The failure of research on media to deal with media's symbol systems is discussed. Nature of symbol systems is described and related to cognition and learning. Symbolic elements used by media can facilitate the cultivation of mental skills in interaction with individual differences and depth of processing. (Author/RD)

College faculty evaluated their own teaching and were evaluated by their students in each of two courses. There was considerable student-faculty agreement in the ratings obtained. Separate factor analyses indicated that similar dimensions underlay both student and faculty evaluations. Validity coefficients were statistically significant for all…

Spanish-English bilingual and English monolingual children imitated Spanish and English lexical and syntactic constructions. Lexical items contained "high risks" phonemes. Sentence constructions emphasized plurality, possessiveness, and adjective-noun word order. Monolingual and bilingual children did not differ on English imitations; bilinguals…

Undergraduates rated their affective reactions to hypothetical test failures under conditions of high or low effort and in the presence or absence of self-servicing excuses. Then, in the role of teachers, they administered punishment to hypothetical students under the same failure conditions. Results were interpreted using self-worth theory.…

College students read a text either with or without inserted questions. Question groups performed better, relative to controls, on post-test items that repeated inserted questions, and on new post-test items from the same categories as the inserted questions. A selective attention interpretation of the effect of inserted questions was made.…

Three of Guilford's tests of divergent thinking were scored for ideational fluency and originality. The originality scores were reliable, but when the effects of ideational fluency were partialed out of the originality scores, all reliabilities showed substantial decrements; interest correlations dropped to zero or showed a substantial decrement.…

In five experiments, adults verified sentences by reading complex information in several technical passages. Both segmenting and indenting influenced performance; however, once a text had been meaningfully segmented, the addition of indentation cues did not affect response time. Implications for typographic design--line length and margins--are…

The effects of examination grades on undergraduates' study behaviors, attendance, and evaluations of instruction were examined. Liberal grading was found to result in higher evaluations of course and instructor but had no demonstrable effect on studying or attendance. The implications of these findings and alternative interpretations are…

Children were individually administered the Matching Familiar Figures (MFF) Test and the Haptic Matching Task. Impulsives received either reflective scanning strategy training or control procedures and were retested. Visual training decreased errors only on the MFF and increased latency on both tasks. Haptic training decreased errors and increased…

Prekindergarten children were given a perceptual discrimination task using letterlike forms and their transformations. The magnitude of the relation to subsequent achievement in reading varied according to the difficulty of a transformation. More easily discriminated transformations were associated with higher correlations. Patterns were similar…

The cognitive styles of fifth-grade students and their teachers were assessed. Some teachers were made aware of the educational implications of field-dependence-independence and of the individual styles of their students and themselves. Self-concept and attitude toward school were measured prior to and at the conclusion of the experiment.…

The relationship between elementary school children's mental ability scores and classroom performance was investigated. A strong predictive relationship between mental ability scores and classroom performance was obtained irrespective of the subjects' socioeconomic status. These findings indicate that predictions of academic performance derived…

Females' and males' ninth grade scores for three cognitive tests and eight mathematics attitudes scales were used to predict mathematics performance. These scores significantly predicted mathematics performance 1-3 years later. Spatial visualization was an important variable, significantly predicting geometry grade for girls, but not for boys.…

Academic locus of control and mothers' school-related reactions and expectations were studied in 81 learning disabled (LD) and 81 normally achieving children. LD children indicated more external perceptions of control for academic success. Mothers of LD children reported more negative reactions to their children and lower academic performance…

Six experiments investigated the informational value of praise and criticism. Praise after success and neutral feedback after failure led to perceptions that an acting person's ability was viewed as low. Neutral feedback after success and criticism after failure led to perceptions that an acting person's ability was viewed as high. (Author/RD)