Abstracts - Earli

language interactions in these classrooms their teachers more often use teaching strategies (e.g.repetition, correction) aimed to primarily stimulate vocabulary development and basic languageskills. In contrast, in classrooms with relatively few second language learners, teachers often usemore cognitively demanding strategies during language interactions (e.g. open ended questions).These differences in early-in-life experiences with more cognitively complex languageinteractions, both at home and in school, seem to be of influence on children’s vocabularydevelopment and on the long run might play an important role in children’s school success.Preschool boosts verbal and fluid intelligence of disadvantaged immigrant childrenCathy van Tuijl, Utrecht University, NetherlandsPaul Leseman, Utrecht University, NetherlandsThe current longitudinal study examined the effect of two and a half years preschool on thedevelopment of verbal and fluid intelligence of 4-6-year-old children of low-income ethnicminority families by determining the changes in full scale IQ, and in verbal-crystallized and fluidintelligence, relative to the age norm. The results showed that preschool boosted the intelligence ofdisadvantaged children, with medium effect sizes. Effects of preschool on gains in intelligencewere moderated by children’s home language and age. Using stepwise regression analysis, gains inverbal and fluid intelligence were found to predict emergent school vocabulary and premathematicalskill in addition to effects of pre-test intelligence. Children gaining most inintelligence also profited most with respect to emergent school skills. Moreover, gains in verbalintelligence predicted emergent vocabulary, but gains in fluid intelligence did not. Gains in fluidintelligence overall predicted emergent math, whereas gains in verbal intelligence predictedemergent math only with older children.C 2629 August 2007 08:30 - 10:30Room: 1.71 PóczaSymposiumBuilding dynamic mental models from visualizations (I)Chair: Wolfgang Schnotz, University of Koblenz-Landau, GermanyOrganiser: Wolfgang Schnotz, University of Koblenz-Landau, GermanyOrganiser: Richard K. Lowe, Curtin University of Technology, AustraliaDiscussant: Susan Goldman, University of Chicago, USAInstruction frequently aims at the learner’s understanding of dynamic systems, which requires theindividual to construct a dynamic mental model of the system and to perform mental simulationsby ‘running’ the mental model in order to solve specific tasks. A frequent assumption hold bypractitioners is that the temporal characteristics of an external visual representation shouldcorrespond to those of the represented content. This would imply that static pictures should beused to display static content because they lead to the construction of a static mental model,whereas animated pictures should be used to display dynamic content because they lead to theconstruction of a dynamic mental model. A more detailed consideration reveals however that thisis not the case. Static pictures are not limited to supporting the construction of static mentalmodels, but can also be the basis for constructing dynamic mental models and dynamic– 188 –