Competence and Experience

Abstract

In an earlier report (White, Watts, Kaban, Marmor, Shapiro, & Barnett, 1973), we remarked that the psychological literature (as of 1965) did not contain extensive research findings on the topic of the competent 6-year old. Aside from Lois Murphy’s Sarah Lawrence study (Murphy, 1956), we could find no reports of extensive studies of unusually good development in the first six years of life. (Terman’s studies of gifted children, for example, while of great value for certain purposes, contain little detail about behavior during the first six years of life.) We described briefly how we observed children going about their ordinary activities in nursery schools, kindergartens, playgrounds, etc., and their own homes. Although in that report we described the population on whom we had gathered such data over an 8-month period, we provided less detail than we might have. Recently, for example, a few observers of our work have concluded that our definition of competence seems to be a “middle-class” definition. We have maintained that such is not the case. We have tried to focus on those distinguishing dimensions of competence held in common by children across socioeconomic status (SES) and ethnicity within the limits of our sample size and level of skill.