Investigates effects of a specific method of art instruction designed to increase the individual's ability to handle visual complexity and detail. Implications of findings for art education are also discussed. ( MG)

Although the kind of transactional dialogue used in everyday trade can be of potentially great value, those found in textbooks tend to be of limited usefulness because they are unrealistically long, complex, formal, and descriptive, overuse atypical structures or vocabulary, and assume an understanding of the culture. (MSE)

The separate and interactive effects of three kinds of background knowledge (content area, context of materials presentation, and lexical items in the text) on reading comprehension were studied. Unlike native readers, nonnatives neither show significant effects of background knowledge nor appear to have a good sense of the text's difficulty. (MSE)

Attention to others' activity increased with age in children ages four to six. Subjects who showed stable gains in performance level across sessions engaged in more observation of others' activity than did subjects who showed only temporary gains. Subjects who showed no gains observed others' activity least. (Author/RH)

A study of children's structuring of complex sentences requiring mood choices is reported. The objectives were to provide data for an understanding of sentence construction problems and to form a better idea of the acquisition of the intrinsic linguistic contrasts in the Spanish modal system. (MSE)