Examines the effect of age and sex on hand preference and hand skill in two studies using six samples of children and a reanalysis of adult data. Results included findings that left- handers have an advantage over right-handers in visuo-motor speed. There was no evidence of increased dextrality with age. (JAC)

Investigated the effects of participative versus assigned goal setting on intrinsic motivation for interesting and boring tasks. Participative and assigned goal setting had no significantly different effects on performance if the goal was held consistently difficult, but had different effects on intrinsic motivation at different levels of task…

Studied neuropsychological recovery following alcohol abuse as a function of age. Alcoholics (N=31) were administered a repeatable neuropsychological test battery for the three months immediately following cessation of drinking. Results suggest that beyond age 40, humans increase in vulnerability to the toxic effects of alcohol. (JAC)

Reviews the Piagetian description of the stages of development of children's drawings, points out the influence of task demands on drawing performance, and asserts need for a new theory. An alternative framework is discussed and recent research illustrating the alternate theory and methodology is reviewed. (Author/RH)

Student attendance at help sessions before an examination indicated by attitudinal and behavioral data that those most likely to seek academic help had performed poorly in the past, attributed their performance to remediable factors and received information about session usefulness. Ability, effort and external attribution significance are…

Discusses factors which should be taken into account when designing and arranging furniture used with microcomputers in classroom learning centers. (JJD)

With first-grade and college students, examines barrier effects as a function of the task used to assess subjects' cognitive maps. One group, asked to give rank-ordering judgments, had to keep an entire spatial layout in mind. The second group made direct estimates of the distance between two objects. (RH)

Two experiments examined affect-dependent memory in preschool/kindergarten and third-grade children. A two-list intentional learning procedure was used to assess the effects of the congruent versus incongruent relationship between happy versus sad affect during initial list learning and happy versus sad affect during a delayed-recall test.…

In order to specify the combinations of content and form dimensions in which explicit verbal feedback becomes most effective in enhancing communication skills, a training experiment was designed in which both dimensions were factorially manipulated. Forty children between the ages of 5 and 10 participated. (Author/RH)

Distance running tests evaluate a unique physical activity that is an important component of many other physical tasks. Factor analytic studies have clearly shown that distance running tests assess underlying abilities and physiological capacities that are different from those assessed by runs of shorter duration. (CJ)

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised Verbal, Performance, and Full Scale IQs for matched-pair subjects were compared, evaluating performance in morning and afternoon testing. No significant differences in mean IQ as a function of time of testing were shown. Greater variability occurred for morning performance on the Verbal and Full…

Perceived time in complex cognitive functions was studied using college students' estimates of time spent taking a test in relation to examination performance. Significant correlations were found between true scores and students' estimated time. Differences in the perception of time were shown to be consistent with theories of attentional…

In two experiments, children ages six through eight, 10-year-old children, and college students were shown several series of slides. Each series told a unique "story" and was followed by oral questions. Results illustrated the increasing interdependence of the verbal and visual systems with age. (Author/MP)

Twenty-four girls and 19 boys who failed quantity conservation tasks on a pretest were retested after having been exposed to a classroom demonstration on conservation. Results indicated that children who understood number conservation improved their quantity conservation performance more often than children who showed no understanding of number…

Gender differences in predicting displaced volume did not reflect gender differences in spatial ability, field-dependence-independence, or Piagetian formal reasoning. In addition, gender differences were not accounted for by science and math course-taking experience. (Author/PN)