An exploration of children's responses to some of the Caldecott prize-winning books, using a Piagetian-type interview. An attempt is made to find out why some children are "turned off" by books that, from all ostensible evidence, are of high quality. (CS)

Examines the effects of three levels of personal intrinsic and extrinsic motivational dispositions on grade point average in college freshmen courses rated as the student's most and least challenging. (Author/DEP)

Research supported by Grant No. HD-01762-01 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Comprehension of metaphor was examined in 36 children ranging in age from 55 months to 186 months. The subjects were audiotaped while answering questions about a target sentence that was contextually anomalous. Five pictures were drawn to accompany each story, two relating to the literal meaning of the target sentence, two to the metaphoric…

Item response changing as a function of test anxiety was investigated. Seventy graduate students enrolled in a basic statistics course completed 73 multiple-choice items on the course content and the Test Anxiety Scale (TAS). The TAS consisted of 25 items that students indicated were descriptive (true) or not descriptive (false) of themselves.…

The papers included in this collection represent as closely as possible the content and organization of the oral presentations delivered at a March 1980 conference on the use of readability formulas. The papers discuss the following topics: (1) an introduction to the conference, with general remarks on the uses and criticism of readability…

The objectives of this study were (1) to observe and describe the social quality and the cognitive type of spontaneous play exhibited in a group of 20 children in a child care setting during two age periods, toddler (14-30 months) and preschool (30-48 months), and (2) to chart the developmental trends using a model of play complexity derived from…

The purpose of this pilot project was to determine whether involvement, as described by verbal and nonverbal indicators, increased as children worked at language arts learning centers characterized by increasing possibilities for involvement. Twelve first graders, randomly selected from an open space school, were each observed at three learning…

One aim of criterion-referenced testing is to classify an examinee without reference to a norm group; therefore, any statements about the dependability of such classification ought to be group-independent also. A population-independent index is proposed in terms of the probability of incorrect classification near the cutoff true score. The…

The utility and precision of scaling 200 relatively short reading passages were analyzed using a Rasch-based measurement technique as compared to readability estimates using the Spache or Dale-Chall formulas. In addition, a regression model was specified for predicting the grade level of a text a student could literally comprehend based on…

Three questions are addressed in this study: (1) what is the effect of additional, unexplained content on achievement and perception? (2) is the effect altered by time? and, (3) what is the relation between student achievement and student perception? It was determined that the effect on achievement was not significant but the effect on perception…

In simultaneous learning two verbal lists are interlaced for study, with each tested separately. In the present experiments simultaneous learning was used as a means of determining the conditions under which study time or learning resources might be reallocated between lists. One of the lists was called the standard list and remained constant…

It was hypothesized that using asterisks as attention focusing devices would cause students to read all asteriked test items more carefully and would improve test scores of undergraduate education students. Sixty-three undergraduates majoring in elementary or special education were administered a 36-item objective test. Asterisks were used to…

The accuracy with which testees perceived the difficulty of ability-test items was investigated by administering two 41-item conventional tests on verbal ability. High- and low-ability groups responded to test items by choosing the correct alternative and then rating each item's difficulty relative to their levels of ability. Least-squares…

Two experiments were conducted using nine- through twelve-year-old readers to determine how they differed from adults in their ability to identify meaningful units in a written passage, how they were affected by sentences of increasing difficulty, and whether they would be aided by either shorter sentences or meaningful segmentation of sentences.…