THE EFFECTS OF DAY-CARE INTERVENTION IN THE PRESCHOOL YEARS ON THE NARRATIVE SKILLS OF POVERTY CHILDREN IN KINDERGARTEN

The following study examined narrative skills in 89 poverty children, half of whom had received an infant daycare intervention (experimental ) and half whom had not (control). At school entry these groups were s plit again with half of each group receiving school-age intervention. For each child in the sample, a child of the same sex in their classro om was chosen to form a local population sample (LPS). Children were r ead stories of varying thematic cohesiveness and asked both to compreh end and paraphrase the narratives in the fall and spring of the kinder garten year. The results indicated that the preschool experimental gro up performed better than the preschool control group on the comprehens ion and paraphrase of the stories in the fall but not in the spring. T he LPS group was especially better able to paraphrase stories in compa rison to the poverty groups. Discussion is centred on reasons for the convergence of the two poverty groups over kindergarten and the possib le cultural differences that led to their poorer performance with resp ect to the LPS group.