This is a comprehensive program of research that integrates characteristics of the home, the caregiver, and the child in relation to the child's path to self-regulation. This research examines the role of temperament on individual differences in attention strategy use in preschool children from Head Start. The study also examined whether modeling a mature vertical strategy impacted subsequent strategy use. We are interested in investigating specific dimensions of temperament in relation to children s spontaneous attentional strategies. Phonemic Awareness and Attention Regulation Children vary widely in their acquisition of reading.
Some children ease into the process while other children continually struggle.
One of the factors that may account for individual differences is children s phonemic awareness. The current research examines phonemic awareness in preschoolers and kindergartners. Attention is proposed to be an underlying factor in individual differences in phonemic awareness. My first year project involved looking at the development of executive function in adults with Williams Syndrome as well as adults with normal development. We investigated performance on executive function tasks in relation to cognition, memory, and verbal abilities.