Compared perceptual and conceptual implicit and explicit memory performance of preschool, elementary, and college students. Found that conceptual explicit memory improved with age. Perceptual explicit memory and implicit memory showed no developmental change. Perceptual processing during study led to better performance than conceptual processing…

Two experiments examined 4- to 5-year-olds' acquisition of family-resemblance categories for fictitious animals. Results showed that children who performed theory-guided learning were more successful at making feature/category associations than children who performed similarity-guided learning and categorized attributes significantly better than…

Presents definitions and purposes of delegation, accountability, and empowerment as parts of a system aimed at high performance. It explores how advanced program evaluation methods can make delegation and accountability more effective and empowerment less risky. (SLD)

Four experiments investigated 3-year-olds' understanding of the differential importance of shape for categorizing solid objects. Found that they categorized rigid and deformable objects differently in a non-naming task and knew that material was important for deformable items and shape for rigid items. In two naming tasks, they generalized names…

Investigated whether Brazilian 4-year-olds held essentialist beliefs about animal categories. Found that middle class and poor children were equally likely to interpret labels as referring to mutually exclusive animal categories, and more likely to accept a common label for animals sharing internal properties than superficial properties,…

Tested the hypothesis that focusing on details of studying (a low-action identity) would enhance performance and persistence. Data for 35 Belgian college students supported this hypothesis for academic nonprocrastinators, but for procrastinators, a low identity was found to enhance only task persistence and performance on a creative response…

Examined development of infants' relational coding in spatial orientation problems. Found that 6-month-olds performed poorly in a peekaboo task in which they had to turn to a target after displacement to a novel position and direction. Twelve- month-olds solved the tasks whether or not target was located between two landmarks; 8.5-month-olds…

Discussion of performance improvement focuses on the effect of emotions on performance. Topics include the emotional intelligence of the performers; how people deal with emotional demands and the stress of their performance; and emotional states that affect attention, focus, perception, and time on task. (LRW)

Two studies examined age differences in conditional reasoning. Results indicated that 8-year-olds performed better when antecedents were weakly associated with consequents than on strongly associated antecedent/consequents, with no difference among 11-year-olds. Eight-year-olds did better on ad hoc premises than on causal premises, with no…

Two experiments examined effects of content and rhetorical prompts on undergraduates' writing processes and the quality of their writing. Found that content prompts extended time spent writing and related to improved text quality. Rhetorical prompts demonstrated some influence on planning and global text quality only when presented during domain…

A review of empirical investigations of effects of goal setting on task performance of persons with mental retardation found that use of goal setting strategies, in conjunction with other instructional strategies, was associated with increased rate or accuracy of performance of both children and adults with mild to severe mental retardation.…

Examined influence of object labels and shape similarity on 16- to 21-month-olds' inferences. Found that infants generalized non-obvious property of unlabeled objects to test objects with highly similar shapes. For objects labeled with novel nouns, infants relied on shape similarity and shared labels to generalize properties. For objects labeled…

Discusses the trend toward short tenures for state university presidents, and indeed, for all university presidents, and concludes that evaluations make little difference in decisions to retain or remove presidents. Annual reviews or reports are considered valuable in improving the performance of university presidents. (SLD)

Three experiments tested 21- and 27-month olds' ability to construct a path to a mentally re-presented goal. After seeing the goal-state configuration of problems, both age groups evinced planning. Demonstration of initial solution step was less effective than goal-state exposure. Even with specification of a greater proportion of the goal path,…

Examined children's tendency to make argument structure overgeneralization errors. Found that 3- to 8-year-olds were more likely to overgeneralize verbs less familiar to them, supporting the hypothesis that verb usage in particular construction types becomes entrenched over time. As children learn transitivity status of particular verbs, they…