The Abecedarian 1 Approach to Social Competence: Cognitive and Linguistic Intervention for Disadvantaged Preschoolers

Abstract

The educational program of the Carolina Abecedarian Project has altered the educational ecology of disadvantaged children from birth, and has apparently succeeded in preventing a significant amount of developmental retardation during the preschool years. The daily program is to create an ecology in which adaptive and social behaviors can be manifested and reinforced. The program aim is designed to elicit social and adaptive behaviors through creating an environment in which the skills can be fostered and by using a specific social curriculum which makes children aware of appropriate behaviors and feelings. M. C. Ward postulated that imperatives and directive forms of language in general are characteristic of environments in which children's linguistic mastery is devalued; B. Bernstein earlier produced evidence for this in his sociolinguistic research. R. D. Hess and V. C. Shipman found that the specificity of mothers' information was positively related to language acquisition, whereas the incidence of using imperatives was negatively related.