Number Of Defiant Acts Of Kindergarteners example essay topic

Even with many confounding variables present, the evidence gathered clearly shows that pre-school children are more defiant and disregard rules more frequently than that of kindergarten children. During our one-hour observation, equally divided between the two groups, we encountered several confounding variables that may have altered our results. However, they would have done so in favor of the pre-school children having a lesser number of defiant events compared to that of the kindergarteners. For example, there were a greater number of kindergarten children than per-schoolers, which consequently increases the chance for the kindergarten children having a greater number of defiant acts. In addition, the recess periods took place at two different times. The kindergarten children were on the playground during the second half of the hour, which is around the time where their day ends and the parents pick them up.

This could cause more excitement among the kindergarten children in comparison to the pre-schoolers who went back inside the classroom after their recess time. The excitement of going home could cause children to become more defiant and less likely to follow direction. Even though these variables would most likely increase the number of defiant acts of kindergarteners, the evidence still shows that preschools participated in more defiant acts than kindergarteners. Another variable that could alter the results was the fact that the playground was rather large and to the naked eye it's highly unlikely that all acts of defiance were recorded. However this could decrease the amount of acts recorded on both sides. Additionally, during the fifteen minutes of event recording for the kindergarteners one girl was told repeatedly not to swing on the swing incorrectly, this accounted for the four of the event marks.

During the pre-school recess numerous children had to be corrected more than once. It seemed for the most part that the pre-schoolers always had to be corrected more than once on their defiant behavior, where as the kindergarteners only had to be told once with the exception of a few. Conclusively, our evidence supports our hypothesis that per-schoolers are more likely to participate in defiant acts than that of kindergarteners. However our evidence does display a clear difference between the Event and Time sampling measures. We found that most of the defiant acts were done towards the beginning and end of the recess. Therefore the Time sampling evidence recorded on both age groups shows a great number of marks towards the beginning and end of the minutes recorded.

This makes perfect sense because this is when the teacher gives the majority direction. For example, in both groups, when told to line up many children had to be told a repeated amount of times because they refused to follow directions. Another example is when the kindergarteners were told to sit and wait for their parents to arrive. Additionally the attention span of the pre-school children seemed to be shorter than that of the kindergarteners which accounts for the larger number of defiant acts of pre-school children during this time. Studies in the past related to our topic have a strong correlation to our findings and may explain why the pre-schoolers disobeyed more of the instructions given than that of the kindergarteners.

Children's ability to regulate their conduct has proven to be age dependent. {Kochanska et al., 1996; Luria 1961} Generally younger children have a more difficult time completing any act other than what they prefer to do or what ever their predominant response was. For example, if a child on the playground saw a railing, and his / her first response was to climb it the pre-schooler is more likely to react on impulse {predominant response} than that of the kindergarteners. Conclusively, children's ability to control and regulate conduct such as inhibiting undesirable acts, following the rules, and doing more desirable acts improves with age. { Kochanska et al., 1996; Luria 1961} According to the study, the cause for the inhibition control is neurological maturation of the frontal lobes.

Studies show that both adults with lesions of the frontal lobes and pre-school children display the same difficulties in controlling their inhibitions. {Diamond& Taylor, 1996} Conclusively if the child is older and has developed mature frontal lobes, there is a greater chance that that child will dismiss their inhibitions and follow the rules,.