Discusses a straw-vote study seeking to gather data that would give some indication of the courses in journalism that most instructors find the hardest to teach. (HOD)

A distinctiveness of encoding hypothesis, as applied to the facilitative effects that higher order objectives have on readers' prose recall, was evaluated in three experiments. Results suggest that distinctiveness of encoding may offer a theoretical basis for the effects of adjunct aids as well as a guide to their construction. (Author/GK)

Investigates the syntactical level of spontaneous and echolalic utterances of 26 autistic boys at different stages of phrase speech development. Speech samples were collected over a 90-minute period in unstructured settings in participants' homes. Imitations were not deliberately elicited, and only unprompted, noncommunicative echoes were…

Examined whether different levels of task complexity result in variations in group decision making. Groups (N=7) discussed problems varying in levels of complexity. Findings suggested that group decision making is a cyclical process with the number of cycles affected by task complexity. (RC)

Reveals that the Rauding Scale of Prose Difficulty provides results closer to Spache and Dale-Chall values than does the Singer Eyeball Estimate of Readability (SEER) technique. (FL)

This study examines the receptive skills of severely deaf subjects employing either oral or total modes of communication in the comprehension of a wide range of syntactical and semantic structures. For almost all types of structures investigated, the total system was found to be the more effective method of communication. (Author/SJL)

Two forms of an undergraduate examination were constructed. Tests varied with respect to item truth value (true, false) and method of phrasing (positive, negative). Negatively stated items were more difficult but not more discriminating than positively stated items. False items were not more difficult but were more discriminating than true items.…

Examined differences between five-, seven-, and nine-year-olds' ability to estimate their counting accuracy for large set sizes on tasks of three levels of counting difficulty. With increasing age, children's estimates of their counting accuracy increasingly corresponded to their actual counting accuracy. (Author/DB)

Three "tests" of intellectual competence (vocabulary, remote associates, trigram word-making) which permit cheating were standardized by rankings of 71 college students. The three tests were found to be equidistant along the dimension of perceived difficulty. Suggestions are made for using these tasks in cheating studies. (Author/SJL)

Several exercises are presented that are intended to challenge and "limber up" the translator's manipulation of words, meanings, and connotations. The exercises point up the complexity of the translating task and encourage the translator to make the most of this fact. The focus is on French and English. (MSE)

The complexity hypothesis suggests that the hierarchical arrangement of learning tasks is related to the complexity of the task. Using a definition of complexity based on an analysis of the rules governing performance on a task, the present study lent support to the hypothesis. (Author/GDC)

Results of this study demonstrated that while positive occupational information alone leads to greater simplicity, negative or mixed information significantly retards the trend toward greater simplicity. Results are discussed from both theoretical and practical perspectives, especially with reference to the typical occupational information…

It was hypothesized that the concept of cognitive effort in memory is both useful and important. Cognitive effort was defined as the engaged proportion of limited- capacity central processing. Four experiments were conducted, and the implications and potential applications of the concept were discussed. (Author/MH)

Presents a study of the effects of the occupation of an individual's personal space on that individual's judgment of the invader when the invader's attitudes are known to the invadee. Also studies the effect of the difficulty of the task on the relationship between spatial orientation and interpersonal attraction. (JMF)

The concept of sentence weights (the assigning of numerical scores based on hierarchical modification) seems to be a more sophisticated measure for looking at syntactic complexity than the T-Unit. (DD)