Authors hypothesized client's self-perception of improvement in therapy is partially a function of situational cues in contrast to internal mechanisms. Undergraduate Ss (N=65) self-disclosed on a problem for 10 minutes and were then assigned to one of four "interpersonal cue" conditions, or to a "discharge cue" condition. (Author)

Student behavior measures were shown to be highly predictive of achievement, adding support to the notion that student behavior during instruction is strongly linked to student learning. (Author)

In the generative model of learning with understanding, reading comprehension occurs when readers actively construct meaning for text. On two experiments with 488 sixth graders, learning time was held constant across all treatments. The combination of inserted paragraph headings and instructions to generate sentences about paragraphs approximately…

Three experiments were designed to clarify the perplexing ability of subjects to discriminate between to-be-remembered (T BR) and to-be-forgotten (TBF) items in memory. Results implicate within-list retrieval of TBR items as a potent tagging or strengthening operation that provides a basis on which those items may later be discriminated from TBF…

Investigates the effects of combined learning cues (pretest and behavioral objectives) on the achievement levels of teachers in an inservice course. Subjects receiving the combined learning cues did not achieve at a significantly higher level than did those who did not receive the combined learning cues. (CP)

Test-anxious subjects (N=19) participated in an outcome study comparing systematic desensitization, cue-controlled relaxation, and no treatment. The treatment groups demonstrated significant improvement on the self-report measures of test and state anxiety but not on the behavioral indices. The potential advantages of this technique over…

Three studies involving groups of four- to five-year-old children examined whether the discriminative properties of prompts are critical for establishing a difficult (septagon, octagon) discrimination through time delay. Results confirm superiority of multiple-stimulus, distinctive-feature prompts, implying that stimulus dimensions of prompts are…

Children viewed televised messages with identical content that were presented in either child or adult program forms and at three levels of difficulty. Visual attention was significantly greater for messages in child forms, but showed minor variation according to content difficulty. Recall scores were higher for child forms and for easy versions.…

Examined developmental changes in children's recognition that help is needed. Four- and 9-year-olds were shown a series of videotaped vignettes of two child actors, one of whom experienced a problem because he lacked a necessary skill or was physically unable to complete a task. (Author/BE)

Briefly summarizes history of neurolinguistic programing, which set out to model elements and processes of effective communication and to reduce these to formulas that can be taught to others. Potential areas of inquiry for neurolinguistic programers which should be of concern to visual literacists are discussed. (MBR)

The inclusion of "purpose questions" before passages in reading comprehension tests is evaluated in light of recent research related to schema theory and adjunct questions. While research supports the use of purpose questions, gaps and weaknesses in the available data exist. Suggestions for further study are provided. (Author/LMO)

The encoding specificity principle asserts that a retrieval cue will be effective if, and only if, the to-be-remembered item was specifically encoded with respect to that cue during input. Describes a classroom experiment that provides an opportunity to demonstrate the encoding specificity phenomenon, note its limitations, and discuss its cause…

Page prompts and beginning handwriting legibility were examined in a study of handwriting and teacher ratings of writing legibility. The relation of letter prompting to legibility was found to be dependent on the measure of legibility used. (Author/DF)

No differences in immediate recognition performance were found for 30 undergraduate students who reorganized notes into an instructor-generated matrix versus subjects who reviewed in their typical manner. Reorganization during review resulted in relatively higher achievement on a free recall test, while unstructured review produced higher…

When subjects learned paired associates that, on the study trials, consisted of a stimulus (cue) and its correct (target) response plus two other (distractor) responses from within the list, the presence of the distractor items interfered with learning, especially when overtly pronounced as opposed to silently studied. (Editor)