Adam Winsler, Ph.D. Stanford University (1994), Professor: Applied Developmental Psychology

Dr. Winsler is an applied developmental psychologist with interests in a) the development of self-regulation and children's private speech (self-talk), b) early childhood programs, child care, and school readiness for ethnically diverse children in poverty, c) bilingual language development, d) kindergarten retention and delayed school entry, and e) parent-child interaction and executive functioning in children with ADHD and/or high functioning autism.

Topics for his current research projects, grant proposals, and manuscripts in progress include:

• Developmental assessment, intervention, school readiness, and early childhood program evaluation for ethnically diverse, low-income preschoolers
• Predictors of early academic trajectories for ethnically diverse children in poverty
• Parent, family, music, and child language influences on the development of behavioral self-regulation
• Executive functioning, parent-child interaction, and private speech in children with high functioning Autism/Asperger's, and children with ADHD
• College student self-regulated learning and motivation as predictors of academic success and retention

Winsler, A., Tran, H., Hartman, S., Madigan, A.L., Manfra, L., & Bleiker, C. (in press). School readiness gains made by ethnically-diverse children in poverty attending center-based childcare and public school pre-kindergarten programs. Early Childhood Research Quarterly.

Although intensive early childhood interventions and high quality preschool programs have been shown to foster children’s school readiness, little is known about the school readiness gains made by ethnically and linguistically diverse children in poverty receiving subsidies to attend center-based childcare or those in public school pre-kindergarten programs. Within the context of a large-scale, university-community applied research and evaluation project, The Miami School Readiness Project, children receiving subsidies to attend center-based childcare (n = 1,478), children attending free Title 1 public school pre-k programs (n = 1,611), and children attending fee-supported public school pre-k programs (n = 749) were individually assessed at the beginning and end of their pre-kindergarten year in the areas of cognitive, language, and fine motor development. Parents and teachers reported on children’s socio-emotional strengths and behavior concerns. Findings revealed that although children from all types of programs made considerable school readiness gains in most areas in terms of their national relative standing, children attending public school pre-k programs typically made somewhat greater gains in the areas of cognitive and language development. Results suggest that center-based childcare programs in the community may be beneficial for fostering school readiness within ethnically diverse children in poverty, and that public school pre-kindergarten programs may show even greater gains in some areas. Policy implications are discussed.

Winsler, A., Abar, B., Feder, M., Rubio, D.A. & Schunn, C. (2007). Private speech and executive functioning among high functioning children with autistic spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disabilities, 37, 1617-1635.

Children’s reported use of single and multiple search strategies during a matching numbers task, along with accompanying verbal (private speech, self-talk) and motoric (finger pointing, place-holding) strategic behaviors were examined with a large, nationally representative cross-sectional sample (n = 1,979) of children between the ages of 5 and 17. Strategic searching increased with age, especially between the ages of five (15% strategic) and nine (63%), with nine-year-olds’ strategy use being similar in many ways to that of 17-year-olds. Use of multiple search strategies similarly increased with age. Relations between reported strategy use and task performance were positive for 5-7 yr-olds, nonexistent for 8-12 yr-olds, and slightly negative for adolescents. Self-talk, although relatively rare during this task, was a performance asset for young children who were strategic and a liability for young children who were non-strategic. Pointing was negatively related with performance for those who were strategic and irrelevant for those non-strategic.

Winsler, A. Feder, M., Way, E., & Manfra, L. (2006). Maternal beliefs concerning young children’s private speech. Infant and Child Development, 15,  403-420.

The goal of this study was to understand maternal reports, beliefs, and attitudes about their young children’s use of private speech. Mothers of 48 children between the ages of three and five participated in a semi-structured interview in which they reported on the frequency and context of their child’s use of private speech, maternal responses toward such speech use in children, and beliefs about the utility of such speech for children. Interviews were transcribed and responses coded. Mothers also completed surveys on children’s self control and parenting style. Results indicated that practically all parents reported that their child engaged in private speech and that such speech was more likely to appear during fantasy play than during problem-solving activities. Parents varied in their personal responses to children’s self talk and, as a group, do not appear to actively discourage or encourage its use. Ignoring/allowing child private speech use was common and this response was positively associated with authoritative parenting. Parental reports of the frequency with which their child talks to himself were negatively associated with parental reports of children’s self-control. Crib speech, or bedtime monologue, was reported to be very common and was negatively associated with children’s self-control and positively associated with children’s reported private speech use. Parents were uniformly positive in their belief that private speech serves important functions and that it helps young children during task activities.

Winsler, A., Madigan, A. & Aquilino, S. (2005). Correspondence between maternal and paternal parenting styles during early childhood. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 20, 1-12.

