This paper applied findings from studies using the kind of viewing measures used by social scientists, to the relationship between programing and viewership when viewership is measured by means used by producers. Total aggregate viewership and the relationship of viewers' ages to viewership was concentrated on. Effects of competing programs on…

The present research was designed primarily to investigate the type of instruction needed to help children learn difficult principles. A total of 159 fifth graders (each assigned to one of six experimental conditions) read lessons which dealt with principles from two content areas (mathematics and language arts). Lessons varied in the number of…

To find out what factors are involved in a child's learning of syntax, investigators studied the syntactic complexity of the language a mother and child use when talking to each other. The complexity measure used was one developed by Dr. Sheldon Frank and Dr. Harry Osser, and is based on the concepts of generative grammar and transformations.…

Decision-theoretic testing is used to explore whether students can improve their realism, i.e. congruence between reported and true probabilities. Randomized sets of math problems were presented at computer terminals to 49 seventh graders from two classes (high/low achievers) over a period of three weeks. The subject assigned values to each of…

A simple device called a "wire labyrinth" was used in an experiment involving learning of a two-hand motor task. The Ss were asked, after completing each of 7 successive trails, to give their estimates of perceived (subjective) difficulty of the task. For this purpose, the psychophysical method of magnitude estimation was used. Time was…

Three studies compared learning and problem-solving performances of normal and familially-retarded children on tasks differing in complexity, and one study investigated motivational-personality differences. Main purpose of the first three studies was to investigate the controversy between developmental and defect theorists in mental retardation.…

Accuracy of memory for left-right orientation of single forms varying in meaningfulness and complexity was studied in 120 subjects at 5 age levels from kindergarten to adulthood. Complexity was found to be unimportant, but orientation of meaningful figures was remembered better than orientation of non-meaningful figures at all ages. (GO)

While thematic curriculum designs based on Bruner's structuralism are a great improvement over the old chronological literature anthologies, they still ignore several important contexts in which a literary work might be studied. The multifunctional approach can provide this complexity of contexts. (SJL)

The language competency of learning disabled (LD) children as it relates to social situations demanding interpersonal communication skills was examined in 28 LD and normal elementary school children. (DLS)

Various experiments demonstrated that the difficulty level of several performance-type intelligence test tasks is determined directly by stimulus and task variables that vary the information to be processed. The implications of these findings for intelligence and the problems of an experimental approach to the measurement of intelligence are…

In a sentence-completion task, eighty sixth-grade students were assigned specific difficult goals or general goals ("do your best"). Subjects received one of four levels of monetary incentive. Specific difficult goals produced higher performance than nonspecific across various incentive conditions, and maintained those levels when previously…

Authors of the taxonomy made various claims about its properties that concern both educational and psychological issues; these claims have stimulated investigations of the taxonomy's validity. As the taxonomy is now entering its twenty-second year, this review attempts to survey these investigations and appraise the findings. (Author/CP)

Patterns of relationships between 96 adolescents' cognitive and verbal domains suggest a three-level cognitive complexity continuum: Level 1, a creative, analytic, flexible, differentiating mode; Level 2, a person-oriented, moderately complex functioning level; and Level 3, an inflexible, concrete, simplistic mode of operation. (RL)

Seventh grade students answered questions while reading programmed science materials. For increasingly difficult questions, achievement and time required to complete the unit increased. Post-instruction achievement was higher in groups which answered questions during the unit than those which read additional material but answered no questions.…

The effects of student effort exerted studying, and of written feedback from the instructor, were studied in undergraduate classrooms. Students received high or low-effort assignments, and high or low praise from their teacher. Those completing high-effort assignments and receiving high praise formed significantly more positive attitudes.…