The present study examined the effects of a classroom intervention on students' metacognitive monitoring of retrieval practice performance feedback and metacognitive control of future study decisions. A true experimental design was used to randomly assign 103 undergraduate students from an education course to trained (n = 49) and control (n = 54)…

This study examined the impacts of 2 different graphic organizers (filled-in graphic organizers and interactive graphic organizers) on middle school students' learning processes, outcomes, experiences, and preferences. In Experiment 1, 60 students were assigned to read a short expository passage in 1 of 3 conditions: text-only, filled-in graphic…

In 2 experiments, college students read a 4-paragraph text on how the human circulatory system works and were instructed to form a mental image of the events described in each paragraph from the perspective of their own body (first-person perspective group) or from the perspective of a fictitious person facing them (third-person perspective…

Interim testing of studied information, compared with restudying or no treatment, facilitates subsequent learning and retention of new information--"the forward testing effect." Previous research exploring this effect has shown that interim testing of studied information from a given domain enhances subsequent learning and retention of…

In a randomized-controlled trial we tested a computer-assisted intervention for the prevention of reading difficulties, delivered by nonprofessional tutors, running from kindergarten to halfway Grade 2. The full sample included 123 prereaders (M = 5; 6 years; 56 intervention; 67 controls) with low preliteracy skills. Parents were sent a…

"Stereotype threat" is defined as a situational threat that diminishes performance, originating from a negative stereotype about one's own social group. In 3 studies, we seek to determine whether there are indeed negative stereotypes of students who have chosen a career in teaching, and whether the performance of these students is…

Increasingly, school leavers are taking time out from study or formal work after completing high school--often referred to as a "gap year" (involving structured activities such as "volunteer tourism" and unstructured activities such as leisure). Although much opinion exists about the merits--or otherwise--of taking time out after completing…

Effort on homework has a profound impact on student achievement. Researchers typically use an interindividual research design to explain homework effort. In this study with a total of 511 students from Grades 8 and 9, an interindividual perspective (focus on between-students differences) was combined with an intraindividual perspective (focus on…

The influence of listening to humor on creativity tests of adolescents is investigated. It was found that those adolescents who listened to the record performed significantly better on a creativity test than control groups. (Author/DEP)

High-Formality and low-formality versions of a passage were read by undergraduate education students who either took notes for a presentation to professionals or to students, or simply read the text. Results of a free-recall test support the encoding function of note taking and its relation to informal prose. (Author/AEF)

Undergraduates could earn a $10 bonus by performing above average on a free-recall task. Following a pretest, success messages were manipulated. During a subsequent test, subjects could cheat. Cheating was related to anticipated success in a curvilinear fashion with medium success yielding the most cheating. Cheating and expectations are…

Exam-skilled, high-anxious college students performed comparably with skilled, low-anxious peers on the Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices, yet significantly worse on the concurrent backward Digit Span test. Conversely, high-anxious, unskilled subjects were exceeded by low-anxious, unskilled peers on both tasks. (Author/BW)

Conflicting findings in two earlier studies in the area of learning style effects are studied. (DG)

Female college students were given a training task involving anagrams, mathematical problems, perceptual identifications, or all three. Results indicate that increasing the variety of training tasks at high or low levels of required effort contributes to the student's abstraction of a general principle concerning degree of effort required for…