The goal of the present study was to investigate perceived similarities and differences in parenting styles between mothers and fathers in the same family. The 56 parents of 28 preschool children independently completed the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ: Robinson, Mandleco, Frost Olsen, & Hart, 2001). Results reveal only modest similarity in parenting styles used by two parents within the same home. Permissive (and to a lesser extent, authoritarian) parenting was somewhat positively associated across parents but no cross-informant association was found for authoritative parenting. Fathers perceive their spouses to be more authoritative, more permissive, and less authoritarian than themselves, whereas mothers only perceive themselves to be more authoritative than fathers. Parents who share similar parenting styles are more accurate at reporting on their spouses’ parenting styles than are parents with differing styles. Correspondence in parenting style across both parents in the home is important as are parental perceptions of similarity and differences in styles. Independent assessment of both mother’s and father’s parenting styles and each parent’s perception of their spouse’s parenting appears needed in research and practical settings.

Winsler, A. (2003). Vygotskian perspectives in early childhood education: Introduction to special issue. Early Education & Development, 14, 253-270.

Winsler, A., & Naglieri, J.A. (2003). Overt and covert verbal problem-solving strategies: Developmental trends in use, awareness, and relations with task performance in children age 5 to 17. Child Development, 74, 659-678.

Age-related changes in children’s use, self report, and awareness of verbal problem-solving strategies (private speech) and strategy effectiveness were explored with a large (N = 2,156), cross-sectional sample of children aged 5 to 17. Children’s verbal strategies moved from overt, to partially-covert, to fully-covert forms with age. Self-reports of verbal strategy use were accurate yet incomplete. Awareness of children’s use of verbal strategies was low and increased with age. Although verbal strategies were associated with competence among the youngest children, self-talk was unrelated to task performance for older children, suggesting considerable persistence over time of a relatively ineffective strategy. Awareness was not a prerequisite for children’s verbal strategy use but was positively associated with strategy effectiveness among those who talked.

This study examined (a) developmental stability and change in children’s private speech during the preschool years, (b) across-task consistency in children’s self-speech, and (c) across-setting relations between children’s private speech in the laboratory and their behavior at home and in the preschool classroom. A group of 32 normally-developing three- and four-year-old children was observed twice (six month inter-observation interval) while engaging in the same individual problem-solving tasks. Measures of private speech were collected from transcribed videotapes. Naturalistic observations of children’s behavior in the preschool classroom were conducted, and teachers and parents reported on children’s behavior at home and school. Individual differences in preschool children’s private speech use were generally stable across tasks and time and related to children’s observed and reported behavior at school and home. Children whose private speech was more partially-internalized had fewer externalizing behavior problems and better social skills as reported by parents and teachers. Children whose private speech was largely task-irrelevant engaged in less goal-directed behavior in the classroom, expressed more negative affect in the classroom, and rated as having poorer social skills and more behavior problems. Developmental change occurred during the preschool years in children’s use and internalization of private speech during problem solving in the form of a reduction over time in the total number of social speech utterances, a decrease in the average number of words per utterance, and an increase in the proportion of private speech that was partially-internalized.

The goal of the present study was to describe one center’s interpretation of child-centered instruction and what this looked like in terms of the children’s daily activities, social affiliation, and behavior in the classrooms. Staff at a self-identified child-centered constructivist preschool program were interviewed about their pedagogical philosophy and asked to give their estimates of the proportion of time that children in their classrooms spent both interacting with different people (alone, with peer, with teacher) and engaged in various behaviors. Data were collected pertaining to children’s goal-directed, sustained activities, social affiliation, affect expression, and inappropriate/aggressive behavior via 2,752 naturalistic classroom observations over the course of a semester. Results indicate children a) spent significantly less time engaging in focused, goal-directed, learning activities, b) sustained their attention on one activity for significantly smaller lengths of time, c) expressed overt positive affect considerably less often, and d) had significantly less one-on-one teacher-child interaction, than was believed and desired by the staff. Results were consistent with both a fear expressed by the center director and recent calls from researchers in early childhood education, that teachers in many child-centered constructivist early childhood programs may be committing the “early childhood error” by stepping back and refraining from getting directly involved in children’s activities.

Social interaction and task behavior of preschool children in mixed-age and same age groups were studied longitudinally in this natural experiment which capitalized on one preschool's transition from two, same-age (separate 3,4) classrooms to two, mixed-age (combined 3/4) classrooms. In contrast to previous research examining mixed-age (MA) and same-age (SA) grouping which has typically lacked appropriate comparison groups, the present study was essentially able to hold teachers, curriculum, location, teaching philosophy, and participant population constant. 7,887 naturalistic, time-sampled, classroom observations on 47 children attending the two classes were conducted over the course of 18 months. Children's goal-directed activity, sustained attention, social affiliation, inappropriate behavior, and affect were reliably recorded on a checklist instrument. Significant age differences in behavior between the 3- and 4-year-olds in SA classrooms were typically eliminated in the context of MA classrooms such that 3-year-olds in MA classes in several ways were more like 4-year-olds in SA classrooms, and 4-year-olds in MA classes behaved more like 3-year-olds in SA classrooms. The social and behavioral ecology of the mixed-age preschool classrooms changed significantly over time as children became more familiar with one another. Several of the social affiliation advantages of MA grouping that were found (i.e., age and gender desegregation) wore off over time as the school year progressed. The effects of mixed-age grouping on children’s social and behavioral development appear complicated. Developmental benefits that mixed-age grouping may provide appear to come with some costs, especially for the older children in the classroom.

