performance on the BAS Word Reading Scale. Our results support the Specificity Hypothesis.
Subject(s)
Achievement , Brain Damage, Chronic/psychology , Infant, Premature, Diseases/psychology , Learning Disabilities/psychology , Self Concept , Brain Damage, Chronic/diagnosis , Cerebral Palsy/diagnosis , Cerebral Palsy/psychology , Child , Cohort Studies , Dyslexia/psychology , Female , Follow-Up Studies , Humans , Infant, Newborn , Infant, Premature, Diseases/diagnosis , Learning Disabilities/diagnosis , Male , Personality Assessment , Psychomotor Disorders/psychologyABSTRACT
Young children's vulnerability as pedestrians has often been attributed to deficiencies in their decision making about vehicle approach times. Some studies have found a preponderance of risky decisions below the age of eight years. In contrast, studies using a closer simulation of road crossing, known as the pretend road, have found a preponderance of overcautious decisions in young children: traffic gaps of adequate size were frequently rejected (missed opportunities). However, the pretend road has potentially distorting characteristics which may account for this divergent pattern of findings. The experiments reported below show that new simulations that eradicate distortions nevertheless validate the pattern of results produced with the pretend road. Differences between adults and young children were pronounced for missed opportunities, but not for risky decisions. Subsidiary analyses suggest that the risky decisions of the youngest children may have arisen through lapses in attention, rather than deficits in timing. These findings run contrary to the view that attributes young children's pedestrian vulnerability to perceptuo-motor deficiency.
Subject(s)
Acceleration , Accidents, Traffic/prevention & control , Decision Making , Motion Perception , Safety , Accidents, Traffic/psychology , Attention , Child , Discrimination Learning , Female , Humans , Male , Reaction TimeABSTRACT
Recent work by the present author has identified a sequence of events during joint play of mother and infant which may lead infants to process mothers' presentations of objects in a particular way. This sequence of events implies a special form of detection of discrepancy by infants. The present report is an attempt to determine whether a plausible alternative hypothesis, which also happens to be more parsimonious, can account for previously reported findings which are consistent with the discrepancy hypothesis. The alternative hypothesis states that infants' processing of objects either during mothers' presentations or during infants' independently initiated manipulations is determined by the duration of time infants previously devoted to manipulating the object. The findings contradict this alternative hypothesis, and in so doing, lend further support to the discrepancy hypothesis originally proposed.
