In recorded interviews, 10 camp counselors described children they believed to have high social or athletic ability. Judges rated counselors' voice tone as warmer and less hostile when describing children for whom they had high expectations. Less competent counselors were more prone to biasing effects. (Author/BS)

A school discipline survey form was mailed to 324 principals in 18 randomly selected states representing the nine U.S. Census districts. Results indicated widespread use of corporal punishment with students at every grade level. The use of corporal punishment across demographic, administrative/procedural, and administrative opinion variables in…

To probe the association of reading achievement with factors in learning, the scores of 2,890 13-year-old students from a National Assessment of Educational Progress sample were regressed on 24 indexes of the factors, singly and as a set. Achievement showed diminishing or eventually negative returns to eight time variables. (Author/BS)

For ninth graders studying three biological concepts via computer-based instruction, decreasing display time of interrogatory examples for incorrect answers and increasing display time for correct answers was the best procedure for two-stage concept learning. Information processing theory and instructional display time as an adaptive design…

Multiple reading measures and writing measures were administered to 256 second graders and 251 fifth graders. A canonical correlational analysis, grade level analyses, and cohort analyses for beginning and proficient readers were performed. Reading or writing never explained more than 43 percent of the variance in the opposite test set. (Author/BS)

Fifth and sixth graders performed at a high or low level on a novel achievement task within a competitive or individual goal structure. The type and frequency of children's thoughts were assessed. Children made more ability attributions in the competitive condition and more effort attributions in the individual condition. (Author/BS)

Three year trends in the law grade averages of nonminority, Black, and Chicano students were studied in two sets of law schools enrolling more than 900 Black students and more than 300 Chicano students. Reasons for the differential improvements in grades are considered, including statistical artifacts and substantive factors. (Author/BS)

Three experiments were designed to test preschool, first, and second graders' understanding of the term "word." A modified aural discrimination task required children to discriminate word from nonword stimuli. Results indicated that children's word concepts have been underestimated. (Author/BS)

Three functions that might explain why analogies are effective reading aids are described. Six experiments using elementary, secondary, and college students are reported which address the use of analogies as reading aids. Performance improvement, reading time, effects of restrictive time conditions, and aptitude treatment interactions are…

To evaluate individual differences in children's propensity to demonstrate cognitive synthesis, six-year-olds were asked to demonstrate the meaning of various sentences constructed of logographs, which were arranged in either a meaningful or scrambled order. Overall, synthesizers had a larger attentional reserve, or M-capacity, than…

The present article reviews the procedures that have been developed for measuring the reliability of human observers' judgments when making direct observations of behavior. These include the percentage of agreement, Cohen's Kappa, phi, and univariate and multivariate agreement measures that are based on quasi-equiprobability and quasi-independence…

A paired-associate memory task with pictures and words as items was used to categorize fourth graders into four learner types (high/low picture x high/low word performance). Poor paired-associate learners profited more than did good paired-associate learners from picture aids on the prose task. (Author/BW)

Cognitive processing and language awareness in relation to reading were studied. Language awareness involved understanding of phonological representation, ambiguities, and incongruities. Second and fourth graders were administered seven "simultaneous-successive" tasks. Results showed a much greater direct effect from language awareness on reading…

The degree to which concreteness of prose material presented in an auditory fashion would interact with learners' lateral preference under different right hemispheric presentation conditions was investigated with 96 adults. Subjects recalled a greater number of ideas when the passage was concrete. Abstractness interacted with cerebral dominance.…

Three systems of motivation (ability-evaluative, task mastery, and moral responsibility) and their implicit value orientations shared by students and teachers are defined. This qualitative perspective relates to distinct cognition networks, involving goals and values, attributions, and strategy beliefs. Student motivation and teacher motivation…