While alcoholism is no longer regarded as a unitary disorder, conventional measures of congition and personality have yet to be shown capable of consistently predicting clinical outcomes. To investigate cognitive dysfunction and locus of control as predictors of post treatment outcome in a large sample of alcoholics, 106 alcoholics (74 men, 32…

The potential for feelings of hopelessness and depression in the aged is well documented. Although studies have examined the role of perceived control in ameliorating depression in the institutionalized elderly, no research has actually measured the perceived causal attributions among depressed, hopeless and/or institutionalized elderly…

This experiment examined the effects of headings and adjunct questions embedded in expository text on the delayed multiple-choice test performance of college students. Subjects in the headings-present group performed significantly better on the retention test than did the subjects in the headings-absent group. The main effect of adjunct questions…

Interpersonal power has been defined as the ability of an agent to alter the behavior of a target through means-control, attractiveness, and credibility. To identify and delineate situations of influence in personal relationships, undergraduate students either wrote influence descriptions (N=96), made similarity judgments on the original 96…

Presented are abstracts and abstractors' analyses of 10 studies related, in some manner, to learning. These studies focus on: (1) problem-solving processes used by experts and novices as they worked five mechanics problems (J. H. Larkin and F. Reif); (2) formal reasoning patterns of Italian high school students (M. L. Aiello-Nicosia, et al.); (3)…

Reports on a study of 120 (60 boys, 60 girls) middle school students in Bophuthatswana on the relation of academic achievement to self-concept and locus of control. Finds that measures of extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism are related negatively to school achievement. (CFR)

This research project was designed to explore ways of making computer text presentations more readable as a way of compensating for the constraints that computers impose on the display of text as compared with print-on-paper displays, e.g., limited screen resolution and display area. Forty-eight undergraduate teacher education majors enrolled in…

A model for the development of scientific reasoning in adolescents was formulated largely upon the basis of Piagetian theory. Included as potential determinants of scientific reasoning were: experience; age; locus of control; field dependence-independence (FID); rigidity/flexibility; intelligence quotient (IQ); and sex. Causal relationships…

A series of studies are underway at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Audience Research Facility to examine the impact of interactivity on informational and entertainment based television viewing. In order to examine the learning of spatial skills from videogames, the first study compared the learning of spatial content from interactive…

Research was performed in lower grade technical schools in the Netherlands to study complex psychomotor tasks requiring integration of several task-dependent skills. In two studies, students were observed performing metal work. They were assigned to instructional conditions of high, intermediate or low structure. Students in the high-structure…

Recounts an experiment where two groups of college students composed questions for a simulated quiz show and then answered each other's questions. They then answered questions comparing their performance with other groups. Proposes a social norm rather than attribution error explanation for the fact that groups consistently will underestimate…