Dealing with West Virginians' attitudes toward state and local taxes and their uses, this study surveyed approximately 600 male heads of households representing different socioeconomic groups in Charleston, Morgantown, Beckley, and an open-country area in Raleigh County. Reported data "are not encouraging--attitudes vary directly with income…

Age trends in conformity and independence, using a sample of 366 children from the 1st, 4th, 7th, and 10th grades were investigated. Three types of stimuli were used: (1) visual judgments; (2) opinion statements; and (3) delay of gratification preferences. Age-trends were observed for unanimous peer pressure, adult influence, and peer pressure…

A study was conducted to determine whether the use of a model enhances the effectiveness of videotape recorded microteaching sessions in changing the behavior of in-service foreign language teachers. The subjects of the experiment were divided into four groups: men teachers of Spanish, women teachers of Spanish, men teachers of French, and women…

Research efforts in the area of moral development of the child, as based on Piaget's theory, are discussed. Some of the important processes Piaget uses to explain cognitive growth are presented first, followed by his theory of how the individual's capacity for moral judgment evolves. The research discussed tests Piaget's chief underlying…

The author concludes that there is no convincing evidence of differential occupational returns to education, except for effects of race and farm background. There is an interaction effect of fathers' occupational status, as well as race, with the returns to work experience in an equation for income. Findings are either negative or inconclusive…

Two experiments investigated developmental aspects of the two components of scientific reasoning: induction and deduction. In the first experiment, 98 subjects, ages 5 through 11, inductively identified four silhouetted pictures by removing, one at a time and in any sequence, as few covering pieces as possible. Results indicated that: (a) the…

To determine short-run effects of experimentally imposed leadership roles, a sample of 221 Boy Scouts (aged 10 to 17) was formed into (usually) 4-man teams that competed in 3 skill games. One member of each team was randomly designated as captain, with power to administer and reward. Captains who were leaders in their troops responded to becoming…

The purpose of this study is to test the commonly held assumption that younger children are superior to those who are older in learning to speak a second language with a good accent. Students from the elementary, junior high, and college levels are tested after receiving identical instruction in German phonemes. Post-test results indicate that…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of CEMREL's Language and Thinking: New Directions Program, a broadly based early learning program in the teaching of basic language and reasoning skills. The program is a hierarchical skills oriented approach which provides a broadly based set of guidelines for teachers; a wide array…

This study was designed to investigate the effects of modeling or training with and without rule provision on the employment of strategies in solving four-dimensional, discrimination-learning problems. Subjects were 144 second and sixth-grade children from the New York City Public Schools. The blank-trial hypothesis testing paradigm was used. The…

Data collected via a Wisconsin statewide survey of randomly selected adults (N=548) were used to test the hypothesis that size of place is inversely related to community attachment in an ideational sense and that size of place has no clear association with participatory measures of attachment (i.e., contrary to the "linear development"…

This study investigated some of the attitudinal and behavioral components of racial prejudice in elementary school children. It also assessed the effectiveness of various modification procedures upon children's racial attitudes and inter-group behavior at different age levels. A four-stage research design was used. The pre-test stage involved…

This study attempts to determine if individual differences in multitask performance are due in part to the cognitive competence (i.e., the consistent, rule-based strategy) the subject brings to the task. A battery of learning (discrimination shift, transposition, incidental learning and paired-associate learning), cognitive-developmental…

This research describes the attempts of 24 male and 24 female Kikuyu children (aged 2-9 years) to persuade other Kikuyu children and adults to comply to their demands. Examined was the sequence of behaviors beginning when a child encountered a noncompliant response from a target, and continuing until the child either gained compliance or gave up…

This report provides data from a larger study investigating consumer socialization of children which focused on the processes by which children acquire knowledge skills and attitudes related to consumer behavior. The research has utilized two theoretical perspectives: cognitive development and information processing theories. The data reported are…