Statistical methods employed to test individual differences in dual-task performance and the existence of a general time-sharing ability are reviewed and critiqued. Specifically, both the types of data being collected and the types of data analysis procedures have been inadequate to the critical evaluation of a hypothetical…

The effectiveness of Oralographic reading instruction was investigated with a sample of 89 disabled readers in second to fifth grade from five cities; children in each city were randomly assigned to experimental or control groups. All children in the experimental group received reading instruction using the materials and procedures of the…

Research on teacher effectiveness addresses questions about how teachers bring about desirable student outcomes. Until recently, most research has focused on long-term outcomes, such as achievement gains over one year. Short-term outcomes--students' immediate responses to instruction--are also important. Four categories of short-term student…

A total of 286 subjects was presented with a series of motivations and asked to evaluate the relative importance of each in their exposure/avoidance decisions about watching sports programs on television. The 188 sports viewers assessed the importance of each motivation for their viewing of baseball, hockey, football, and tennis. The 98…

The problem of this conference panel was to explore attentional and motivational systems and the factors in classroom management that influence them. The contents of this panel report consist of three approaches to the problem: the study of the psychological state of children as they take part in schooling, with special consideration given to the…

A 3-year-old (severely retarded and visually impaired) was trained in a program emphasizing functional, age-appropriate visual motor tasks requiring use of vision for successful task completion. Use of a repeated prompting procedure was successful in establishing visual attention, and generalization of visual attention to untrained tasks was…

This study examined the relation between teacher suspicion of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and teacher ratings on common behavior measures used to identify and diagnose ADHD. The children, urban, Midwestern, African-American first graders, (N=372) completed the Conners' Continuous Performance Test (CPT), an objective measure of…

This action research project describes an intervention to increase attending and on-task behaviors in first- and second-grade students. The problem of inattentive behaviors was documented by means of teacher, student, and parent surveys and teacher observations. The intervention used behavioral management, organizational strategies, role playing,…

Summarizes the immediate and long-range effects of two classroom treatment programs on the academic achievement and nonattending behaviors of elementary school boys. Compares the teacher-training method and the direct intervention method of implementing management strategies in regular classroom settings. (SB)

The behavior of 32 mothers during an object-retrieval game was analyzed in terms of the hints and clues they used to direct their children's attention; age-related differences were found in the type of information offered. (Author)

This study investigated attention to and recognition of components in compound stimuli among infants and preschoolers. Oddity tasks with preschoolers and familiarization/novelty-preference tasks with infants demonstrated successful discrimination among stimuli components on basis of edge property information. Matching tasks with preschoolers and…

Notes that little agreement exists as to which factors influencing academic outcomes for second-language learners are of primary importance. The study hypothesizes that second-language learners in immersion situations undergo an attention shift away from auditory system processing and towards visual information processing. (59 references)…

A cue-target visual attention task was administered to 25 children (ages 10-12) with dyslexia. Results showed a general pattern of slower responses in the children with dyslexia compared to controls. Subjects also had longer reaction times in the short and long cue-target interval conditions (covert and overt shift of attention). (Contains…

Examines student screening of classroom stimuli, noting an ecological environment exists for persons in the same surroundings. The paper presents an example of one behavior setting, a second grade classroom observed by a child development specialist, which illustrates the concept of environment. It recommends research on sensory screening and…

This study found that teachers' ratings of their 8 severely mentally handicapped pupils' (ages 9-18) classroom behavior were correlated with children's performance on a discrimination learning task. The factors of attention/distractibility and responsivity to consequences correlated significantly with number of errors and number of trials to…