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…

Examined 3-year-old boys' pride and shame reactions to success and failure on a "rigged" achievement situation. Found that pride and shame were related to task difficulty and success versus failure but unrelated to temperament after one year. Children whose parents were more positive in previous parenting displayed less pride and…

The study found the on-task behavior of one of two high-achieving as well as of a low-achieving fifth graders increased when the difficulty level of mathematics problems was manipulated to insure a greater than 70 percent success rate. (DB)

Results of five experiments showed that in certain situations recall varied with processing difficulty for both children and college students. This was primarily due to enhanced cue discriminability. The relation between processing difficulty and developmental increases in recall seemed to be mediated by constructability problems and resource- and…

Examined potential central processing strategy differences among subgroups of children on a series of elaborative encoding tasks. Children in lower verbal and learning ability subgroups differed from those in higher ability groups in how they shared, discriminated, and selectively allocated resources between recall tasks. (RH)

Discussion of task motivation focuses on study that investigated the choice behavior of college students within a computer problem solving task as they controlled and selected problem difficulty levels which maximized either intrinsic interest or extrinsic reward. Sex differences are examined, and treatment for experimental and control groups is…

Investigated the range and limits of cognitive reserve capacity as a general approach to the understanding of age differences in cognitive functioning. Group differences were magnified by training to such a degree that age distributions barely overlapped at posttests. The testing-the-limits approach promises increased understanding of cognitive…

Presents the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages' guidelines for determining proficiency in writing, speaking, listening, and reading Arabic. Definitions for both generic and Arabic proficiency skills are provided for low-, mid-, or high-novice, -intermediate, and -advanced levels. (CB)

Causes of differential item difficulty for blind students taking the braille edition of the Scholastic Aptitude Test's mathematical section were studied. Data for 261 blind students were compared with data for 8,015 non-handicapped students. Results show an association between selected item categories and differential item functioning. (TJH)

This study of 67 intermediate grade students with reading difficulties found that students in a peer-mediated sustained reading condition performed better than peer-mediated repeated reading students and control students receiving typical reading instruction, on fluency but not on comprehension. No effect for the level of text difficulty was…

Highly skilled and less skilled college readers (n=29) were compared on several information-processing and language-comprehension tasks that tap cognitive components of reading. Results confirm that both areas distinguish skilled and less skilled readers and suggest that reading ability is a continuous function. (SLD)

Six methods of scoring multiple true-false items were compared in terms of reliabilities, difficulties, and discrimination. Results suggest that, for norm-referenced score interpretations, there is insufficient evidence to support any one of the methods as superior. For criterion-referenced score interpretations, effects of scoring method must be…

No significant differences in performance on a self-adapted test or anxiety were found for college students (n=218) taking a self-adapted test who selected item difficulty without any prior information, inspected an item before selecting, or answered a typical item and received performance feedback. (SLD)

A college teacher's survey of 100 freshmen found only 11 who planned to study in groups, and that most would do so for subjects they believed the most difficult, particularly those requiring quantitative problem-solving and those in which assessment was more frequent. Most believed that reading and writing were solitary, not group, tasks. (MSE)

Describes a study that investigated the effects of flowcharts utilizing maplike symbols on performer efficiency in completing a complex procedural task. The effectiveness of instructional flowcharts is discussed; map learning is examined; and data on response times for three presentation formats (i.e., map, flowchart, and list) and four levels of…