Educational orientation regarding vocabulary and literacy access

Evaluating the impact of an intervention program designed to promote early learning at home

Resumen

The study evaluates the impact of a linguistic and cognitive development program for 5- year-old children. The program was implemented undergoing two conditions. In the first condition, the children participated in activities in their preschool classroom (extensive condition), while the second condition also involved family literacy activities in the children’s homes (intensive condition). The program’s impact was evaluated by using a pre-test – post-test design. The tests for receptive vocabulary (RV), category production (CP) and writing were administered to a sample of 214 children who participated in the intensive condition, 69 who participated in the extensive condition, and a control group of 49 children from Buenos Aires who did not participate in the program. The results showed that participation in the intensive condition led to a greater increase in RV, CP and writing abilities than the extensive condition and that both experimental conditions showed a greater increase in skill level when compared with the control group. The mother’s education level and previous preschool attendance seemed to have no effect. The results showed significant correlations between all of the variables analyzed and that the RV scores at the beginning of the year predicted both the RV and writing scores at the end of the year.