The role of language in conservation tasks and the development of the concept of conservation of quantity in young children are investigated in this study. A total of 50 children, aged 3.0 to 4.7 years, were divided into three groups according to age with a large number clustered around age 4.0 years. Children were randomly assigned to one of two…

The state of the art review depicts comprehension of choice and decision making as knowable and demonstrates that something is already known about both processes and how to facilitate their comprehension. The assumption is made that deciding to choose, choosing to decide, deciding in order to choose, and choosing in order to decide must be…

The applicability of a proposed category system for identifying different types of poor readers in grade 7 was investigated. Three variables were used: vocabulary level, degree of consensual response to meaning, and response to organization when it was added to the reading material. Systematically combining the three levels of response produced…

The purpose of this study was to enumerate, categorize, and compare the types of reading comprehension questions and activities included in the manuals of selected basal reading series. The Barrett Taxonomy--Cognitive and Affective Dimensions of Reading Comprehension was selected as the categorization taxonomy. Basal series were classified as…

The authors provide criticisms of the teaching of organic chemistry in the United States. They suggest that changes be made in the method of presentation of the material, with topics introduced early in the course providing framework for subsequent material. (Author/SA)

Three empirical studies were conducted to investigate the hypothesis that the "easy to see" construction (such as in the sentence "children are hard to understand") is acquired at a younger age than the 7-9 year range reported by previous studies (Cambon and Sinclair, 1974; Chomsky, 1969; 1972; Cromer, 1970; Kessel, 1970).…

In view of the great amount of television viewing among poor readers, the Learning Model for Watching Television was developed to capitalize on students' television watching proclivities. The model encompasses three major overlapping component skill areas to reinforce classroom learning: active listening skills, auditory word recognition skills,…

A total of 224 subjects participated in a study to determine how children and adults comprehend logical connectives. Specifically, the study examined the effects of age, content, and practice on the encoding and combination of logical relationships expressed by six types of logical connectives: conjunction, disjunction, conditionality,…

Comprehension of reversible active and passive sentences was studied with 48 Japanese children between the ages of two and six. Four types of sentences were constructed using passive and active structures and two word orders: subject-object-verb (SOV) and object-subject-verb (OSV). The basic order of elements in a simple sentence in Japanese is…

The recent experimental literature on the acquisition of English antonyms is reviewed, with special reference to the position of Eve Clark and the particular ontogenetic assumptions her position entails. The assumptions examined are: (1) in a hierarchically organized lexical domain, the order of acquisition appears to be from the top of the…

By age two, a child begins to form complex sentences by joining two or more sentences or by embedding one sentence into another. Formation of conjoined structures is a simpler process and emerges earlier than that of embedding structures. This paper attempts to answer the following questions: (1) Do children produce or understand embedding…

The findings of this study indicated that children's capacity to comprehend television advertising is primarily a developmental phenomenon, although social and experiential factors may have a moderate positive and a minor negative influence, respectively. Research subjects were 289 elementary school boys of first, third, and fifth grade levels,…

Elicited imitation occurs in an experimental situation during which subjects are requested to repeat a model sentence constructed so as to include specific desired grammatical structures. Elicited translation involves giving subjects a sentence in one language, and asking them to say the same thing, but in another language; elicited translation…

As an evaluation report, this 1970 document summarizes information from 13 Arizona school districts involved in special English classes under House Bill No. 1. Program emphasis was on oral language development, vocabulary, and comprehension. Each district used its own method of evaluating progress; therefore, in synthesizing the information, each…

This is a survey of techniques that have been used to test language comprehension. The study of research completed in this field points up the fact that there is no single technique that universally gives valid and reliable information. Various definitions of language comprehension are examined with special emphasis placed on implications for the…