This report incorporates a literature review, a workshop paper, and discussion by workshop participants on the current status of research on what the users of computer systems know, and how these different forms of knowledge fit together in learning and performance. It is noted that such research is important to the problem of designing systems…

The present research assessed the ability to attend to relevant information in the presence of irrelevant distraction in hyperactive (H), learning disabled (LD), and unselected (US) children. A total of 20 LD, 20 H, and 20 US children divided into younger and older age groups participated in the study. Younger children were between 94 and 104…

A study examined the relationship of the personality traits of 94 police cadets to their performance at a southwestern state law enforcement academy. The overall training success (percentage of total points earned) of recruits enrolled in 11 weeks of on-site training classes was the primary criterion of the study, and raw personality factor scores…

Arguing that user studies and performance measures provide two major approaches to evaluating the effectiveness of library services, this occasional paper presents an overview of the literature, examines the goals and approaches in user studies and performance measures, and provides suggestions for increasing the potential benefits of both by…

Studies on typing done at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) are reviewed. The first of five chapters is a glossary of terms and classification of typing errors. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the variety of research approaches used to examine typing, including studies of continuous (transcription) and discontinuous (discrete…

The Type A behavior pattern, an independent risk factor for coronary heart disease, has been characterized as a response style for coping with perceived threats to control. Recent research suggests that self-attributional biases may play a role in the Type A's sensitivity to loss of control. Attributional mediation of Type A's experience of stress…

The effectiveness of the use of self-reported imagery strategies on children's subsequent memory performance was studied, and the coding redundancy hypothesis that memory is facilitated by using an encoding procedure in both words and images was tested. The two levels of reported memory strategy (imagize, verbalize) were crossed with "think…

American River College's (ARC's) model for evaluating instructional programs using a mini-accreditation approach is presented in this report. First, a rationale for program evaluation is provided, focusing on its role in future planning, improving existing programs, accounting for expenditures, and self-validation. Next, program evaluation is…

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of disclosing a Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) form on the retest performance of examinees who initially had been tested with the disclosed form and subsequently retested with a different form. Retest performance was compared for three random samples of examinees who had been tested with the SAT as…

One of the important cognitive strategies individuals use when learning is to organize many bits of information into integrated patterns called chunks. To investigate the process of chunking spatial information, 32 college students integrated two cognitive maps either before or after an interfering task. The combined spatial layout formed either a…

Sensitivity to assumptions concerning the applications of computers to education is needed, as educational practices are strongly shaped by both group and individual assumptions. An educational practice will not necessarily be improved if done by a computer. A consequence of searching for computer uses has been a tendency to build from computer…

Evidence suggests that victims of mathematics anxiety suffer from a poor self-concept regarding their mathematical ability. A 27-item attitude scale was developed reflecting attitude toward one's ability to learn mathematics. This scale was administered to 92 students taking a required statistics course, along with the Mathematics Anxiety Rating…

Very little is known about the conditions under which young children acquire strategic means of remembering in natural learning environments. A promising line of research attributes the emergence of "internal remembering strategies" to formal schooling environments. Data gathered from 173 children in kindergarten through the third grade…

These studies aim to determine whether a partner's social role and extent of incorrectness were factors capable of interfering with the effects of social marking in spatial transformation tasks. Social marking refers to a condition in which correspondence exists between cognitive relations and some social relation. Experiment 1 assigned 68…

A review of relevant research reveals the general characteristics of a test of oral communication performance, some specific characteristics of testing programs, and some directions that future performance testing should take. Characteristics of tests of oral communication performance are as follows: (1) students should be able to apply the skills…