Preparing a Native Cognitive Enhancement Training Package, "33 Bridges", and Its Effectiveness on the Intelligence of 4- to 6-Year-Old Children

The most critical part of human communication develops during the growth of the human nervous system in the first five years of life. Previously, a good memory was considered the best and most influential factor that a child should have. However, the students' understanding and insight are being addressed because of the widespread changes in school curricula. Now, the child is asked to analyze, compare, and arrive at a conclusion. Thinking means manipulating and transferring information in memory. This process is designed for conceptualizing, reasoning, critical thinking, decision making, creative thinking, and problem–solving. "33 bridges" is a native curriculum that includes an interactive parent–child educational package. It has been designed to enhance deductive reasoning in preschoolers. This package targets proper conclusions and promotes school decision–making and success skills for preschoolers. So, this study aimed to edit and evaluate the effectiveness of the native cognitive enhancement training package of "33 bridges" on the intelligence of 4– to 6–year–old Iranian children.

This research is a quasi–experimental study with a pretest–posttest and follow–up design and a control group. The statistical population included all 4–6 years old children studying in preschools of the 22 districts of Tehran City, Iran. They were enrolled in the academic year 2015–2016. Next, 2 kindergartens and preschools were selected by multistage cluster sampling method, and 30 children were randomly selected and placed in one experimental (n=15) and one control group (n=15). The inclusion criteria for children were as follows: being 4 to 6 years old, living with both parents, lacking any mental disorders (by performing the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence – Third Edition; WPPSI–III) (Wechsler, 1967), not having any severe movement problems (based on medical records), not using any medicine (according to parents), lacking problems in the child's family relationships, not having certain diseases that disrupt the treatment process, lacking severe mental and motor problems, and obtaining parental consent to participate in the study. The exclusion criteria were the absence of more than one session from treatment sessions and parents' dissatisfaction with continuing the study. The study data were gathered via the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence – Third Edition (WPPSI–III) (Wechsler, 1967). The intervention consisted of 12 sessions of the native "33 bridges" training program. However, no intervention was provided for the control group. For data analysis, descriptive statistics (including mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics, including repeated measures analysis of variance and Bonferroni post hoc test, were performed in SPSS. The significance level was considered 0.05 for all statistical tests.

The result showed that the effect of the group on the variables of general intelligence (p=0.030), verbal intelligence (p<0.001), and practical intelligence (p<0.001) was significant. The effect of time on variables of general intelligence (p<0.001), verbal intelligence (p<0.001) and practical intelligence (p<0.001) was significant. The interaction of time and group on the general intelligence variable was not significant (p=0.177). However, the effect was significant on the variables of verbal intelligence (p<0.001) and practical intelligence (p=0.043). Also, the mean scores of variables of general intelligence (p<0.001), verbal intelligence (p<0.001), and practical intelligence (p<0.001) in the pretest were significantly different from the mean scores of these variables in the posttest and follow–up. The mean scores of general intelligence (p=0.048) and verbal intelligence (p<0.001) in the posttest with the follow–up showed a significant difference. Nevertheless, the mean scores of practical intelligence in the posttest with follow–up did not show a significant difference (p=0.279).

According to the research findings, the "33 bridges" native educational package can be used to increase the intelligence scores of children aged 4 to 6 years.