During the spring of 1971, the political attitudes of middle-class Mexican Americans in the El Paso (Texas) area were surveyed. An 86-item questionnaire was administered to 187 people in six area Councils of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), four posts of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), and one area Council of the Knights…

A total of 138 middle-class first graders in two parochial schools were studied to determine whether a phonics reading approach was superior to a contextual reading approach in reading achievement, whether auditory learners achieve in reading to a greater extent than visual learners, and whether auditory or visual learners achieve in one program…

This study examined age differences in children's visual fixation and search strategies of two dimensional visual stimuli. The hypotheses tested were: (1) that no age differences exist in general search strategies regardless of stimuli position, (2) that age differences could be expected with respect to the number and duration of visual fixations,…

Data on the attention patterns of Sesame Street's intended target audience were analyzed and compared with data on middle-class children. Attention scores gleaned from a series of formative research studies performed in New York day care centers in 1972 and 1973 yielded the following conclusions: (1) within each of the four categories of affect…

The communications barrier confronting the ghetto child, the child from Appalachia, or the reservation Indian is the standard middle-class English taught in most schools. Ways of dissolving this barrier are suggested. Speaking habits as well as thinking patterns of teachers must frequently alter. A child should be encouraged to verbalize and to…

This collection of essays on minority group adolescents include works on the respective identity crises of Puerto-Rican teenagers in New York City, urban Mexican Americans in East Los Angeles, Chinese adolescents in San Francisco, Japanese Americans, and the Kiowa-Apache Indian male. Also addressed are the relationship between minority group…

In the mid-1960's, the American Jewish Committee published a report on suburban schools' failure (or inability) to teach children about "human differences." Since then, there have been significant changes and solid progress in some school systems: new textbooks and supplementary materials have been published; new courses have been added…

The purpose of this study was to investigate class differences in the responses of infants to tape recordings of mothers' and strangers' voices. Subjects were 10-month-old first-born Caucasian girls, 30 from middle class families and 30 from working class families. Stimuli presented through a speaker placed in front of the infant consisted of…

The primary purpose of this study was to identify how boys and girls differ in reported self-concept in lower class inner city schools. In addition, how teachers perceive the "typical" boys' and girls' self-concept was investigated. The Piers-Harris self-concept scale was administered in group sessions to students in grades three through six from…

A manual concerned with communication and the development of communicative skills in general is presented. Specifically, it deals with the significance of speech in its relation to reading. The point is made that a child's awareness of self as an individual and as a worthy human being emerges in direct relation to this ability to express himself.…

Improvements in transfer and retention of skills learned in parent education programs were hypothesized to occur if the learning process provided for the "discovery of personal meaning". Data from 28 parents revealed that parents in the personal meaning approach demonstrated more effective learning and retention. Few changes in attitude…

Examines change in prosocial moral judgment over a seven-year period; determines whether there are gender differences in the development of prosocial moral judgment; and examines the interrelations of moral judgment, affect (sympathy), and behavior in middle childhood. (Author/RWB)

Educated Black women are often wrongly viewed as a homogeneous group, obscuring important differences of social class. Black women of different social classes do not face the same route to college. Both race and class operate within urban settings to either create or limit the options and strategies available to Blacks for attaining educational…

Motivating variables in the verbal interaction between mother and young child, which may influence the acquisition of the child's verbal skills, were investigated. Previous hypotheses were surveyed and data on verbal interactions of 29 mother-child pairs were presented. (Author/MS)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of competition on learning motivation among Chinese students in a classroom setting. The participants (N=52) were 7th-grade students from 2 Hong Kong secondary schools in a middle-lower class neighborhood. The students were randomly assigned to either competitive or non-competitive…