Testing preschool children's skill retention using microcomputers

The purpose of this study -was to determine if children enrolled in Title XX preschool centers would benefit from the use, of microcomputers in the classroom.

A pretest, to test the child's matching skill is administered; from those children missing three or more problems, a random selection of 55 children (three and four years old) was made. These children were divided into a teacher practicing group, a computer practicing group and a teaching control group. In each practicing group there were ten boys and ten girls and in the testing control group. In each practicing group there were twelve boys and three girls.

A teaching session with each child individually took place before the child practiced the matching skill with the teacher or on the computer. After practicing seven minutes, the child took a session test. A post-test, the same as the pretest, was given with a day lapse after the session test. A testing control group took just the pretest and the post-test.

A two-tailed t-test of matched pairs was used to determine if there were significant differences between the pretest and post-test scores. A two-tailed t-test of unmatched pairs was used to determine if there was a significant difference between the teacher group and the computer group, between the boys and girls, and between the testing control group and the children receiving treatment.

The study indicates that by both the teacher and computer methods the children learned equally as well. There was a significant change in the testing control group between the pretest and post-test.

Observations and results indicate that preschool children will need exposure to a microcomputer before they will feel comfortable to work at it alone. The attention span of the three-year-old is very limited and an extensive computer program of the drill and practice type is not recommended.