Examined effects of cognitive focusing training in early and late concrete operational children. Focusing was manifested by the late concrete operational children regardless of whether or not they had been trained. The amount of negative feedback and the nature of the probe techniques affected the manifestation of focusing. (Author/DB)

This study addressed whether students could change their reading rate when presented with two clearly explicated purposes for reading. Results indicated that students could adapt their reading rate to fit different purposes but that passage difficulty affected the degree of flexibility. (Author/GK)

Relative difficulty of Separate (Form S) and Grouped (Form G) True-False tests may be expected to be dependent on the ability levels of examinees. At some levels Form S should be less difficult, at others equally difficult, and at still others, more difficult, than Form G. (Author/RL)

High school dropouts and high school graduates, of which half of each group received vocational training, were compared. Analysis showed that completing vocational training was positively correlated with higher income and job complexity level. Vocational training was a more potent influence on income level than completion of high school.…

Explores the relationship of student-generated questions to students' knowledge of a subject. (MKM)

Examines difficulties children may have in reading Virginia Hamilton's "M. C. Higgins, the Great"; discusses the book and shows how teachers can promote children's appreciation for it by discussing some basic traditions as they appear in the book and by bringing into play children's knowledge of their own belief systems. (ET)

The central idea behind this study is that at about seven years of age the concept of normative difficulty emerges, resulting in changes in interpretation of terms such as "hard" and "easy," as well as of normative cues. (Author/DB)

A high percentage of young people (16-24 years of age) lack essential skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic needed to become workers and citizens. The teaching of reading should be of importance to all educators, not just language arts teachers. (JOW)

The facility index of a test item is the percentage of testees choosing the correct response. A common curriculum model presents process and content as two dimensions of the difficulty of an educational task. Wheeler suggested a third dimension: precision. This three-dimensional model is applied to chemistry education. (BW)

Three-dimensional random polygon objects ranging in complexity between four and 40 turns were presented to the Ss, and time spent in exploration and play was measured over three successive exposure-time blocks. (Author/DLS)

The development of two structural principles, hierarchical complexity and interruption, was examined in a new domain: two-dimensional pictures. Subjects were 60 4-to 5 1/2-year-old children. (Author/MP)

Outlines three types of diagnosis (formal, informal, and inferential) and three areas of diagnosis (difficulty of content, learning style, and use of principles of learning). Discusses considerations and sources of data for each of the three areas. (SS)

A theory and a procedure are presented for estimating a domain parameter and item parameters for test items in a homogeneous domain, such that the combined domain and item parameters account for observed proportions right for each item in a test. (CTM)

The study examines one aspect of the relationship between decoding and comprehension--that between word difficulty, decoding ability, and access of single-word meanings. Results indicate that decoding ease and extraction of word meanings are related and suggest that decoding ability must be considered a factor in reading comprehension. (RC)

Investigates how performance on syntactic structures is affected by the complexity of the surrounding sentence. To investigate possible relationships, two classifications of syntactic structures were tested in both simple and complex sentences. (RC)