Psychologists in America say they have found a simple and quick way to test young children's ability to concentrate and follow instructions in class - what they call "self-regulation".
Self-regulation is said to reflect a combination of attention, inhibition and memory skills. It's a useful attribute to measure because it strongly predicts how well young children will do when they start school.
The new "Head-to-Toes" Task requires that children listen to ten instructions, delivered in random order, telling them to either touch their head or their toes. Points are scored for following the instructions correctly.
Other available measures of self-regulation, such as the Tower of London task, are more time consuming and tend to require special equipment.
Claire Ponitz and colleagues administered the new 'Head-to-Toes" Task several times over two years to 445 children aged between three and six years, based at two sites in Michigan and Oregon.
The researchers said their task showed high reliability and validity. In other words, the same child tested twice, with only a short gap between tests, tended to achieve the same score. Scores on the test also correlated with teachers' reports of the children's self-regulation skills.
The strongest influence on children's scores was their age, with older children finding the task easier. There were differences in performance levels between the two testing sites, but these disappeared once the background of the children in the two sites was taken into account - for example based on their parents' level of education.
The researchers concluded that although older children found the task too easy for it to be a useful measure (in its current form), for the younger children, the "Head-to-Toes" Task could serve as a simple and easy-to-administer measure of self-regulation, thus helping identify those children who are likely to have difficulties when they start formal schooling.
译文:
为什么心理学家让孩子们摸他们的脚趾
美国心理学家声称他们发现了一种简单而又快捷的方法，这种方法可以测出小朋友在课堂上的某种能力，即是否能集中精力并且遵照老师的指示，这也就是他们所说的“自我调节能力”。
自我调节能力据说能综合反映注意力、抑制力和记忆力。这是一种很有特点的方法，因为它能强有力地预测到小朋友在开始他们的学校生活时会如何表现。
新出现的“从头到脚”的任务需要孩子们听10条指令，按一定的顺序传递，告诉他们不是摸头就是摸脚。能够按照指令正确做出动作的就能得分。
别的有效的方法，像伦敦塔任务，需要更多的时间和配备特殊的仪器。
克莱尔伯尼兹和他的同事花费两年多的时间，基于密歇根州和俄勒冈州两个地区，对445名介于3-6岁的儿童多次进行了新型“从头到脚”的任务。
研究人员表示他们的工作显示出高度的可靠性和正确性。换一句话说，同一个小朋友测试两次，如果两次测试有一小段间隙，仍然会得到相同的结果。测试结果还跟老师对孩子们自我调节能力的报告有关。
对孩子们的分数影响最大的是他们的年龄，其中年纪稍长的孩子做起任务来比较轻松。孩子们在表现水平上因为测试地区的不同也存在差异，但一旦这两个地区孩子的家庭背景被考虑到，这种差异也就消失了——例如考虑到他们父母的受教育程度。
研究人员得出结论，因为这是一种很有用的方法（以它现在的样式），尽管年长的孩子们做起任务来相对轻松，但对于小一点的孩子，“从头到脚”的任务是一个简单、易操作的测试自我调节能力的方法。因此，能够帮助我们判断出那些开始正常学习后可能出现困难的孩子。