Five male preschool children were studied to determine the extent to which the generalized motor imitation model applies to vocal imitation. The use of a reinforced-imitation condition produced a systematic increase in verbal matching responses among three of the five children, which is consistent with previous studies. (SW)

Two experiments demonstrated that 11-month olds can encode novel causal events from a brief period of observational learning and recall much of the information after 24 hours and after 3 months. The infants remembered more individual actions than whole sequences, but reproduced many of the events in their entirety after the long delay. (MDM)

Doctoral students trained today will soon join faculties in the nation's more than three thousand colleges and universities. The preparation these students receive while in their doctoral programs will influence the ways they prioritize research, teaching, and service. In this article, the authors report findings from an evaluation of a…

Four experiments were performed, involving third, fourth, fifth and sixth graders as subjects. The results strongly suggested a close correspondence between direct and vicarious verbal learning principles and mechanisms. (GO)

The possibility that regularly broadcast entertainment television programs can facilitate prosocial behavior in children was investigated. First graders exposed to prosocial altruistic episodes demonstrated more helping behaviors in a real-life context than control children did. (GO)

Significant gains in conservation of number, amount, mass and weight were made by 53 previously nonconserving first graders who either simply observed conservers' performance on mass and weight problems or argued with conservers about these problems. (Author/CW)

Demonstrates the process whereby creative drama is used to develop and enhance both self- and group observation skills, awareness, and insight, emphasizing the role of videotape recordings in aiding this development. (Author/BL)

The effects of modeling and corrective feedback on the conservation of equalities and inequalities were studied. Both training methods were successful in teaching children to conserve. Trained children were also capable of generalizing their learning to new conservation tasks. (CS)

Observationally induced concept acquisition and generalization were studies in 132 second graders, using a clustering task. Groups were provided with a live or target model and different types of verbal coding. (ST)

This description of the Child Care Training Project in Michigan includes information on the home child care givers and identifies areas in which aides believed they needed improvement. Gives definitions of outstanding, adequate, and inadequate care and specifies problems and successes of the program's participants. (ST)

Results suggest that the age composition of peer groups influences the performance of peer-modeled information, thus providing an indication that imitation of peers is a selective process influenced by the relative age of the model to the observer. Data also suggest that observational learning is a complex process involving considerable…

Preschool children with low levels of social responsiveness were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 conditions: (1) watching videotapes of social interactions accompanied by a first-person sound track which described the activities of the child model, (2) watching the same videotapes accompanied by a third-person sound track, (3) a nature-film control…

Examines how university students made generalizations when making morphological insect observations. Results showed students rarely made generalizations in terms of universal statements: they did not use induction or produce hypotheses for testing in an analytic philosophical sense but used induction in more familiar contexts. Discusses the…

Assessed whether the effects of vicarious reinforcement and observational learning were maintained and controlled by contingencies of reinforcement among six Japanese preschool children. Findings suggest that some effects of vicarious reinforcement and simple modeling were not maintained without direct reinforcement. (RH)

Suggests ways to teach reading skills in context by drawing students' attention to general text elements, such as semantics, syntactics, graphophonics, print conventions, and creativity. (MM)