Personal control exercised by 74 adults from community living settings in Minnesota were evaluated. Individuals living semi-independently exercised more personal control than did residents of HCBS Waiver-funded supported living services, who had more personal control than did those living in community ICFs/MR. Personal characteristics and…

Investigated intervention effects on mental models of multivariable causality in middle school students involved in inquiry learning. Found that inquiry learning promoted a correct mental model based on additive effects of individual features and a meta-strategic understanding of the need to control influences of other features. Also found…

Describes a study of seventh graders that examined the effect of self-regulated learning strategies (SRLS) on performance in learner-controlled and program-controlled computer-based instruction. Program control seemed to minimize the performance difference between low and high levels of SRLS. (Author/LRW)

Evaluation of the role of concreteness and familiarity in the development of proverb comprehension in 180 students in grades 5, 8, and 11 found that both concreteness and familiarity as well as student age, influenced comprehension. Results support the "metasemantic" and the "language experience" hypotheses of language comprehension development.…

Discusses personnel management and personnel evaluation. Highlights include personnel manager traits; performance improvement; effective leadership; supervisory styles; examining staff skills, including human skills, technical skills, and conceptual skills; increasing productivity; and identifying problem areas in job performance and possible…

A trilinear chart for understanding the distribution of achievement levels of students' performance in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is described and its use illustrated with data from the 1992 state NAEP mathematics assessment. Trends for all 44 participating jurisdictions are simultaneously displayed. (SLD)

This article discusses psychobiological factors that affect recovery after traumatic brain injury in children and adolescents, including biological pathophysiology of the injury, the cognitive stage of the child at injury, the amount of time after injury, the challenge level of tasks, and the child's reserve of psychosocial resources. (Contains…

A study examined the effects of extended and untimed testing on 31 postsecondary students with learning disabilities and 40 typical students. By extending the time limits on the Nelson Denny Reading Test, students with learning disabilities realized significant gains on their test scores and typical students made less dramatic gains. (Contains…

Discusses the ways in which the Project on High Performance Learning Communities helps middle school educators understand what happens in school reform between the implementation of the "Turning Points" recommendations and student outcomes. Discusses the role of school environment, teachers, and students in academic performance. (JPB)

Examines if externally imposed achievement goals influence what children learn from procedural instruction. Third- and 4th-grade children's goals were manipulated toward either learning or performance (N=77). Both initially and after a 2-week period, children who were given either goal were more likely to extend their knowledge beyond the taught…

Examined the role of the psychological process of comparison in young children's ability to extend a novel adjective to other objects sharing a salient property whether objects are of the same or different basic-level categories. Found that comparison operates in conjunction with naming to support extension of novel adjectives to properties of…

Forty-eight young adults with mental retardation were placed into high and low learned helplessness groups based on responses to a questionnaire. Participants were presented with vignettes and asked what they would do. Results found low learned helplessness participants obtained significantly higher decision-making scores. Additional information…

Reports that studies of native and transfer students at a university indicated that lower division GPA and major were significant predictors of upper division GPA for both groups, but more so for transfers than for natives. States that, although race was not a significant predictor for transfers, it was the most significant predictor for native…

After computerized training on visual-visual identity matching, a 5-year old with autism was given visual-visual and auditory-visual matching-to-sample tests with new stimuli. He performed poorly on matching visual stimuli until the stimulus array was changed to resemble the computer-stimulus arrangement, indicating the influence of small…

Examined the relationship among specified personality and individual characteristics of university students with their level of commitment to a measurable, results-focused statement of an ideal vision. Discusses locus of control, generativity, self-efficacy, values, and risk taking in the use of an ideal vision for strategic planning, needs…