Examined three aspects of career exploration (environment exploration, self-exploration, and amount of information acquired) as predictors of interview performance in graduate business students (N=78). Results showed that career exploration activities consistently predicted self-perceptions of readiness and recruiters' ratings but not self-ratings…

American and Chinese students (Grades 6 and 9) performed an auditory tracking task that required counting tone patterns alone and in pairs. The Americans tended to work harder individually, while the Chinese performed better in pairs. These findings contradict earlier suggestions that "social loafing" is a transcultural phenomenon. (KH)

Discusses the findings of five studies which investigated the effects of informal contact on classroom learners' second language abilities. These findings are discussed in terms of six factors which might have contributed to the finding in four of the five studies that informal contact did not lead to increased proficiency. (SED)

Kindergarten through eighth-grade children were presented with two revisions (luck and skill) of the Matching Familiar Figures Test. Questioning about performance of hypothetical others revealed four levels of differentiation of luck and skill. These levels showed parallels with age-related changes in conceptions of difficulty, effort, and…

This study examined whether particular strategies would enhance affective arousal and if these techniques would affect warm-up decrement during performance of a sport skill. One strategy eliminated warm-up decrement and two had no effect. Positive and negative arousal and the correlation of arousal level to warm-up decrement are explored.…

Examines the relationship between the mental effort requirement of cumulative rehearsal and spontaneous utilization of the strategy by three groups of children (mean ages 7.6, 8.7, and 11.5 years). Results showed that the mental effort requirement of strategy use may influence children's strategy selection on memory tasks. (Author/CI)

Using different methods of holding the double bass, college students performed Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. Audio recordings of performance were rated. Muscle tension readings from the left arm, right arm, upper back, and lower back were taken, using electromyography. Results suggest nonsignificant differences in both performance quality and muscle…

This paper provides experimental demonstration of remindings during learning and examines their effect on performance, as well as effects of practice and difficulty. Three experiments examining the occurrence, effects, and conditions of remindings are presented, and the implications for theories of cognitive skill learning are discussed.…

Using a complex, computerized decision-making task, 56 university students participated in a six-week, repeated measures, goal-setting project, involving different payment systems. Results indicated that goal-contingent payment is superior to hourly payment in influencing performance, even though the perceived valence of payment and the actual…

This article reviews two questionnaires designed to measure people's perceptions of their own memories and identifies several research questions requiring further study. Results show that, in general, memory perceptions appear to be multidimensional and involve belief and affective components as well as knowledge components. (CT)

The purpose of this study was to investigate further the effect of differential item performance by males and females on tests which have different item arrangements. The study allows for a more accurate evaluation of whether differential sensitivity to reinforcement strategies is a factor in performance discrepancies for males and females.…

Investigates the relationship between five- and seven-year-old children's communicative performance and their level of understanding about message ambiguity and communication failure. Level of understanding about communication was assessed by asking the child to ascribe blame for communication failure following an ambiguous message and to judge…

Investigated the developmental aspects of the Koppitz scoring system with 652 children who took the Bender Motor Gestalt Test. Scores were fitted to various developmental curves by computer. Results indicated only 35 percent of the Bender test performance variance was accounted for by age. (JAC)

Examined the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) profiles of learning disabled children (N=46) from the Papago culture. Analysis suggested that learning disabled Papago children were not characterized by Spatial > Conceptual > Sequential pattern because WISC-R performance of these children was similar on Sequential and…

Two factors, language difficulty and option set convergence, were experimentally manipulated and their effects on item difficulty assessed. Option convergence was found to have a significant effect on item difficulty while the effect of language difficulty was not significant. (Author/BW)