In 3 experiments, 163 college students who read a summary with a sequence of short captions with simple illustrations depicting steps in a process recalled the steps and solved transfer problems as well as or better than students who received the full text with a summary or alone. (SLD)

Defines interactive writing and how it works. Recommends starting with the message sheet, then going on to written conversation and writing to a make-believe character. Identifies six benefits of interactive writing and asserts that interactive writing supports a basic human need of expressing one's thoughts and communicating them to others. (DLH)

Notes that communication between teachers and culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students need serious consideration especially in recognizing potential sources of miscommunication and misinterpretation. Considers sources of miscommunication within verbal and nonverbal communication. Discusses each element and offers examples in CLD…

Explores effects of parents' and friends' behavior in verbal interactions with adolescents' concerning their school achievement. Finds that parental behavior aimed at control in family interactions had a negative effect on adolescents' school achievement, whereas the same type of behavior shown by best friends resulted in an improvement of school…

This article describes a survey of 84 adults with disabilities who received personal assistance with activities of daily living from family members, informal providers, or agency personnel. Results showed that 30 percent reported mistreatment from their primary provider, and 61 percent reported mistreatment by another provider. Verbal abuse,…

A dual-processing paradigm was used to investigate information processing limitations underlying specific language impairment (SLI). School-age children with and without SLI were asked to recall verbal and spatial stimuli in situations that varied the number of tasks that were required and the speed at which stimuli were presented. Children…

It is not surprising that many struggling learners have low self-efficacy for academics. They believe that they lack the ability to succeed. Consequently, they tend to avoid academics and give up quickly when difficulties arise. This article suggests practical solutions based on self-efficacy theory to improve the motivation of struggling…

This study examines how measures of articulation rate, verbal short-term memory (STM), naming speed, and phonological awareness tasks administered in kindergarten and again in Grade 1 jointly and uniquely predict word reading and passage comprehension variance in Grades 1, 2, and 3. Results from regression and commonality analyses indicated that…

The current study examined whether socioeconomic status (SES) and chaos in the home mediate the shared environmental variance associated with cognitive functioning simultaneously estimating genetic influences in a twin design. Verbal and nonverbal cognitive development were assessed at 3 and 4 years for identical and same-sex fraternal twin pairs…

Few studies have examined characteristics of both verbal and written language of individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD). This study used parallel measures (picture description, word fluency, spelling to dictation, and confrontational naming) to compare verbal and written language of individuals with mild AD, moderate AD, and normal controls (14…

The effects of different approaches to learning Chinese characters were investigated. Ninety-two high-school students were randomly assigned to one of five treatment groups: translation, verbal mnemonics, visual mnemonics, dual coding mnemonics, or self-generated mnemonics. All groups received instruction and completed posttests in a…

Background: Verbal intrusion errors are irrelevant responses made in the course of verbal memory retrieval or language production that have been associated with disruption of executive functions and the prefrontal cortex. They have been observed to occur more frequently both with normal aging and with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's…

This paper presents a response to five commentaries on our article "An Analysis of Autism as a Contingency-Shaped Disorder of Verbal Behavior" (Drash & Tudor, 2004). One of the principal objectives of that article is to provide the behavior analysis community and the autism community with a conceptual basis for analyzing autism as a behavioral…

The effects of at least 23-hr deprivation, 5-min presession exposure, and individual preference on the acquisition of mands were investigated in these studies. Two boys who were 2.5 years old and diagnosed with autism participated in the studies. Preference assessments were conducted to identify preference levels of various toys. Toys of various…

Although it employs a relatively small array of behavioral concepts and processes, Relational Frame Theory provides an account of how some of the most complex verbal events can be understood behaviorally and may be established systematically. In the current paper, the findings from a research agenda that has clear and widespread implications for…