High school students studied a passage to achieve prememorized goals in three experiments. Inspection times and eye movements were recorded in goal-relevant and nonrelevant text neighborhoods. Goal-relevant sentences resulted in twice as many fixations. Qualitative differences were observed in style of subjects' responses to task demands.…

Essays were rewritten to be stronger or weaker in content, organization, sentence structure, and mechanics. Twelve evaluators first used a four-point holistic rating scale and then rated whether each of the four categories was strong or weak. Analyses of variance revealed content and organization affected ratings most. (Author/RD)

The extent to which the student's perception of the purpose for evaluating an instructor, the instructor's expressiveness, and the density of content influences student ratings and achievement was investigated. Perceived purpose for evaluating the instructor had no effect on ratings. Scores were significantly higher for expressive than for…

Personality, personal space, and attitudinal measures were administered to high school students. Comparisons of extreme sections of the classroom revealed a significant polarization of student traits on three categories of variables dominated by self-concept and class participation. Differential participation and physical isolation were closely…

The effectiveness of an experimental mathematics teaching program was investigated. Observational measures revealed that teachers implemented the treatment. Analyses of product data showed that students of treatment teachers outperformed those of controls. Thus, teachers and/or teaching methods exerted a significant difference on student progress…

Changes in attitude were examined over a one-year period in pre-, early, and later adolescent samples. Self-esteem, locus of control, and achievement motivation were examined. The amount of attitudinal change evidenced by subjects at each age level varied with the kind of attitude being assessed. (Author/RD)

The effects of questions on attention and achievement were studied. Children were exposed to the same lesson and questions. Control subjects were called upon randomly, and experimental subjects were asked to indicate responses to every question with a nonverbal gesture. Questions addressed to individuals were less effective than questions used as…

The effects of record-card-type information on performance expectations were examined. Expectations based solely on preobservational information (standardized tests, previous teachers, family, physical characteristics) were positively related to the quality of the reported performance. Implications for the public concern over record card…

Biracial learning teams and cross-racial friendships were studied in desegregated junior high schools. Biracial teams received recognition based on the sum of members' scores. Control students studied alone and received individual scores. Experimental students increased more than control students in the number and percentage of cross-racial…

The effects of videotape exposure to a punished model on children's toy play were studied. Three levels of prohibition were used. Children who saw the videotape maintained their inhibitions over time and generalized them to an unfamiliar adult, while kindergartners who only received strong prohibitions did not. (Author/RD)

This study assessed the effects of portraying a female main character in a traditionally male role on male and female children's sex role perceptions and story evaluations. Exposure to nontraditional female characters increased children's perceptions of the number of girls who could engage in activities presented in the stories only. (Author/RD)

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.…