Performance variables were manipulated to elicit differential outcomes of success and failure for dyad members in an attempt to investigate resultant bargaining and distribution of rewards. Seventy, 10-12-year old children (36 female, 34 males) were placed into dyads controlling for age, sex, I.Q., and friendship choices. Self-allocations were…

The major focus of this study is on the relationship between anxiety and achievement. It was predicted that with young children, anxiety is likely to have a debilitating effect on their standardized test scores as well as on teachers' ratings of their competence. This hypothesis is generally supported. The sample consists of 156 childen from…

In this study, 48 third-grade children learned a successive, two-choice discrimination under one of three conditions: (1) immediate reinforcement (IM), (2) 10-second empty delay (ED), and (3) 10-second delay with the discriminative stimuli in view of S (FD). The performances of groups IM and FD were only marginally different, and were both…

The effects of feedback on the approaches of 20 hyperactive and 20 hypoactive children (ages 6 to 10) to a vigilance task were studied. Results showed that hyperactive Ss had more errors than hypoactive Ss under the feedback for correct responses condition and fewer errors under the feedback for false alarms condition. (PHR)

The effects of meaningfulness of the stimulus materials and the presence or absence of contextual cues on problem-solving behavior were investigated. Third-graders (N=80) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions and their performance in a series of discrimination problems was observed. Subjects in Conditions I and II responded to stimuli…

The Matching Family Figures Test (MFF) is examined in order to show that a wide variety of rational speed-accuracy trade-offs ranging from impulsive to reflective are quite plausible. Ten children (mean age, eight years) took part in the experiment. Five had previously been classified on the basis of the MFF as impulsive, five as reflective. On…

Addressing the question, "What can be done to promote school achievement?", this paper summarizes the literature on motivation relating to classroom achievement and school effectiveness. Particular attention is given to how values, ideology, and various cultural patterns impinge on classroom performance and serve to enhance motivation to achieve.…

Compared coupling characteristics of clapping simultaneous with walking or galloping, consistency across trials, and phasing variability among 4-, 6-, 8-, and 10-year-olds. Found that for walk/clap tasks, children adopted adult-like coupling patterns by age 8 and with the same consistency by age 10. Across age, children became less variable in…

This article discusses the successes of behavior analysts in affecting challenging behaviors in persons with developmental disabilities. Three future issues are then addressed: the development of challenging behaviors, the role of rule-governance in challenging behavior, and the behavior of persons who directly apply functional assessment and…

Three experiments explored the conditions under which inductive inferences about people were made by children and adults. Results indicated that children often predicted that people would behave differently in the future than they did in the past. Younger children limited predictions of consistency to non-psychological events. Older children…

The study sought to determine if there are differences between shifts of workers in Intermediate Care Facilities in their ratings of the daily living skills of mentally retarded residents, and whether these differences reflect actual differences in performance by the residents. Staff were interviewed concerning the level of prompt required to…

This study found that siblings (n=19) of severely autistic children, siblings of children with Down's syndrome, and siblings of normal children did not differ on measures of perceived self-competence or parents' report of social competence. Siblings of autistic children had more internalizing and externalizing behavior problems than siblings of…