Research Findings. The goals of the present investigation were to provide basic psychometric information about the use of the Preschool and Kindergarten Behavior Scales (PKBS: Merrill, 1994) with a sample of normally-developing preschool children, to assess agreement between parent and teacher ratings of children on this instrument, and to assess concurrent, criterion-related validity of these instruments in terms of their relations with observations of children’s behavior in the classroom. Parents and teachers of 47 preschool children completed the scales and these children were observed naturalistically in the classroom setting. Overall, agreement between parents and teachers was modest (-.09 to .38).  Cross-informant correlations were poor   (-.09 to .27) for social skills, low (.15 to .36) for internalizing behaviors, and modest (.29 to .38) for externalizing behavior. Both parents and teachers rated boys as having more externalizing behavior problems than girls. Parents perceived their children to have more externalizing, and more overall, behavior problems than did teachers. In general, teacher reports, but not parent reports, were significantly associated with children’s independently observed goal-directed activity, sustained attention, inappropriate behavior, peer affiliation, expressed negative affect, and proximity to a teacher in the classroom. Practice/Policy. Results argue for the clinical utility of the PKBS for teacher-report assessment of child behavior problems and social skills in the preschool years, and suggest the need for cross-contextual assessment.  Also, it is clear that children's behavioral and social competence are crucial for optimal functioning in the preschool setting.

This study is a prospective, longitudinal attempt to explore behavioral self-regulation, private speech, and speech-action coordination in a sample of behaviorally at-risk preschool children. Preschoolers (N = 72) were classified at age three into a behaviorally at-risk group or a comparison group on the basis of preschool teacher behavioral ratings. Children were videotaped on four different occasions across the span of almost two years as they completed problem-solving tasks, and private speech, task performance, executive functioning, and speech-action coordination were analyzed. Children identified two years earlier as being hard to manage were at risk for continued behavior problems at elementary school entry. Behaviorally at-risk children consistently used more spontaneous private speech than comparison children across all observations. Both groups of children demonstrated a pattern of increasing silence with task success over time. No group differences were observed in children’s speech-action coordination at age five. Intraindividual developmental changes in private speech for both groups were associated with task performance, speech-action coordination, and executive functioning at age five but not teacher- and parent-reported problem behavior.

This study set out to explore the contexts in which preschool children use private speech, or self-talk, in the naturalistic setting of the preschool classroom, and age-related changes in the contexts in which preschoolers talk to themselves. A total of 2,752 naturalistic observations of fourteen three-year-old and fourteen four-year-old children were conducted using a time-sampling procedure in two preschool classrooms over the course of one semester. Results from logistic regression analyses revealed that both age groups were (a) more likely to use private speech during the self-selected activity classroom context as opposed to both large group and outside free play classroom contexts, and (b) most likely to talk to themselves when alone, next likely in the presence of peers, and least likely when in the presence of a teacher. Although the probability of private speech among three-year-old children did not vary as a function of the child's immediate activity, four-year-old children's private speech was more likely to occur during sustained and focused goal-directed activity as opposed to rapidly-changing and non goal-directed activity. The findings suggest that private speech appears systematically in young children and that, in several ways, four-year-old children use private speech more selectively than three-year-olds.

The purpose of the present study was to explore patterns of mother-child interaction, children's private speech use, and behavioral self-regulation among a sample of preschool children identified by their preschool teachers as evidencing behavior problems. Forty preschoolers were classified into two groups [behaviorally at-risk and a matched comparison group] on the basis of teacher ratings of impulsivity, inattention, and hyperactivity. Children completed a magnet board puzzle task once in collaboration with their mother and once individually, and maternal and child speech and behavior were coded from videotapes. Although there were no group differences in children's behavior or speech during the collaborative session, nor were there differences in children's individual task performance or on-task attention, mother-child interaction involving behaviorally at-risk children was characterized by more other-regulation, negative control, less praise, and less physical withdrawal over time, compared to interactions involving comparison children. Behaviorally at-risk children, compared to controls, used more overt, task-relevant private speech during individual problem-solving. Partially-internalized private speech use among at-risk preschoolers was positively associated with task performance. Group differences rather than similarities prevailed in terms of the relations between maternal behavior, child speech, and child performance.

