The Use of Verbal Instructions in Investigations with Young Children

Three to 5 year old children have not fully acquired the skills of language.For example, their ability to understand how to speak intelligibly, and to understandwhat is said to them is still in the process of developing toward the abilities of olderchildren and adults. This often makes their verbal responses to investigating questionshard to evaluate. The reason is that children of this age group may not understandor fully understand a verbal instruction. Moreover, their nervous systems are notfully developed. In this paper, one investigation where conclusions were based onthe responses of 3-5 year old children to a verbal instruction will be compared withexperimental evidence of the stages that children 1-6 years old are observed topass through as they begin to comprehend and respond to certain kinds of verbalinstructions. Thus, the practice of using similar experimental methods in investigationswith both children and adults will be evaluated