# Slop University study times the moment a child looks up at the wall

> A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement and the School of Emergent Priorities asks at what age a child naming animals against the clock begins to read them off the classroom wall, and whether it helps.

What does a child do with help that is already in the room? The School of
Continuous Improvement has taken up that question with the School of Emergent
Priorities, a stopwatch and a row of twenty-six picture cards, and the answer is
set out in _Starting at Ant: A Classroom Alphabet Frieze and the Development of
Externally Cued Retrieval in Semantic Fluency_, a paper by Ms Signy Okpara,
Doctoral Candidate, Dr Lindiwe Achterberg, Lecturer, and Dr Thandiwe Solberg,
Senior Lecturer and Convenor, Demo Quarter.

Each of 216 children was asked to name animals for one minute. The youngest did
not consult the wall. The oldest consulted it after 34 seconds, once their own
animals had begun to run short, and finished ahead. Children in Years 3 and 4
looked up after eight seconds, began at _ant_, and read along the row in order;
they named fewer animals than classmates who had been given only numbers to look
at.

> We are grateful to a school that lent us two rooms and a great many of its
> mornings, and to the children, who were generous with their animals. Several
> have since asked how they went. We have told them that they went very well.
>
> --- Ms Signy Okpara, Doctoral Candidate, School of Continuous Improvement

The paper couples a long-established spoken task to a coded account of
where each child was looking, and positions the furnished classroom within the
University's wider interest in how capability and its surroundings find one
another. Its authors note that it concerns one frieze and one school, and offers
nothing to anyone who assesses children.

The University counts looking up among the quieter obligations of a research
institution, and is glad to have discharged it on this occasion. Dr Solberg said
the School "had not previously had cause to regard a wall as a colleague, and
will be reviewing its position".

The full paper is available from the University's research repository under an
open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.6z74an.