A study involving three men with autism examined the effects of allowing the men to make their own activity schedules by writing down the order of their tasks. Social praise was provided contingent on the participant's task completion. Client engagement was substantially higher than baseline for all three participants. (Contains references.)…

This study compared 3- and 5-year-olds' reports of a true or false play interaction following repeated interviews. Findings indicated age-related improvements in performance. Three-year-olds questioned repeatedly about a false event made more errors in response to specific questions than their age-mates questioned about false details of a true…

Two studies examined whether preschoolers use whole-part juxtaposition to accurately interpret novel part terms. Results confirmed that children do use juxtaposition to guide learning of novel part terms and that such use was not due to memory effects nor to recognition of the grammatical frame accompanying juxtaposition. Children readily used…

The poor achievement of secondary students with learning disabilities in mathematics is often affected by prior low achievement, low expectations for success, and inadequate instruction. Good instruction involves careful selection of examples; explicit instructional design; a parsimonious use of time and resources; and techniques such as direct…

The Educational Testing Service Kit of Factor-Referenced Cognitive Tests contains 72 tests that are supposed to be markers of 23 latent cognitive constructs. Examination of the factor structure of four of these tests with 165 undergraduates suggests caution in using the measures as markers of distinct factors. (SLD)

Examined white-lie-telling behavior in 3- to 7-year-olds using task whereby the experimenter asked "Do I look OK for the photo?" with or without a visible mark on his nose. Found that most children in the experimental condition told white lies. Undergraduates viewing children's videotaped responses could not discriminate white-lie…

Four experiments examined whether letter names at the ends of words are equally useful as letter names in the initial position. Findings indicated that 4- and 5-year-olds derived little benefit from such information in reading or spelling, although adults did. For young children, word-final information appeared to have less influence on reading…

Three experiments investigated effects of complexity on 2- to 6-year-olds' understanding of a beam balance. Found that 2- to 4-year-olds succeeded on problems that entailed binary relations, but 5- and 6-year-olds also succeeded on problems that entailed ternary relations. Ternary relations tasks from other domains (transitivity and class…

This study examined preschoolers' performance on an observation task and a search task involving the invisible displacement of an object. Findings indicated that in the observation task, there was significantly longer looking to impossible than to possible outcomes among all children. Most 3-year-olds, but significantly fewer 2.5-year-olds,…

Discusses the causes of variability of training impact and problems with previous models for evaluation of training. Presents the Success Case Evaluation approach as a way to measure the impact of training and build learning capability to increase the business value of training by focusing on a small number of trainees. (Author/LRW)

Examined in two studies the moderating effect of perceptual load on visual selective attention. Found that children's performance was as efficient as adults' under conditions of high but not low loads, suggesting that early selection engages rapidly maturing neural systems and late selection engages later-maturing systems. The onset of early…

The study investigated the effectiveness of using visual cues to highlight the seams of baseballs, to improve the hitting of curveballs by five undergraduate varsity baseball team candidates. Results indicated that subjects hit a greater percentage of marked than unmarked balls. (Author/DB)

The study compared speech naturalness ratings of 280 perceptually fluent speech samples produced by nonstutterers and stutterers who had been treated in six different therapy programs. A significant difference existed between the naturalness ratings of nonstutterers and the treated stutterers. No difference was found in the posttreatment…

Entrepreneurial business owners were surveyed concerning their attitudes toward factors related to entrepreneurial success. Various myths about entrepreneurship are presented, such as the perception that entrepreneurs are "wild and crazy," are ego-driven, rely on "gut feelings," and derive their successes from "gimmicks." These myths are then…

Studies examining language onset and disorders of articulation, syntax, morphology, semantics, and word finding are analyzed. Although evidence is not convincing that stutterers as a group are more likely than nonstutterers to have deficits in these areas, it is clear that some stutterers do have concomitant speech and language problems.…