Recent developments in cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence have shown that various types of prior knowledge play important roles in understanding during text processing and have resulted in a new kind of model for conceptual processing, "procedural semantics." This paper discusses two types of units, or schemata, which,…

The author identifies three school practices which discriminate against Black children and proposes three measures school systems can take toward a more equitable learning experience. The following negative practices are discussed: overenrollment of Black children in special education classes for the emotionally disturbed, the disproportionate…

This report examines the impact of certain key features of schooling organizations on student outcomes with specific attention to three key concepts: expectation, evaluation, and reward. Previous research on schooling outcomes is reviewed and complemented by the presentation of a theory (based on Parsonian concepts of social action) of school…

Extensive research has been conducted examining the effects of teacher expectations on student performance, revealing reasonably consistent patterns of differential behavior by teachers toward high and low expectation students. Few theories which integrate isolated research findings into a causal sequence have emerged, however. One such model…

Although widowhood is a disruptive and inevitable phenomenon for many older people, few studies have explored either adjustment to widowhood or the impact of widowhood on the lives of elderly people. Recently widowed persons (N=51), ranging in age from 49 to 83 years old, were interviewed to examine their relatively immediate psychosocial…

An information-processing view of perceptual motor performance holds that the processes involved in perception are organizational and depend on past experiences. In motor tasks which require anticipation, an individual uses past experience to predict what may happen. Yet bias effects in perceptual judgments, including bias caused by contextual…

Differences between freshman expectations at the University of Maryland in 1968 and 1969 were assessed using data from College and University Environment Scales (CUES). Two editions of CUES have been published. CUES I consists of 150 statements about university life that help to define the atmosphere of the institution as seen by the student. The…

In this study the effects of factors of ascription, achievement, and educational expectations on the type of college attended by blacks and whites who participated in the 1972 National Longitudinal Survey are examined. Findings indicate that the variables used in past models of educational attainment were also important in determining the type of…

Utilizing data derived from 277 rural, male respondents initially enrolled in Lenawee County, Michigan high schools, the Rotter's Internal-External Locus of Control Scale was employed to test the hypothesis that locus of control will have interactive rather than additive effects on the process of status attainment. Locus of control was defined as…

Two experiments were conducted to determine: (1) whether fear of success, as measured by three different instruments, interacts with subjects' expectancies of success to affect performance on exams in college courses; (2) whether fear of success can be clearly distinguished from fear of failure; and (3) whether males and females differ on fear of…

With fragmentation the dominant trend in academic settings around the world, the larger wholes of profession, enterprise, and system are less held together by integrative ideology. Strong ideological bonding is characteristic of the parts, primarily the disciplines. The larger aggregations are made whole mainly by formal superstructure, many…

Evaluability assessment is a descriptive and analytic process intended to produce a reasoned basis for proceeding with an evaluation of use to both management and policymakers. It was jointly developed by the members of the program evaluation group of the Urban Institute between 1968 and 1978. The approach begins by obtaining management's…

Researchers and the committees established for the protection of research participants are obliged to consider the ratio of ethical costs to benefits when making decisions about whether a study should be conducted. Pre- and post-questionnaires were administered to students participating in reserach projects to assess their opinions concerning…

For many years researchers have investigated the relationship between alcohol consumption and human aggression. A "policy-capturing" methodology was used to determine how judgments of responsibility for aggressive behavior are influenced by information about a person's alcohol consumption, sex, and degree of injury to a victim. Male subjects (N=8)…

A number of examples are presented to illustrate a common flaw in the published research on learning, memory, and instruction. Experimental subjects--often college students--have certain expectations about the problems they will be asked to solve and about the questions that will appear on reading comprehension or recall tests; these expectations…