The question-asking behavior of disadvantaged Mexican-American second-grade children was found readily modifiable using an adult model offering contingent praise. (Authors)

Relevance of cognitive and developmental variables to observational learning and imitation is also discussed. (Authors/MB)

Investigated the effects of yoking role-play practice to modeling treatments designed to teach rudimentary counseling skills of reflection of feeling. Counselors-in-training (N=28) were assigned to one of the four treatment conditions. There were significant differences between students who received an opportunity to role-play practice and those…

Reviews literature related to modeling in a rehabilita- tive setting. Suggests modeling effectiveness is influenced by sex, prestige, and able-bodiedness of the models. Both live and film models prove effective. Modeling is applicable to social, emotional, educational, and vocational problems. Different disability groups react to models in…

A replication was conducted of part of J. Turnure and E. Zigler's (1964) experiment in which they assessed whether outerdirectedness was a function of failure experiences. (Author)

Low-income families participated in several variations of a home-based intervention program which focused on modeling verbal interaction between mother and child around selected toys and books. (SB)

This study compared relative effectiveness of imitative treatment and conversational recast treatment in 7 children (ages 55-79 months) with language impairment and 7 controls. Target acquisition was faster under conversational recast treatment for both groups. Language-impaired children learned grammatical structures as efficiently as…

A structured discourse strategy, employing child echoic imitations and adult expansion, was used to teach five autistic preschool children two-term semantic relations. The strategy increased the children's initial spontaneous imitations of two-term relations. Following the imitation increase, spontaneous productions of the two-term relations…

Third semester college students of French viewed part of a film, read part, and then were given a surprise vocabulary test with colloquial words from the text. Their performance, compared to a control group, suggests that incidental vocabulary acquisition is possible in a foreign language situation. The test is appended. (Contains eight…

Eleven students of novice paddling ability were divided into two groups, one group receiving verbal, the other nonverbal, instructions on using the kayak stern rudder. The verbal group was significantly better at performing the correct sequence of movements. Results support existing research showing that observation alone does not enable the…

Twenty children (ages 5-6) with specific language impairment (SLI) were taught a nonlinguistic conceptual rule under imitation or modeling conditions. No intergroup differences were found between the extent of overall learning displayed. Performance of SLI children was not better under the imitation condition than under modeling. (Author/JDD)

This paper reviews research on observational learning, including model characteristics and observers' responses, vicarious reinforcement as implicit punishment, vicarious effects on students with problem behavior, observers' other characteristics and vicarious effects, and aggression and vicarious processes. Regular class placement of students…

Analyzed the differences between heroes, other characters, and themes from the Roy Rogers television show of the 1950s, and the Brave Starr show of the 1980s. Found the modern hero more prosocial, cooperative, fearful, and self-critical. The modern villain was more hostile, negative, and successful against the hero. Discusses implications for…

Provides instructional techniques, using samples from evergreen trees, to explain to school children the concept of adaptation. The techniques help children develop skills in observation, classification, communication, inferring, and predicting. A teacher's reproducible is included. (GLR)

Offers a nonparticipant observation exercise that allows students to engage in research quickly, while keeping in mind constraints created by one-semester introductory courses. Discusses the selection of observation sites and topics, ethics and policies of human-subject research, procedures for taking notes, classroom discussion of student…