Interviews with university students selected as high or low in either self-handicapping or defensive pessimism identified personal perspectives on the nature of self-handicapping and defensive pessimism, the perceived reasons why they engage in these strategies and the perceived advantages that follow from them, and the extent to which ego goals…

Learning and understanding of science instructional material was examined from a cognitive load perspective. Diagrams were expected to reduce cognitive load by allowing students to process information using fewer elements in working memory than an equivalent text-based format. Two experiments using different chemistry instructions confirmed these…

Tests whether writing about stressful events improves grade point averages (GPAs) and whether decreases in writing-induced negative mood from the first to last day of writing predicts GPA improvements. Results reveal that writing about general life stress leads to improved academic functioning, particularly among those who become less distressed…

The author used data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Survey to examine whether Gender X Item Difficulty interactions like those in American mathematics exist in mathematics and science in 10 countries. For both mathematics and science, the author detected male advantages that were minimal on easy questions and increased as…

Reviews theory and research relating to fluency instruction and development. Found that fluency instruction is generally effective; assisted approaches seem to be more effective than unassisted approaches; repetitive approaches do not seem to hold a clear advantage over nonrepetitive approaches; and effective fluency instruction moves beyond…

Studies the development of phonological processing abilities in dyslexic, weak, and normal readers. Among other abilities, phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming were assessed in kindergarten, in 1st grade, and in 6th grade. Concludes that various manifestations of a phonological deficit follow distinct developmental pathways.…

Examines the influence of letter-name instruction in beginning word recognition. Children who received letter-name instruction learned words phonetically spelled with letters included in instruction significantly better than other words. Children receiving comprehension instruction performed significantly better on visually distinct word…

Investigates whether children can use partial information to learn the pronunciations of Chinese characters. Children learned to pronounce more regular characters, which contain full information about pronunciation, and more tone-different and onset-different characters, which contain partial information about pronunciation, than characters with…

Evaluates prior findings of reading, mental ability, and personality correlates of Stroop Color-Word Test (SCWT) scores. In spite of significant correlations between the SCWT scores and selected measures of mental ability, genetic influence on SCWT scores was relatively unaffected when the influences of correlated ability measures were removed.…

Examines children's social and academic competencies as mediators to explain the often positive relation between parent-school involvement and achievement. Ethnic variation was examined. For African Americans, academic skills mediated the relations between school involvement and math performance. For Euro-Americans, social competence mediated the…

Tests a model of motivation and achievement with data from 50 teachers and 806 Grade 4-6 students in Taiwan. Autonomy as a construct was shown to have ecological validity in Chinese children. The proposed model fit the data well, showing that maternal involvement and autonomy support, as well as teachers' autonomy support, are important for…

Examines a study of student motivation in physical education that incorporated constructs from achievement goal and self-determination theories. Self-determined motivation was found to positively predict, whereas amotivation was a negative predictor of leisure-time physical activity intentions. (Contains 86 references and 3 tables.) (GCP)

Examines the degree to which children's achievement-related beliefs could be predicted from their friends' beliefs. Friends showed consistent, albeit modest similarities with regards to their self-perception of competence, academic standards, and importance of meeting standards, and preference for challenge. Friends appeared influential with…

Tests theoretical and developmental models of the causal ordering between academic self-concept and academic achievement. The structural equation model for the total sample supported a reciprocal-effects model, indicating that achievement has an effect on self-concept and that academic self-concept has an effect on achievement. (Contains 33…

Investigates the behaviors, interactions, and perceptions of junior high school students as they worked in structured or unstructured cooperative learning groups on problem-solving, curriculum-based tasks in mathematics, science and English. Results show that children in the structured groups were more cooperative and provided more relevant verbal…