A study examined the status of research on effects of pictorial advertising and areas within the field which need additional work. The method of investigation was based on a model of memory, incorporating emotional, semantic, and episodic processing of information--focusing primarily on constructing a preliminary taxonomy of visual stimuli, a…

Enrollment management and marketing strategies employed by the largest state university users of American College Testing (ACT) program tests were studied. The primary objective was to develop a descriptive profile of institutional practices and role performance factors. The study population was the 54 largest state university users of ACT student…

To explore the impact of the environment on perceptions of compliance gaining situations, 97 university students were asked to recall and describe situations in which they had had to persuade someone to do something. Their descriptions of compliance gaining situations were then evaluated for similarity by three additional groups of students. The…

The legitimacy of using the criterion of low reading achievement in the study of learning and memory skills with learning disabled children was assessed, based on a comparison of 35 nondisabled students, 15 low readers, and 10 learning disabled high school students. Learning disabilities were defined as encompassing perceptual and/or processing…

When children are raised in an environment where alcoholism is prominent, certain dysfunctional responses are learned as a way to cope with the challenge of that environment. This study was conducted to examine the learning styles of adult children of alcoholics. Subjects were college freshmen and self-identified adult children of alcoholics…

Research has suggested that didactic and values discussions, life skills training, social skills training, and family intervention can reduce heavy drug use. Because subjects display variability in patterns of behavior change, increased understanding of these individual differences could be beneficial to interventions. A preventive intervention…

Based on the notion that a dialectical perspective better represents the processes and tensions involved in family communication than do traditional models, an exploratory study examined the communication practices of two television families: the Huxtables of "The Cosby Show," and the Keatons of "Family Ties." The series were…

Two experiments were conducted to assess the performance of freshmen chemistry students with poor spatial visualization skills. In the first experiment, 31 chemistry students with academically deficient backgrounds completed a diagnostic test of their ability to visualize and interpret pictorial representations of simple molecular structures. At…

This paper explores children's contributions to the functioning of kindergarten classrooms, arguing that the child's perspective on educational experiences is a valuable source for understanding that experience. Although children are seldom consulted about their experiences, they can provide information about the congruence between the teacher's…

Conducted at a Chapter 1 school serving mainly Hispanic and Black youth, this practicum developed a teacher-directed listening skills program for first grade students. The project goals were to provide auditory training and to increase proficiency in decoding skills. The listening skills program consisted of five components. The physiology of…

This report includes three experiment sections. The first experiment tested sensitivity to loss in altitude and demonstrated that: (1) preview effects led to adaptation; (2) sensitivity decreased with higher flow rates; and (3) sensitivity increased with higher optical texture densities and fractional loss. The second and third experiments…

This report summarizes research performed at the Universtiy of Kansas that involved several topics related to reading and learning to read, including the development of automatic word recognition processes, reading for comprehension, and the development of new computer technologies designed to facilitate the reading process. The first section…

In developing understanding of social roles, preschool children proceed from an initial awareness of single behavioral categories to the ability to comprehend, first, simple relationships between categories, and second, complex systems of categories. At each developmental level, children show characteristic modes of distortion when faced with…

Through everyday experience people acquire knowledge about how moving objects behave. For example, if a rock is thrown up into the air, it will fall back to earth. Research has shown that people's ideas about why moving objects behave as they do are often quite inconsistent with the principles of classical mechanics. In fact, many people hold a…

A study explored the potential relationships between communication-relevant personal characteristics (listening ability, tolerance of ambiguity, interpersonal needs, and communication apprehension) and small group leadership. Thirty college students enrolled in a small group communication course completed a battery of instruments measuring each…