Resumen de Contextual factors impact on the child development in early childhood: The attendance of the pre-kindergarten as an increasing factor the basic visual-motor and perception skills
Francesca Giovanna Maria Gastaldi
The purpose of this study is to assess how the pre-kindergarten experience can positively affect the development of basic visual-motor integration skills in early childhood. Pre-kindergarten has to be understood as a setting with specific educational purposes that differentiate it from the first educational context in which the child experiences: the family. The envisioned hypothesis is that the experience of pre-kindergarten can improve the neuropsychological development of the sensorymotor and perceptual aspects of visual and spatial integration. The specific objective is to assess the impact of pregressed education experiences, within the pre-kindergarten on the development of visual-motor integration skills, comparing the incidence of additional contextual factors, referred to the current preschool experience and the family’s characteristics. The project involved 60 children (age range: 4-5 years old, mean: 4.5; sd: 0.5, 38 males, 22 females), 30 with pre-kindergarten experience, 30 without pre-kindergarten experience. To the participants were proposed the VMI (Visual- Motor Integration) test; an ad-hoc questionnaire related to socio-anagraphical data was handed over to the families. The analysis carried out (Mann-Whitney for independent samples) showed significant results (p <0.05) in relation to the influence of previous experience of pre-kindergarten.
