Whether some word linguistic properties studied in English have the same influence on phonological awareness of preschoolers and kindergartners in the Spanish language was studied with 32 Spanish-speaking children. While some effects were similar, others differed. Implications for training for phonological awareness in Spanish are discussed. (SLD)

Phonological awareness was explored by examining the effects of two instructional treatments on the development of specific and generalized phonological skills for 66 kindergarten children with low phonological manipulation skills. Instruction in blending and segmenting or with a global array of phonological tasks improved the children's…

Two experiments involving 80 4-year olds were conducted to assess how children who differ in vocabulary knowledge learn new vocabulary incidentally from listening to stories read aloud. Results clarify the role of active responding by demonstrating that verbal and nonverbal responses enhance vocabulary acquisition. (SLD)

The connection between heritage language instruction and self-esteem was investigated for 64 Inuit, 13 white, and 36 mixed-heritage children. Children educated in their heritage language showed an increase in self-esteem after one year, but Inuit and mixed-heritage children educated in a second language did not. (SLD)

Urban African American elementary school students (n=128) were asked to compare the memorization of noncontroversial information with the learning and discussion of information designed to help students develop personal stances on controversial matters. Older students, more than younger students, saw collaborative inquiry as fair and likely to…

Israeli 2nd and 6th graders (n=159) working puzzles in task or ego goal conditions were more likely to request help and to explain help avoidance as motivated by effort toward independent mastery in the task-focus condition. Results clarify the role of motivational factors in academic help seeking. (SLD)

Urban at-risk elementary school students (n=72) who experienced both parent involvement (PI) and reciprocal peer tutoring interventions or the PI intervention alone reported higher self-concept and greater gains in mathematics achievement than students in practice control conditions. (SLD)

The relationship between epistemological beliefs and learned helplessness and between conceptual understanding and application reasoning in conceptual change learning were investigated for 212 high school science students. Results support the importance of epistemological beliefs in predicting conceptual change learning. Implications for science…

The Test of Reactions and Adaptation in College (TRAC), a measure of students' personal dispositions toward learning, is presented. Results from 2 different samples of college students (n=1,081) indicate acceptable psychometric characteristics for the TRAC. The TRAC predicted college success better than high school weighted academic average did.…

The effects of generating versus reading the answers to multiplication problems were studied with 28 2nd graders who had not yet been taught multiplication. Results are explained in terms of a procedural account of the advantage after retention interval for generation. Instructional applications are discussed. (SLD)

Two studies involving 177 undergraduates examined the effects that mental representations derived from maps and verbal descriptions have on the recall of facts from a text. Findings suggest that there may be fundamental differences between visual and verbal representations of the same space. (SLD)

A motivational model of school performance, based on the theoretical framework of Deci and Ryan (1985) and structural equation modeling, was prepared and tested with 263 Montreal (Canada) 9th graders. Perceived academic competence and perceived academic self-determination positively influenced autonomous academic motivation, which had a positive…

The imposter phenomenon is an intense feeling of intellectual inauthenticity experienced by many high-achieving individuals. In a study with 127 undergraduates, greater family achievement orientation was associated with higher levels of the imposter phenomenon. Higher levels of the phenomenon were associated with higher grade point averages for…

Two studies involving 135 college students examined the effects of instructional activities that provided either relevant domain knowledge or knowledge about comprehension strategies. The two studies did not provide unequivocal information regarding the efficacy of these activities, although results suggest that strategy instruction may compensate…

Comparison of the results of performance by 36 7th graders on 3 measures of listening comprehension--the Sentence Verification Technique (SVT), a subtest of the Test of Adolescent Language, and the Premise/Inference Stories-- supports the potential of the SVT as a listening comprehension test. (SLD)