Seven experiments were conducted concerning decision making and information processing under conditions of uncertainty. Several different experimental tasks were used; all presented the subject with multiple independent sources of information regarding the likelihood that some event would occur. Study 1 subjects were Air Force pilots; all other…

A study was conducted to examine young children's ideas about a psychology study in which they had participated, and to assess their perceptions about the voluntary nature of their participation. Subjects were 28 third-grade students and 28 fifth-grade students. Findings indicated that while no significant grade level differences existed in…

The present study was designed to examine the effectiveness of post-experimental debriefing in reducing both self-reported anxiety and physiological arousal among participants who differed in their characteristic responses to threat. One hundred five female undergraduates were classified according to their Repression-Sensitization type and were…

Studies show that culture change initiated by the common individual is slow, but like the geologic forces shaping our earth, it is persistent and inevitable. Anthropology's response to Freud began the culture-and-personality school that stressed psychological rather than biological foundations of behavior. Recent studies perceive individuals as…

The main focus of this paper is research on the content dimension of feedback, although the scheduling of feedback in an instructional program is also briefly considered. The two major categories of the content of feedback discussed are motivational, reinforcing feedback and informative, corrective feedback. It is noted that researchers in the…

A number of studies have shown that parent-child interaction influences the manner in which adolescents see their future. In an investigation designed to determine whether this influence varies according to the child's age and sex, 57 Finnish adolescents were interviewed at ages 11 and 15 about their hopes for the future. The internality,…

This chapter describes current research in cognitive psychology and considers how this work may be applied to the design of instructional materials. The nature of knowing--and of meaningful knowing--are examined, and findings from psycholinguistics and pattern recognition are integrated to provide an understanding of concept and memorization…

This paper is concerned with the importance of argumentation in the classroom, especially in relation to the social sciences. Issues of argument and argument evaluation are considered. The paper analyzes the nature of such reasoning and indicates its importance in subject matter learning. Three situations are described in the paper in which…

An experimental tool is described for the investigation of the human control behavior for slow responding dynamic systems. The Program for Research on Operator Control in an Experimental Simulated Setting (PROCESS) is a simulation of a dynamic water-alcohol distillation system that can be used in research on operator training. In particular,…

The use of video recording and role playing are considered as instructional methodologies to support school discipline management systems, foster the positive self-concepts of students, and improve school achievement. Research in the following fields is detailed: (1) interventions intended to maintain school discipline and improve classroom…

The Milan model of systemic family therapy, developed in Italy and based on G. Bateson's cybernetic epistemology, can help meet the goals of a feminist/systemic epistemology in research by accepting data in its "traditional" form yet also connecting it to the act of researching, itself, thereby merging a feminist perspective with the…

This paper examines the gap between the learning potentials that computers provide and the actual impact of computer use on learning and development. It is argued that the computer's unique potential is derived in part from four basic attributes: information, symbol systems, user activities, and relations with the user. It is hypothesized that…

The theoretical fields of adult developmental psychology and andragogy provide some principles or rules for action that may lead to useful improvements in course organization and teaching methodology. An analysis of the principles and the likely effects of their implementation has led to the following speculation: principles that are not likely to…

Investigations of moral development have usually relied on longitudinal research on adolescent males; such research has served as a basis for national educational efforts to foster moral development. To represent female as well as male perspectives in constructing theories of human development, conceptions of morality and conceptions of self and…

A taxonomy for literature reviews in education and psychology is presented. The increased use of the descriptor "literature review" in ERIC and Psychological Abstracts documents between 1969 and 1983 is cited as creating the need for categorization. The taxonomy categorizes reviews according to focus, goal, perspective, coverage,…