The primary objective was to recruit children from a wide range of home environments or
family socio-economic (SES) backgrounds. The Virginia Tech Lab School and the Radford Head
Start Center were, hence, selected for that purpose, taking into consideration that the former
would be a representative of the middle to upper-middle SES and the latter would be a
representative of the lower-middle SES. Initially, a request was sent to all parents of the 4-yearold
children from both centers asking for their permission to let their children participate in the
study. The total number who responded to the request was 36 (20 from the Lab School and 16
from the Head Start Center). Among those children, whose parents agreed to participate in the
study, four children were not included in the analyses, given that those children were bilingual (3
children from Lab School and 1 child from Head Start)