Universitätsbibliothek

The present research examined whether children's awareness of phonological similarities between words with respect to rhyme and consonantal word onset is of the same importance for learning to read German as it was found to be for learning to read English. In two longitudinal studies differences in phonological sensitivity among children before learning to read (at age 6 to 7) were tested with versions of Bradley & Bryant's (1985) oddity detection task. Children's reading and spelling achievements were tested about one year later at the end of grade one, and again at around the age of 10. The main finding was a developmental change in the predictive relationship of rhyme and word-onset awareness. Rhyme awareness was only minimally predictive for reading and spelling achievement at the end of grade one, but gained substantially in predictive importance for reading and spelling achievement in grades three and four. No such predictive improvement was observed for word-onset awareness. It is proposed that rhyme awareness is initially of little importance, because in the first phase of learning to read German children rely heavily on indirect word recognition via grapheme--phoneme translation and blending. The gain in the predictive importance of rhyme awareness is explained by its helpful effect on the establishment of mental representations of written words. Such mental representations allow fast, direct word recognition and orthographically correct spellings. A wareness of larger phonological units is helpful for the efficient establishment of such representations, by allowing connections of recurring grapheme clusters in written words with phonology.

No abstract available

No abstract available

Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird der Versuch gemacht, neuere Befunde der kognitiven Psychologie, insbesondere der Expertiseforschung, zur Entwicklung außergewöhnlicher Fertigkeiten und Kenntnisse auf den Bereich des Sports zu übertragen und damit deren Generalisierungsmöglichkeiten zu prüfen. In einem ersten Schritt werden dabei die Grundannahmen der traditionellen fähigkeitsorientierten Leistungsprognose mit denen der neueren Expertiseforschung verglichen und im Hinblick auf ihre empirische Bewährung untersucht. Der zweite Schritt besteht darin, daß mögliche Parallelen zwischen der Entwicklung kognitiver und sportlicher Expertise aufgezeigt und an Fallbeispielen demonstriert werden. Dies leitet zum Schwerpunkt des vorliegenden Beitrags über, der in einer Reanalyse von Daten besteht, die im Rahmen einer fünfjährigen Längsschnittstudie an jugendlichen deutschen Tennistalenten gewonnen wurden (vgl. Rieder, Krahl, Sommer, Weicker & Weiss, 1983). Da in dieser Untersuchung sowohl Daten zur Entwicklung allgemeiner motorischer Basisfähigkeiten wie auch zur Entwicklung sportartspezifischer Fertigkeiten erhoben worden waren, ließ sich die Bedeutsamkeit dieser beiden Komponenten für den sportlichen Erfolg relativ genau bestimmen. Weiterhin waren Informationen zu Hintergrundmerkmalen wie z.B. der elterlichen Unterstützung, der Trainingsintensität sowie Merkmalen der Motivation und Konzentration verfügbar, von denen anzunehmen war, daß sie zusätzlich dazu geeignet sein sollten, individuelle Unterschiede in den beobachteten Entwicklungsverläufen zu erklären.

According to more recent studies on memory development in young children, preschoolers and kindergarteners are able to demonstrate surprisingly good memory skills in natural as weH as in laboratory-type settings. This finding is not consistent with the results of a study by Istomina (1975), conducted in 1948, leading to the concJusion that (a) preschoolers do not use voluntary remembering, and (b) children generally recall better in play situations than in typical experimental settings. In this study, two experiments were conducted to replicate Istomina's research. In the first, it was shown that Istomina's findings were replicable when methodological problems in the procedure were ignored. Experiment 2 improved methodologically upon Istomina's experimental methods and did not produce results to support her concJusions. Four- and 6-year-olds showed voluntary memory in play activities as weH as in laboratory-type settings, and remembered equally weB in both contexts. The results did not support the assumption that memory performance in young children can be substantially facilitated by motivating contexts.