UH study found early education benefits

A strongly held belief is that children develop their abilities as they physically mature. Part of that belief is that children shouldn’t be introduced to certain kinds of learning until they are cognitively “ready” through maturation. If the child is introduced to reading too early, for example, the view assumes it will at best be wasted effort and probably harmful; 4-year-olds are thought to be too young.

That is why a new study at the University of California, Berkeley, is so important (“No harm found in preschool academics,” Star-Advertiser, May 31). The study, to appear in the Journal of Developmental Psychology, showed that rather than harm, children who attended a preschool that included academic training in literacy and math benefited as measured by tests.

What is not brought out in the reporting of this study is that research done at the University of Hawaii-Manoa — much earlier, more analytically, within a much more extensive program of research — adds powerfully to the evidence that early academic training is valuable for the preschool child, not harmful.

In the Hawaii research, the children were ages 3 to 4, each of mixed cultures. All were enrolled in the Hawaiian Curriculum Center campus laboratory school. Over a period of about seven months they attended a traditional preschool class (with singing, painting, playing with blocks and dolls, and such, as well as scheduled play periods).

However, three times per day, each child went to another room to receive training from a tutor in reading letters (research shows this skill to be highly correlated with being able to learn to read), in writing letters, and in number skills. Each tutor recorded everything presented to a child, and every response the child made, correct and incorrect.

Overall the Hawaii results were very clear. All of these 3- and 4-year-olds learned invaluable academic skills, in letter reading, in writing letters, and in counting objects, in knowing the names of the numbers, and in reading numbers and in some cases beginning to learn addition.

In addition, on the Stanford-Binet intelligence test, their average IQ advanced from 105.4 to 111.7, and on the Metropolitan Readiness Tests, they advanced a great deal. The analytic findings also showed the academic training the children received made them better learners. For example, as they learned to read the letters of the alphabet their learning ability got better and better, to the point where they would learn a new letter four times as fast as they had done when beginning their training.

With respect to writing letters, a common belief is that learning-disability children have a brain deficit; that is why they frequently write letters upside down, backwards, slanted and such. Normal children do not make such errors. That’s the trouble with common beliefs, they lack knowledge of how children actually do learn. When the individual children were studied, and all their responses were examined, it became evident that all children when at the beginning of learning, write letters upside down, backwards and lopsided. Learning-disability children just began school by not paying attention, then falling behind, and finally giving up, thus remaining like young beginning learners.

The Hawaii study, conducted in 1970 by Barbara Brewer, Michael Gross and myself, was a pioneer in the field of early child learning, and derivative research continues to be published in the field of behavior analysis. The study’s findings add much to understanding that preschool children are capable of cognitive learning earlier and beyond that traditionally thought possible.

The Hawaii researchers concluded in their study: “Thus, the present evidence speaks in favor of early cognitive training and against the passive approach to child-rearing suggested by the maturational unfolding conception of child development.” That is also the message of the University of California study. It is important that these two works — one done in Hawaii — reached the same conclusion, very much strengthening the findings.

Arthur Staats, of Kuliouou, is a psychology professor emeritus of the University of Hawaii-Manoa, credited with inventing the “time-out” process used to discipline children.