A microcomputer technique was used to measure the attention span of 115 boys and 117 girls in kindergarten through the ninth grade. Attentional ability increased only up through the fifth grade, and both the false alarm rate and the interstimulus interval scores were related to behavioral activity during test sessions. (Author/CB)

To determine the effect of background music on on-task-performance (OTP), 26 fifth grade science students were observed for 42 class sessions over a four-month period. Time-series analyses indicated a significant increase in OTP for male subjects and for the total class. (Author/CB)

A study investigated the effect of scholastic level, teacher orientation on a control/autonomy continuum, and pupil gender on 459 elementary school students' intrinsic motivation to engage in school work. Results indicated that teacher orientation toward autonomy enhanced the intrinsic motivation of girls on two of three dimensions, and that of…

The potential effect of goal setting to improve the spelling performance of elementary school students was examined. While results tended to support the hypothesis that the setting of specific and difficult goals improved performance more than simply asking students to do their best, differences in group means were not significant. (Author/CB)

The effect of post-passage question generation on comprehension question performance was examined. Students who were taught to generate "think"-type questions for reading comprehension performed better than students who were told to read and reread a story for comprehension on higher order inferential comprehension test items, but not on literal…

A study examined the value of two different sets of variables as predictors of first-grade writing achievement. A set consisting of six variables measuring cognitive development was found not to predict writing achievement, while another set consisting of seven subtests of the Canadian Readiness Test was found to be a significant predictor.…

Urban high school minority group students with differential preschool program histories were compared to controls on measures of school achievement, school sentiment, and perceptions of preschool experience. No main long-term effects were revealed, although favorable student evaluations of preschool were observed. (Author/MT)

This study examined the test-retest reliability and criterion validity of basal mastery tests of three commercial reading series. Results indicated that reliability and validity of the test varied among and within instruments. Implications for developing and using basal mastery tests are discussed. (Author/MT)

Two-hundred-fifty fifth graders participated in this study of the effects of evaluation condition and task difficulty on motivation to return to an initial task. The significant effect for difficulty level resulted from the interaction of difficulty level with evaluation condition. Implications for classroom practice are discussed. (Author/MT)

The effects of retelling (free recall) upon comprehension and recall of text information for fourth-grade students were investigated. After training sessions, students silently read a test passage and either retold or illustrated the important parts of the passage. Significant differences were found on all measures of reading comprehension in…

An investigation examined third- and sixth-grade students' proficiency in comprehending anaphoric relations in stories and whether grade level affected comprehension of anaphora. Both grade levels were somewhat proficient and sixth-grade students achieved significantly higher comprehension than did third-graders. (Author/MT)

An ambiguity in Gagne and Briggs' model of instructional design was investigated using treatments which contrasted verbal expository and guided discovery forms of presentation. Analysis found the guided discovery method as effective as the expository method on all measures. Implications are discussed. (Author/MT)

A sample of approximately 7,200 students was used to study the effects of adaptive education on cognitive, affective and behavior outcomes of learning. The average student in adaptive education scored at the 67th percentile of control group distributions. This effect appeared consistent across contexts of learning and categories of students.…

In a modified replication study, a general question intended to capture spontaneous detection of inconsistent information found neither good nor poor comprehenders successful. In response to a specific question, however, good comprehenders evinced far superior error detection than poor comprehenders. Reasons are speculated upon. (Author/MT)

Effects of global cognitive development, sex, and word abstractness on young readers' word recognition were explored. ANOVA results indicated that nouns were recognized more frequently than non-nouns; children with high cognitive development recognized more words than children with lower cognitive development; and females recognized more words…