A study investigated when medical students are at greatest risk of academic failure and which cognitive or noncognitive factors place them at risk. Subjects were 658 medical students matriculating at Wake Forest University (North Carolina) over five years. Results suggest the majority of academic delays occur in the first two years. Specific…

Examined optimism, generalized self-efficacy, and interactions between these variables, along with member expectancies for group, as predictors of growth group outcomes. Results based on student responses (N=19) indicate that the ability of initial expectancies to predict outcome depended on the level of generalized self-efficacy. (RJM)

Explores the relationship among self-disclosure, discloser gender, expressiveness, instrumentality, and group social environment in personal growth classes. Focuses on individual personality and group social environment characteristics in an established group. Results indicate that expressiveness, instrumentality, and the relationship dimension of…

Explores the interplay of various factors that may jointly predict the frequency of drug use and the intention for further use. Drug-use prevalence data for 969 adolescents, high school students, and imprisoned offenders linked drug-use frequencies with psychosocial variables such as disinhibition, peer drug use, peer pressure, and other factors.…

This study investigates the phenomenon that listeners of English were surprisingly accurate at predicting the temporal end of a sentence when only given the part up to the "potentially last word," that is a noun before an optional prepositional phrase of varying lengths. Results of four experiments using either French or English are given. (35…

Describes a study of 208 community college students to determine reasons given for deciding to withdraw, the relationship of student characteristics to those reasons, and patterns of reenrollment over 1 to 3 years. Discusses the relationship of gender, age, ethnicity, and academic preparedness to persistence. (58 citations) (KRG)

A study of 410 University of Texas (Houston) dental school graduates taking the Texas State Dental Board Examination immediately after graduation did not identify any characteristics strongly predicting success or failure, although there was a weak but insignificant relationship between class rank and passing. However, the fact that most test…

Presents findings from a study of the relationship between the characteristics of 3,762 Connecticut 2-year college students 25 or older and their persistence to 4-year colleges. Reports that students with higher perceptions of social and institutional support and those over 35 were more likely to persist to 4-year institutions. (10 citations) (AJL)

Discusses a study conducted at Kent State University's (Ohio) regional campuses that measured the basic library competencies of incoming college freshmen. Results show that the frequency of student assignments was the best predictor of scores on the test measuring library skills. Implications for bibliographic instruction are discussed. (LRW)

Describes the different priming procedures and experimental variables used for gaining access to the nature of the lexical representation of morphological information and summarizes the experimental data collected across different languages. Notes that responses to a target word in auditory word recognition tasks can be facilitated when the word…

A study involving 17 fourth graders identified as poor readers found the strongest predictors of work attack skills were phonological awareness and grammatical judgment. The combination of phonological awareness, grammatical judgment, phoneme manipulation, and rapid naming of digits accounted for more than half of the variance in word recognition.…

Assessed whether the timing of prenatal care related to low birth weight delivery, adjusting for sociodemographic and behavioral risk factors. Data on births to white and African American women showed no benefits for early initiation of prenatal care in reducing the risk of low birth weight.(SM)

This study builds upon earlier research on personality types, educational outcomes of diversity, and school and community desegregation to explore how students' plans for involvement in diversity-related activities in college varied by racial background and personality type and how students' exposure to diversity prior to college affected these…

Four studies based on two longitudinal investigations examined the relation between social rejection and increased antisocial behavior. Found that early peer rejection (ages 6 to 8) predicted growth in aggression (at ages 10 to 12); findings were replicated in children ages 5 to 8. Rejection exacerbated antisocial development only among children…

Used mothers' generalized beliefs about adolescents to predict mother's expectations for her own sixth- or seventh-grader's adolescent years. Found that generalized beliefs predicted mother's expectations even after accounting for the adolescent's current attributes. Greater beliefs that adolescents are upstanding/prosocial predicted greater…