Despite much effort by scholars, the definition of play remains a problem. Observers of preschool children tend to rate constructive activities as play; this has implications for play criteria. Types of play recorded may be appreciably affected by the time frame of observations and the use or lack of supplementary interviews. (RH)

Among findings from studies involving 48 9-10 year-olds classified in three dyslexic subgroups were that there were no modality of presentation-specific recall differences among groups and that all three subgroups made significantly more errors than controls in the condition in which it was essential to activate phonetic representations of…

It is recommended that thought be given to the formulation of more appropriate theoretical frameworks and behavioral measures in research on reading disability subtypes, and that single-subject research designs which yield information about subtypes and remediation effects be designed through collaboration of researchers and practitioners. (Author)

A dozen schemes proposing to classify research questions are surveyed, analyzed, and applied to the understanding and practice of inquiry. The extent to which these schemes account for questions found in educational journals is estimated. Principles and issues are identified to stimulate work on the classification of research questions. (Author/BS)

Examined the category structure of joy and shame emotions by having college students (N=40) judge slides of human faces. Results supported the family resemblance-prototype process in that the higher the typicality, the shorter the reaction time and showed that the more intense (typical) expressions were recognized more accurately. (LLL)

The authors examine factors contributing to the perpetuation of the categorical approach to education for behaviorally disordered students and document problems associated with it. Factors in support of the noncategorical are presented. Selected examples of noncategorical educational programs precede recommendations concerning the facilitation of…

A classification system of mental retardation is proposed based on etiology and IQs at least two standard deviations below the population mean. Social competence and performance capabilities of individuals with subaverage IQs are removed from definitional status and given prominence as correlates of class membership. (Author/CL)

Developed sorting rules to identify Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory configurations and applied these to patients with chronic low back pain, migraine headaches, hypertension, and diabetes (N=157). Results showed that profile types did not differ in frequency among the groups but were more elevated in the back pain patients. (LLL)

In Study 1, 85 percent of 248 third-, fifth-, and twelfth- grade students identified as normal could have been classified learning disabled (LD). In Study 2, 88 percent of a low achieving fourth grade sample could have been identified as LD, with 4 percent not meeting any criteria for classification. (Author/CL)

Proposed a revised system of classifying women's careers and applied the proposed system in an investigation of the career patterns of women college graduates (N=498) of the 1960s 10 years after their graduation. Results indicated that women are making definite strides toward building a relatively strong career base. (LLL)

Reports an experiment with tasks involving memory search for a given probe word with respect to a set of semantic category labels for subjects in a word comparison task and a set of semantic category labels for subjects in the categorization task. The memory search process is fundamentally different in categorization and comparison tasks. (CLK)

Data on sexual preferences of 243 male homosexuals were analyzed to determine how they fit the insertee-inserter dichotomy. The fit between the dichotomy and the data was very poor. The most popular set of sexual preferences was for all roles combined, both active and passive, anal and oral. (Author)

Third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders who received training in recognition of context clues performed significantly better than controls on tests of reading skills. (GW)

In 2002, the National Association of State Fire Marshals (NASFM) began developing applied research initiatives to help professionals curtail juvenile firesetting. The project included a review of the research literature, a conference of researchers and professionals involved in preventing juvenile firesetting, and a final report, upon which this…

This paper proposes a way to organize the literature on cognitive and learning styles that avoids the shortcomings of existing taxonomies. Most existing reviews and organizations of literature in the field can be criticized on the basis of inconsistency, selectivity, lack of scientific criteria, failure to consider scientific impact, bias, and…