[The enhancement of development at nursery school age]

A scientifically based synthesis of diagnostic inventaries and intervention measures would be desirable for the practice of the enhancement of development. Recent research on preschool training, however, has hitherto tended to deal with the development and testing of the effectiveness of training programmes without linking them explicitly to a diagnosis of the abilities which are to be promoted. This article presents two studies that are part of a major project to connect the assessment and enhancement of development. The objective was to develop and empirically test intervention measures for two functional areas of the Wiener Entwicklungstest (WET, Kastner-Koller and Deimann 1998, 2002). Two training conditions were developed for the area of language, i.e. a specific encouragement of vocabulary and conceptualisation and general linguistic promotion. Similarly, two different promotion strategies were realized for the functional area Visual Perception, i.e. a conventional means of promotion using work sheets and a form of promotion utilizing games. According to area, these treatments were tested for their differential effectiveness in an experimental design (linguistic training N = 42; training of perception N = 51), using the Wiener Entwicklungstest (WET) for the pre- and posttests, the intermediate programme comprising 16 units and a control group meantime taking part in the educational programme of the nursery school in both studies. The results showed that both forms of linguistic training and the promotion of perception through games were highly effective in their areas, but that the effect of work sheets could not be definitively assessed. The different effects of the training programmes on children with and without a general developmental lag in the Wiener Entwicklungstest (WET) were particularly interesting.