Examines the effectiveness of Early Steps, a first-grade reading intervention program in which at-risk students receive one-to-one tutoring lessons. Results reveal that at the end of the school year, the Early Steps group outperformed a comparison group on a variety of reading measures, including oral reading accuracy, comprehension, and…

Examines relations between academic self-concept (ASC) and measures of reading-related performance and self-concept in 60 beginning school children who were assessed as having positive, negative, or typical ASCs. Data reveals that children with negative ASCs performed poorly on reading-related tasks and reported more negative reading self-concepts…

Assesses "theory of mind" (ToM), or social understanding, in preadolescents (N=128) and examines individual differences in the relations among social understanding, self-concept, and language competence. Results reveal positive associations between children's social understanding and self-understanding; self-perceptions of behavioral conduct; and…

Examines gender differences in EXPLORE scores of gifted third through sixth graders. Results reveal that boys performed better on Mathematics and Science reasoning, and girls performed better on Reading, but effect sizes were negligible. Test performance of boys in mathematics was somewhat stronger than that of girls, but results favoring girls in…

Tests the hypothesis that personalized messages in a multimedia science lesson can promote deep learning by actively engaging students in the elaboration of the materials and reducing processing load. Instructional messages were presented in either a personalized style or a neutral style. Results reveal that personalized messages produced better…

Examines if externally imposed achievement goals influence what children learn from procedural instruction. Third- and 4th-grade children's goals were manipulated toward either learning or performance (N=77). Both initially and after a 2-week period, children who were given either goal were more likely to extend their knowledge beyond the taught…

Investigates sociocultural and family factors that contribute to children's academic achievement among 40 European American (EA) and 40 second-generation Chinese American (CA) preschool and kindergarten children. CA children outscored EA children in mathematics at all three intervals, and were better readers by the third interval. CA parents…

Investigates 1st-graders' ability to select the appropriate strategy for constructing a building from memory versus listening to instructions that included an unfamiliar word. Results reveal children's strategy selections: preceded any construction attempts; followed failed construction attempts; or followed verbal feedback about failures.…

Examines whether teaching poor text comprehenders reading strategies will improve reading comprehension. Third through fifth grade adequate decoders who were poor comprehenders were trained for 10 weeks in either a verbally or visually based reciprocal teaching program. Results reveal that training reading comprehension strategies in small groups…

Examines mnemonic transfer in the form of knowledge generalization in the context of an artwork-learning task. Results reveal that mnemonic instruction produced memory benefits on a direct test, and that on a transfer task, mnemonic students who were directed to focus on the general style of the artist outperformed students who focused on details…

Investigates the relation between comprehension skill and the ability to locate information. Results reveal that good comprehenders were more efficient than poor comprehenders when they were required to locate specific pieces of information in a text. Findings suggest that good comprehenders' superior search strategy may arise because of their…

Examines metamemory for categorized lists of items among college students. Judgments of learning (JOLs) were obtained either immediately after study or following a brief delay. Results indicate that delayed JOLs were more accurate than immediate JOLs only when knowledge based cues were used. Indicates that the phrasing of metamemory cues can have…

Studies the influences of modeling and social feedback in acquisition of dart-throwing skill with 60 high school girls. Discusses results in terms of a social-cognitive view of athletic skill acquisition in which vicarious abstraction of a skill prepares students to learn self-regulatively during practice efforts. (Contains 20 references, 4…

Study analyzes three dimensions of teaching quality perceived by Chinese students in Hong Kong, China: satisfaction with lecturing; satisfaction with course-design; and a self-rated measure of effort devoted to studying. Results reveal that the strongest effect on course ratings came from students' judgment of aspects of course design and…

Explores what diverse first grade children can learn about reading within a year-long balanced approach to emergent reading instruction. A research participant observer visited a classroom of 20 diverse children. Results show that the children were constructing a balanced view of reading and that a balanced program can be used successfully in a…