Does the use of student response systems (clickers) in the classroom increase student performance on exams? Do students perceive a benefit to using clickers in the classroom? This study investigates the effect of student response systems on accounting students' learning outcome and perceived satisfaction. Results show that, though the use of…

Using a continuous tracking task, the authors examined whether stopping is resistant to expectancies as well as whether it is a representative measure of response control. Participants controlled the speed of a moving marker by continuously adjusting their response force. Participants stopped their ongoing tracking in response to auditory signals…

The objectives of this study were to (1) evaluate group differences in specific arithmetic competencies among students with various types of learning difficulties (LD) and (2) to examine the influence of attention behaviors on possible group differences. Participants were a community sample of 291 third- and fourth-grade students with reading…

Study based on M.A. Thesis submitted to Memphis State University (Meador, 1967).

The purpose of this study was to investigate the function of positive attentional cues as cognitive factors in the modification of fear responses in a desensitization-like treatment procedure. Positive attentional cues are defined as positively-valenced descriptors of the feared stimulus. Two groups of two subjects each were assessed as to the…

Attention has been studied in four major areas of research: 1) an orientation reaction which must be present before an organism can receive stimulation; 2) a mediating response which directs further action to the stimulus being presented; 3) a cognitive or perceptual state in which the organism selects certain stimuli and excludes others; and 4)…

Sixteen elementary school children were administered an auditory and visual vigilance task and their performance related to their off-task behavior in the classroom. In addition, the relationship of vigilance performance to teacher ratings of the children's behavior and to reading achievement scores was also assessed. (JB)

Parieto-occipital electroencephalograms were recorded during resting baseline intervals, during an initial instruction period, and during active performance on mental arithmetic and immediate recall tasks to determine if 10 learning disabled boys (10-12 years old) would show less alpha attenuation than 11 normal controls. (Author/CL)

The central purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of distractions in nonverbal problems on the problem solving behavior and performance of young children (grades 1-3) in 6 schools (N=360). Results indicated 66 percent of the subjects were distracted by irrelevant spatial-numerical or color attribute uses. (JC)

The Ravens Standard Progressive Matrices Test was administered to 48 subjects who then performed a card-sorting task under single- and competing-task conditions. Hick's Law and the Roth-Jensen procedure were used in task development. Complexity should have a more central role in speed of processing models of intelligence than ability to divide…

Distractible elementary students (N=44) were assigned to one of four experimental conditions, reflecting manipulations of reinforcement and task difficulty. For difficult tasks, students assigned to contingencies for correct academic performance alone were off-task more and scored significantly lower in academic performance than Ss receiving…

To examine differences between auditory selective attention abilities of normal and cerebral-palsied individuals, 23 cerebral-palsied and 23 normal subjects (5-21) were asked to repeat a series of 30 items in presence of intermittent white noise. Results indicated that cerebral-palsied individuals perform significantly more poorly when the…

Results of a study involving 5 high test-anxious poor readers failed to replicate an earlier study reporting selective attention deficits in the population. Further, there was a marginal tendency for older poor readers to be high test-anxious. (Author/CL)

Findings indicated no differences between 17 learning disabled and 32 normal elementary students on attention tasks, no difference in sustained attention, and no evidence of a developmental lag. A significant difference in attention was found favoring special classes over regular, small groups over large, and teacher-directed over independent…

The ingestion of methylphenidate in hyperactive children was studied in classroom and informal settings. The drug seems to improve tractibility and learning in situations involving clear-cut tasks demands and high compliance, yet leaves informal behavior undisturbed. (ST)