Measures of beliefs and reading performance were collected from 350 Moroccan students over a 5-year period beginning with grade 1 and 464 students over a 3-year period beginning with grade 5. Belief measures covered metacognition of reading skills and strategies, causal attributions, and conceptions of the good reader. (TJH)

Forty-eight third- and 48 fifth-graders' ability to monitor comprehension was measured with the error detection paradigm. Some analyses excluded 23 third- and 14 fifth-graders. Cognitively-reflective and impulsive children--distinguished via the Matching Familiar Figures Test--differed significantly on their ability to identify inconsistencies.…

The reliance of 12, 18, and 22 children in grades 2, 4, and 6, respectively, on context- versus word-based information was studied. Factor analysis of error scores yielded a structure reflecting 3 information sources: graphophonic information; context to identify words; and comprehension monitoring. Age differences in decoding strategies were…

A study of acquisition of the alphabetic principle in 64 preliterate children, aged 3 to 5 years, is reported. It appears that phonemic awareness and grapheme-phoneme knowledge are needed in combination for acquisition of the alphabetic principle. Once gained, alphabetic insight proved relatively robust. (TJH)

Fifty-five boys, aged 6 to 8 and 10 to 12 years, were administered EEGs while they silently read short passages. Subjects were then tested on the passages. Age differences in the relationship between hemisphere activation during silent reading and reading comprehension were discovered. (TJH)

The social cognitive conception of self-regulated learning presented here involves a triadic analysis of component processes and an assumption of reciprocal causality among personal, behavioral, and environmental triadic influences. Central roles for academic self-efficacy beliefs and three self-regulatory processes (self-observation,…

A study involving 80 fourth graders investigated the effects of providing children with training in the use of specific standards for evaluating their reading comprehension. Results indicate that instruction in the use of these standards were generalized to the use of other standards and that the training advantage was maintained over time. (TJH)

Advice and feedback on analogical reasoning were manipulated to produce varying conditions for college-age subjects (228 college students). Subsequent testing indicated a general transfer effect for verbal analogy solution and a procedural transfer effect for cause-effect relationships. Results are discussed within the context of schema theory.…

The viability of self-instructional strategy training was investigated in a study involving 22 learning disabled and 11 normal fifth and sixth graders. Training produced meaningful and lasting effects on composition skills and heightened the sense of self-efficacy of subjects. (TJH)

Students (N=340) at the University of Manitoba (Canada) with internal and external loci of control (LOC) received no training or received either contingent or non-contingent feedback. Student achievement and achievement attributions were measured against variations in expressiveness in a videotaped lecture. Training and LOC influenced students'…

A study involving 110 fifth- and sixth-graders (51 male and 59 female), classified as low or high in effort orientation, assessed the effects of task- versus performance-oriented instructions on a computer-assisted test programed to ensure that all examinees failed to solve all problems. Problem-solving strategy analyses were preformed. (TJH)

Four experiments with 263 undergraduates and 57 seventh-graders examined the "testing phenomenon" in relation to students' memory for brief passages and labels for parts of flowers. The phenomenon, which involves the positive effects of previous testing on final test performance, appears to depend on several complete retrieval events. (TJH)

Four samples of university freshmen (N=859) rated the influence of 10 possible factors on exam performance. A subset sample (n=209) assessed 10 factors along 3 of the 4 dimensions identified in the first study. Results indicate that the dimensions of locus, stability, control, and globality constitute major causal attributions. (TJH)

The effects of a school's age organization (age-segregated versus age-mixed) were examined within a quasi-experimental design with 702 sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students. Factors measured include popularity, perceived competence, and mixed-age and cross-sex friendships. (TJH)

A study involving 176 secondary school students was undertaken to determine how specific motivational processes are related to the salience of mastery and performance goals in classroom settings. Findings suggest that classroom goal orientation may facilitate maintenance of adaptive motivation patterns when students adopt salient mastery goals.…