Four studies were conducted in which subjects performed three sets of tasks tapping, in a standard format, progressively refined, non-linguistic processes in speech processing. The studies examined the following: (1) auditory versus phonetic processes in the discrimination of consonants; (2) auditory versus phonetic processes in loudness and pitch…

There are 900 million illiterate people in the world. Because of reflective insights and creative research during the last two decades, the literacy process is no longer conceived as a training process that concentrates exclusively on implanting specific mechanical skills. It is now recognized as an educational process, as an unfolding of human…

Five child report measures were developed in order to gather systematic information about children's perceptions of themselves, their parents, and their families as a whole. The measures used a dialogue format, had parallel adult versions, and were designed for children's descriptive capacities. The five dialogues concerned (1) My Family and…

Although the relationship between social support networks and mortality is well established, a tendency to define and measure support differently and a failure to identify when in the disease process social support has the greatest impact have caused studies concerned with this relationship to yield inconsistent results. This study was designed to…

A study was conducted to analyze the content of stories in several basal reading systems widely used in primary grade reading instruction. The investigation was in terms of the relative frequency of main characters who are elderly, the portrayal of elderly characters in relation to other characters in the stories, the incidence of aging themes,…

Using an advance organizer, an instructional aid designed to precede a main passage and to provide an effective organizational framework for older adults who may not have spontaneously employed their own strategy for understanding written material, a study investigated whether (1) reading comprehension could be instructionally influenced and (2)…

A study of differential brain hemisphere involvement in second language acquisition is reported. The study examined the idea that the right hemisphere is progressively more involved the later the second language is acquired. Various techniques for monitoring hemispheric functioning are described, especially the Evoked Potential (EP) technique. In…

The first of a series of four, this booklet is designed to interest and involve 9- to 11-year-olds in learning about human development. "Fun to Grow On" focuses specifically on helping elementary school children share and enjoy some simple activities with preschool children. The activities are intended to teach older children that (1) each person…

The beneficial effects of changing an answer on a multiple choice test were examined for elementary school students, with particular emphasis on the answer-changing behavior of minority versus non-minority groups and high-income versus low-income students. Test booklets from students in grade 2 and answer sheets from students in grades 4, 6, and 8…

This study attempts to integrate and extend previous research by multivariate investigation to determine multidimensional relationships among both the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) subscales and the demographic variables for the 1981 WAIS-R standardization sample. Canonical correlation with orthogonal rotation of composite…

Studies conducted in the 1960s (Aldous and Hill, 1969) examining the quality of life in families based on their affective and financial resources identified the childbearing stage and the stage when adolescents were present as especially stressful periods. Findings from the 1978 Quality of American Life survey (Campbell and Converse, 1980) were…

Fertility research among four groups of Chicanas showed intragroup differences in fertility rates and in relationships between fertility and independent socioeconomic variables. A literature review suggested that research on minority group fertility failed to recognize intragroup variations. Data from the 1980 Public-Use Microdata Sample yielded a…

Using the 1976 Survey of Income and Education, and focusing on Hispanics aged 14 to 25, analyses were conducted to assess when in the schooling process Hispanics drop out. Findings suggest that over 40 percent of all Hispanic dropouts leave school before reaching the 10th grade, with most of the pre-high-school attrition occurring at the junior…

A study was conducted to investigate developmental aspects of the logical organization of reasons among 30 boys and girls from each of the first, sixth, and tenth grades. Participants were administered the Responsibility Story Test, a measure consisting of stories portraying moral dilemmas and corresponding semistructured interview schedules.…

The popular view that children have an advantage in learning a second language has considerable support in research, although it is not uncontested. One approach proposes that the child possesses a unique capacity for language that the adult no longer has. Another view argues that the child's brain is more flexible. A third approach assumes that…