This study examined young children's sensitivity and positive responsiveness to their mothers' needs, using data on 90 preschoolers and their depressed and nondepressed mothers. The highest frequencies of caring behavior were from children with severely depressed mothers, problems in affect regulation, and secure attachment. Girls were found to be…

Adolescents (n=26) whose depressive symptoms increased from ages 11 through 13 were compared with matched control participants (n=26) whose depressive symptoms remained low over the same period. Symptoms could be predicted at age 11 from self-perceptions, self-evaluation, loneliness/social dissatisfaction, perceived number of friends, and…

Describes a study to determine if the personality traits of students in televised college-level courses differ from those of students in traditional courses, and to identify the specific traits predictive of successful performance in televised classes. Results showed that telecourse students do have a unique profile and traits for success. (LRW)

Volunteer participants (n=77) enrolled in 8 substance abuse treatment facilities were surveyed in order to examine the prevalence and nature of incest contacts among the group. Results indicated that approximately 49 percent of the participants had reported histories of incest. Data are presented under various parameters. Also gives comparisons by…

Examined the effectiveness of small sets of predictor variables for correctly identifying children as developmentally delayed at four to seven years of age. A combination of six biomedical risk items, maternal education level, and four subscale scores from the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment Inventory is effective when used as…

Reports on a study of the personal characteristics, academic habits, high school course of study, and perceptions of student/teacher interaction and academic advising of community college transfer students attending a research university in the midwest. Compares students who achieved satisfactory progress with those who did not. (DMM)

Researchers measured the constructs of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for college students' learning, examining self-assessed motivation, composite ACT score, and grade point average (GPA). Extrinsic motivation more strongly (though negatively) predicted GPA. There was a significant positive relationship between GPA and intrinsic motivation.…

Decoding, working memory, and domain-specific prior knowledge were studied as predictors of comprehension for 48 university undergraduate students after rewriting notes, rereading notes, or rereading a text. Working memory was most important for comprehension of text-implicit information, whereas knowledge was relatively more important for…

A study of users' keyword searching success and knowledge using the NOTIS online catalog at Indiana State University revealed a low rate of knowledge about keyword searching. Frequency of catalog use, previous online database searching or computer coursework, and library instruction were found to correlate well with search success and keyword…

Survey results found that 66 percent of social workers who recently graduated from social work programs and received child welfare traineeships indicated overall job satisfaction. There were differing arrays of organizational, client-related, and personal factors that predicted job satisfaction. (BB)

Analysis of medical residents' clinical performances in five teaching hospital anesthesiology departments revealed that noncognitive performance in some areas was a powerful predictor of overall clinical performance and was related to the occurrence of critical incidents. Noncognitive predictors included conscientiousness, management, confidence,…

This study examined characteristics of multiple-choice reading comprehension tasks suspected of influencing their difficulty, through administration of the California Achievement Tests to 158 deaf college students. Problem components evaluated included manifest content, psychologically salient features, and processing demands. Variation in item…

A survey of seven Canadian research granting agencies concerning weighting of criteria in applications for graduate student awards found undergraduate grades were heavily weighted. However, literature on early career indicators suggests this is not an effective predictor of future research productivity. Strategies for improving use of predictive…

The economic utility of the following 5 weighting methods for evaluating consumer loan applications was determined using a sample of 443 loans: (1) unit; (2) weighted application blank; (3) chi square; (4) Bayes; and (5) regression. The unit and weighted application blank procedures were the best approaches. (SLD)

Analysis of the records of all University of Missouri (St. Louis) optometry students entering 1980-88 found that, overall, undergraduate grades and the personal interview, were the most significant components of a student's entering profile in predicting performance in the first professional year, first and second professional year, four-year…