Standards for literacy in the twenty-first century raise the bar on the complexity of texts and the tasks for which they are used. The strengths and limitations of contemporary approaches to text complexity are discussed with respect to major points raised in the six articles in this special issue. In addition, four features of text that are of…

The complexity hypothesis suggests that the hierarchical arrangement of learning tasks is related to the complexity of the task. Using a definition of complexity based on an analysis of the rules governing performance on a task, the present study lent support to the hypothesis. (Author/GDC)

Examines the relation between attention to target and context information and target recall in an incidental learning task for children and adults. Results support a distinction between context-interactive and context-independent situations and suggest that the attentional patterns that are efficient for memory may differ with the kind of…

Assesses the degree of difficulty parents attribute to specific socialization tasks; explores the relation between parents' perceived difficulty and children's perceived and actual competence in these two domains; and determines whether the ease or difficulty of these child rearing tasks, as perceived by parents, varies as a function of the…

Describes a specific technique that involves initiative games to assess the level of group cooperation among children ages 11 to 13 in a school setting. Describes the development of initiative tasks used in the evaluation and the observation procedure used. (SB)

To investigate developmental differences in timesharing performance, 60 boys, 20 in each of three age groups (7-, 10- and 13-year-olds), performed an auditory matching task and a tracking task alone and concurrently, the latter under two sets of instructions. Decrements produced by concurrent performance were compared for the three age groups.…

Questions investigated in this study deal with relationships between map problem difficulty and students' acquired level of intellectual development, the effects of sequential mastery of map concepts, and the optimum age to introduce certain map concepts in the geography curriculum. In the main investigation, which covered varied selected,…

A series of three experiments was conducted for the purposes of (1) clarifying problems of previous research on the relationship between working memory capacity and performance on figural analogy tasks, and (2) exploring developmental issues concerning executive strategies, working memory capacity, and perceptual processing. Directly manipulating…