Claude Steele's stereotype threat hypothesis has attracted significant attention in recent years. This study tested one of the main tenets of his theory--that stereotype threat serves to increase individual anxiety levels, thus hurting performance--using real-time measures of physiological arousal. Subjects were randomly assigned to either high or…

Background: Measuring the self-perceptions, thoughts, hopes and inner lives of persons with intellectual disabilities (ID) has long been a research challenge. Unlike objective or projective tests, semi-projective tasks may provide persons with ID with just enough structure or cues to convey their self-perceptions in a spontaneous and unbiased…

We examined the development of phonological processing, naming speed, and visual attention in kindergarten and addressed the question of their contribution to reading and spelling in grade 1. Seventy five French-speaking children were administered seven tasks at the two phases of the study, and reading and spelling were assessed in grade 1. The…

This study reports the results of a picture verification task assessing the interpretation of intra-sentential anaphora and cataphora in Italian by a group of English-Italian bilingual eight-year-olds, a group of age-matched Italian monolinguals, and a group of Italian monolingual adults. No significant differences between the groups were observed…

One of the major findings in previous research on reflexive coreference in a second language is that learners of English violate the locality requirement of the reflexive form "x-self" more readily when it appears in the subordinate infinitival clause than when included in the subordinate tensed clause (a phenomenon called the…

Parent-child "everyday" conversations have been suggested as a source of children's early science learning. If such conversations are important, then it would be pertinent to know whether children from different family backgrounds have different experiences talking about science in informal settings. We focus on the relation between…

The aim of the study was to examine reading and writing tasks as learning tools in higher education in Spain. The participants were 171 undergraduates from three different university degree courses. The data were gathered through a questionnaire that explored the kind of tasks carried out by the students, their perception of different aspects of…

Task analyses have traditionally been framed in terms of overt behaviors performed in accomplishing tasks and goals. Pioneering work at the Learning Research and Development Center looked at what contribution a cognitive analysis might make to current task analysis procedures, since traditional task analysis methods neither elicit nor capture…

This study examined the maternal teaching practices of Mexican American mothers and the relation of these practices to their children's task performance. The questions considered in the study were: (1) what teaching behaviors characterize maternal instruction; (2) how does use of these behaviors change throughout instruction; and (3) how do these…

The purpose of skills-training needs-assessment is to identify what type of skills and knowledge are needed to support economic strategies and, as a result, improve organizational decisionmaking related to training investments and general work force development. This paper presents findings of 11 skills-retraining, needs-assessment,…

As part of a research program investigating the interlanguage lexicon of Kenyan learners of English, based on the lexical field of locomotion, a card sorting task was used to produce raw similarity measure data. This was subjected to cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling (MDS). This paper suggests that cluster analysis/MDS of perceived…

Developing A CurriculUM (DACUM) is an approach to job/occupational analysis. The profile chart that results from DACUM analysis is a low-cost, effective method of quickly determining what tasks must be performed by employees in a given job or occupational area. The DACUM analysis can be used as a basis for the following: curriculum development;…

This document contains a task analysis for health occupations (dental assistant) in the dental assisting cluster. For each task listed, occupation, duty area, performance standard, steps, knowledge, attitudes, safety, equipment/supplies, source of analysis, and Illinois state goals for learning are listed. For the duty area of "providing…

Men high and low in resultant achievement motivation related luck to outcome. High-achievement women related luck, ability, and effort to outcome, whereas low-achievement-motivated women attributed outcome to task difficulty. Implications of these findings for the understanding of sex and race differences in achievement are discussed. (Author)

Designed to illustrate effective course design for user-oriented materials for data processing education or training, this paper argues that conceptual knowledge should be integrated into a course only as it is needed to support task knowledge. The importance of determining the direction of a course by planning and controlling the informational…