A phenomenon called "pragmatic variation" is discussed as a child's individual system of behavior in response to a question the child doesn't understand but realizes that he must verbalize an answer to. (NCR)

In testing kindergartners and first graders in their comprehension of the words "before" and "after," it was found that when temporal terms are acquired, they are first used as prepositions and then as subordinating conjunctions. (Author/NCR)

Preschool children's comprehension of the adverbial modifiers "very" and "sort of" was experimentally investigated in 64 children. (Author/NCR)

Native signs used as basic kin terms in 20 sign languages from several sign language families are examined. (Author/NCR)

Six-and eight-year olds were exposed to a modeling sequence for cluster rule learning under high, medium, and low degrees of structure. Age differences in vicarious learning emerged only in the medium structure condition, while immediately imitating a model failed to influence learning for either age group. (Author/CP)

High-level behavioral objectives did not produce greater learning than low-level, contrary to previous findings using study questions interspersed through written prose. Overt use of objectives at both levels produced greater learning, supporting the idea that procedures requiring semantic encoding are instructionally superior to those requiring…

Critical features of sound observational studies fall under three categories: the sampling framework; the theoretical model; and the statistical procedure. If the methodology for explanatory, rather than descriptive, observational studies can be applied within these categories, more consistent, convincing, useful explanations of educational…

Theory pertaining to human development suggests that, as students advance through the secondary-school grades, the learning structures should become less restrictive. This research examines the extent to which "structure" within the secondary school environments changes in accordance with growth in students from year 8 to year 12. (Editor/RK)

The time taken to name 56 drawings of objects on five separate occasions were analyzed for 21 ESN(M) children (i.e., moderately educationally subnormal) and 21 ESN(S) children (i.e., severely educationally subnormal), matched for picture-naming vocabulary. Results were discussed in terms of the Oldfield (1964) and Lachman (1973) models of lexical…

Recently a group of Newcastle teachers spent a week inside some London schools teaching classes they had never seen before. They worked with local teachers and children under the eagle eye of Dorothy Heathcote. Here is a report on the way that the week developed. (Editor/RK)

Discusses the aims and subject content of film/media studies in relation to ideologies about education, pedagogic traditions, and the debate on child cognition; suggests that a critical pedagogy can best be advanced through a materialist perspective based on theoretical and political considerations. Also describes two film study projects used with…

The impact of language (especially written language) on the acquisition of knowledge and skills in children is discussed. (MJB)

Barrett, Maier, Ekstrand, and Pellegrino in 1975 reported relatively large drops in performance from the criterion trial to an immediate retention test using a study-test free-recall paradigm. The present experiment was designed to determine whether this criterion fall was associated with the use of a retrieval strategy involving short-term…

Five studies are presented describing the development of a self-report inventory for measuring individual differences in learning processes. Factor analysis of items yielded four scales: Synthesis-Analysis, Study Methods, Fact Retention, and Elaborative Processing. There were no sex differences, and the scales demonstrated acceptable reliabilities…

Sixth graders from a semirural midwestern community were randomly assigned to one of four different learning strategies--imagery, overt repetition, covert repetition, and control. Results showed that imagery instructions facilitated learning performance; overt repetition interfered with performance; and covert repetition was similar to the control…