Study identifies home literacy and literacy interest as two independent sources of literacy experience among 92 kindergarten prereaders. Together, they accounted for significant variance in oral vocabulary and on a letter-name and letter-sound measure of early written language. Discussion focuses on print exposure versus explicit print-sound…

Study examines whether children's achievement strategies predict their improvement in reading and mathematical skills during the first school year, or whether the skills predict the change in their achievement strategies. Results indicate that task-avoidant behaviors decreased subsequent improvement in reading skills, and that a low level of…

Examines attentional demands and recall among undergraduates for stories that differ in rated interest. Results reveal that more interesting stories required fewer attentional resources for comprehension than did less interesting stories. Overall recall did not differ across story interest, but story interest did interact with type of encoding in…

Using a comprehension-monitoring model, 192 skilled and less skilled readers from 3rd and 6th grade read stories containing inconsistent information. Half of the students constructed a storyboard representation of the stories and half only read the text. Results reveal that storyboard construction enhanced the integration of text propositions and…

Study examines interaction between ninth-grade readers' (N=72) social desirability concerns and comprehension of text that does or does not violate social values. Results reveal that comprehension scores increased with reading level, and were lower on paragraphs that violated social values. Students with higher social desirability concerns had…

Investigates effects of epistemological beliefs and topic-specific beliefs on undergraduates' (N=40) cognitive and strategic processing of a dual-positional text. Findings reveal that epistemological beliefs about the speed of learning affected the overall number of cognitive processes exhibited, whereas topic-specific beliefs interacted with the…

Assesses the combined effects of goal setting and different types of comparative information on fourth-grade students' (N=84) self-efficacy and fraction skill, particularly within a Taiwanese classroom. Results reveal that children in the self-referenced groups demonstrated significantly higher fraction skill and self-efficacy than did children in…

Addresses the role of multiple goals, both mastery and performance goals, and links them to multiple outcomes of motivation, affect, strategy use, and performance. Data from 8th and 9th graders (N=150) reveal that, in line with normative goal therapy, mastery goals were adaptive; but also that performance goals, when coupled with mastery goals,…

Examines the hierarchy of academic self-concept in four studies. Tests the hypotheses that strong hierarchical relations exist in the academic self-concept structure at a domain-specific level, and that a hierarchy exists in an educational setting with a strong focus on the curriculum. Results reveal support for the multidimensionality of academic…

Examines predictors of alcohol and marijuana use at school among a sample of high school students (N=208). Results reveal that personal predispositions are more strongly related to substance use at school when students believe they have the opportunity to use alcohol and drugs without getting caught. (Contains 39 references and 5 tables.)…

Conducts a meta-analysis of supplemental, adult-instructed one-to-one reading interventions for elementary students (N=1,539) at risk for reading failure. Results indicate that interventions using trained volunteers or college students were highly effective. Studies comparing one-to-one with small-group supplemental instruction showed no advantage…

Interviews 36 practicing teachers, using phenomenological methods to examine what, when, where, and to whom teachers offer choice. Final results focus on the following main points: teachers believe that choice promotes learning and motivation; choice is used in a number of ways; and teachers impose limits on classroom choice based on student age,…

Analyzes training procedures designed to address specific phonological deficits in six- to eight-year old disabled readers (N=24). Children were taught to connect printed letter clusters with underlying oral-motor activity. Posttest results reveal that all children were successful in segments representing trained reading rules, but disabled and…

Reports on a study of Grade 5 children who had been trained in phoneme identity six years earlier. Results reveal that these children were superior to untrained controls on irregular word reading and on a composite list of nonwords, regular words, and irregular words. Preschool instruction in phonemic structure had modest but detectable effects on…

Reports on two longitudinal studies in which 3 subgroups of German-speaking children (phonological awareness deficit, naming-speed deficit, and double deficit) were assessed for reading and spelling performance three years later. Unlike findings with English-speaking children, results reveal that phonological awareness deficits did not affect…