This article discusses two investigations which explored the bilingual language development outcomes of comparable groups of low-income, Spanish-speaking, Mexican-American children who either did or did not attended a bilingual (Spanish/English) preschool. Study 1 is a replication of Rodríguez, Díaz, Duran, and Espinosa (1995) involving a new sample of 26 children who attended bilingual preschool for one year and 20 control children who remained at home. Study 2 represents a one-year, longitudinal follow-up of Rodríguez et al.'s (1995) sample of children during and after the children spent another year at home or in the preschool. In both investigations, standardized, objective measures of three components of children's language proficiency (productive language, receptive language, and language complexity) in English and Spanish were obtained at the beginning and end of the academic year. Contrary to fears that have been expressed by some that early exposure to English would lead to children's native language loss, the results of both studies offered no evidence of Spanish proficiency loss for children attending bilingual preschool. Children who attended bilingual preschool, compared to those who remained at home, showed significant and parallel gains in Spanish language development as well as significant and greater increases in English language proficiency over time. Results are discussed in terms of the need for more systematic research to be conducted in this area to inform policy and practice in the early education and development of language-minority children.

The goals of this investigation were to explore (a) processes of parent-ADHD child interaction and scaffolding during joint problem-solving,  (b) the nature and self-regulatory quality of ADHD children's private speech, and (c) relationships between previous parent-child interaction and ADHD children's individual private speech use and task performance. Nineteen boys diagnosed with ADHD and twenty matched controls were videotaped as they worked together with their parent on a problem-solving task and as they individually completed a similar version of the same task alone. Measures taken during the dyad session included the functional quality of parental speech, children's off-task/non-compliant behavior, parental scaffolding and withdrawal of control over time, and children's social and private speech. Measures during the individual session included children's on-task attention, task performance, and the quantity, quality, and abbreviation/internalization of children's private speech. Parents of ADHD boys, compared to parents of controls, used more negative verbal control strategies, engaged in poorer quality scaffolding, and withdrew adult control less during collaboration, and ADHD boys were more off-task and noncompliant than control boys. Although ADHD boys used a wide variety of task-relevant private speech during joint and individual problem-solving, and their speech varied appropriately as a function of both the task and the social context, weaknesses in ADHD boys' verbal self-regulation were that, compared to control children, (1) their private speech contained more task-irrelevant forms, (2) their speech was less related to their ongoing activity and task performance, (3) they show a delay in the internalization of private speech. Implications of these findings for intervention are discussed.

This study was designed to examine the following central, Vygotskian hypotheses about the functions of preschool children's private speech:  1) that private speech facilitates the transition from collaborative to independent task performance, and 2) that children's use of private speech is conducive to task success.  Age-related changes in children's use of private speech were also examined.  40 preschoolers, ranging in age from three to five, completed a selective attention task with scaffolded assistance given from an experimenter when needed.   In an effort to overcome several methodological limitations found in previous research,  a new microgenetic method of analyzing speech-performance relations based on assigning task items to discrete categories reflecting six possible co-occurrences between private speech (item-relevant speech, item-irrelevant speech, silence) and performance (success, failure) was introduced.  Results were that 1) item-relevant speech was used more often during successful than during failed items while the opposite was true for item-irrelevant speech, 2) children were more likely to use private speech on successful items after scaffolding than they were on similar items not following scaffolding, 3) after scaffolding, children were more likely to succeed on the next item if they talked to themselves than if they were silent, and 4) hypothesized curvilinear, age-related patterns in children's item-relevant private speech and silence were found, however, only when analyzing speech during successful items. Implications of this research for preschool teachers and parents are discussed.

This study addressed the question of how young children’s spontaneous use of private speech in the kindergarten classroom varies as a function of contextual variables, such as type of activity, immediate presence of others, degree of teacher-given structure, and classroom age composition. Twenty children from two classrooms (one mixed-age, one same-age) were systematically observed in their regular kindergarten classroom during a period of four weeks, using a time-sampling procedure. Results from ANOVA, chi-square, and logistic regression analyses indicated that young children’s use of private speech does vary systematically according to the immediate physical and social context. More specifically, children were found to use more self-regulatory language when they were 1) engaged in goal-directed task activity, as compared to free play or other activities; 2) in a classroom context which provided an intermediate degree of teacher regulation, compared to contexts in which either very little or a great deal of external structure was present; and 3) with their younger classmates, compared to either their same-age or older peers. No differences in overall private speech usage were found between the mixed-age and same-age classes. Frequency of private speech did not vary significantly depending on whether children were alone, with other children, or with adults. Classroom contexts vary in the degree to which they promote self-direction. This study suggests that if one is interested in fostering young children's development of self-regulation or in observing children’s use of private speech, the optimum context is one which provides an intermediate amount of structure and allows children to spontaneously engage in challenging goal-directed activity.

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