Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort of 1998 (n = 15,070), this study used propensity scores to examine the short- and long-term academic and psychosocial benefits of preschool education for a diverse sample of middle-class children. Compared with children who attended informal care at age 4, preschool…

High school students with high or average achievement motivation read a passage with a list of learning goals. Two different goal lists were used. The 24 students were also instructed to expect a particular type of test questions. A free-recall test was administered; results are discussed. (GDC)

Six hundred boys divided by age (6-8), race (black and white) and social class (middle and lower) were given tests for memory, intelligence, learning, and transfer. Findings indicated social class differences on learning and intelligence tests, with racial differences on intelligence, digit span, and paired-associate learning. (Author/MV)

This study confirms the hypothesis that poor children's difficulties with sounds stem not from deficiencies in auditory discrimination but from inadequate skill in phonemic analysis. Almost all of disadvantaged and middle-class kindergarten-age children could readily hear phoneme differences in words. Almost all of the disadvantaged children, but…

The hypothesis that teachers criticize low-expectation students in order to control reinforcement schedules was tested. Teacher expectation, teacher perception of control, criticism of students, academic behavior, and student perception of teacher response to student effort were examined in six primary grade classes. Implications concerning…

The relationship between cognitive style and hypothesis-testing behavior was studied in 46 third grade children. It was found that field independent children process information more efficiently and according to a perfect focusing model. Efforts to enhance the information processing of field dependent children were described. (GDC)

Children prerated paired-associate nouns for likability and then learned them. The relationship between childrens' self concept and learning of affectively assessed verbal material was examined. Results indicate that learning along an affective dimension of meaningfulness can be influenced by personality-related variables such as self-concept.…

This experiment studied whether socioeconomic status indicators sufficiently represent those aspects of the home environment relevant to IQ. Home environment ratings for samples of ninth grade black and white middle class females were compared to the subjects' scores on an IQ measure, an achievement measure, and grade point average. (Author/JKS)

Taxonomic category encoding was studied in 160 second and fourth grade students, both low-socioeconomic status Blacks and middle-class Whites. Three items were displayed sequentially, to be recalled later. The results provided conclusive evidence of the availability of taxonomic encoding categories in the groups sampled. (Author/GDC)

This longitudinal study compared two predictors of reading performance: behavior rating scales and psychometric tests. Two groups of 888 and 844 middle-class kindergarten children were studied through Grade 3. Classroom and school environment were also considered. (Author/GDC)

Change over three years in the competence beliefs and subjective task values in the domains of reading, mathematics, instrumental music, and sports was studied with approximately 615 predominantly white, middle-class elementary school children. There was moderate to strong stability in their beliefs. Exceptions and gender differences are…