Findings from this investigation with 81 college students indicate ideational fluency as a valid predictor of student achievement in an interior design course. Both original and popular ideational fluency as measured by the Multidimensional Stimulus Fluency Measure were related to course grade, design criteria scores, and final project grade.…

Sixty-three parents of children with severe handicaps who were placed out of the home were interviewed regarding why they did not place their child sooner. Factor analysis indicated three main factors that delayed placement: guilt feelings, social support, and family relationships. (Author/JDD)

To investigate stress among parents of mentally retarded children (aged 6-17) who demonstrate behavior disorders, 17 children who demonstrated disruptive behavior and 22 who did not, and their families, were assessed. Levels of children's pathology and aspects of family climate predicted the parental stress, pinpointing different variables for…

A model was developed for estimating individuals' true changes on test scores using the additional information provided by an auxiliary variable correlated with a trait being measured. This provides an improved and more precise estimate when compared with simple difference scores. It involves the reliability of "X" scores only. (SLD)

Investigated the relationship between specific features of the residence environment and the persistence and performance of Black students. Found race, high school grade point average, family income of roommates, and residing in residences with other Blacks was related to college grade point average for Black female freshmen. (Author/ABL)

Studies conducted to investigate the psychometric qualities of the Health Support Index suggest that the index is internally consistent, stable and, potentially useful in identifying those individuals who do or do not have adequate support from their social environment to make successful changes in health-related behavior. (CB)

First-graders' responses to a battery assessing phonemic awareness, syntactic awareness, receptive vocabulary, word decoding ability, and reading comprehension ability revealed strong zero-order correlations among all the variables, although analysis revealed that metalinguistic ability did not contribute to the prediction of early reading…

Reviews "Risk-Taking Behavior in Youth: A Psychological Approach to Accidents" (Jean-Pascal Assailly). Notes that childhood accidental deaths have been overlooked as an outcome of early childhood problems. Notes factors associated with accidents that are identical to predictors of juvenile delinquency. Highlights the book's strong…

Examined child protective services (CPS) screening practices in 12 sites from 5 states to identify factors predictive of the decision to investigate a report. Found that only 66% of all reports making specific allegations of maltreatment were investigated, while only 70% of all reports making specific allegations of injury were investigated. (MDM)

Argues that Gottlieb rejects population sampling and statistical analyses of distributions as he proposes that his experimental brand of mechanistic science is the only legitimate approach to developmental research. Maintains that Gottlieb exaggerates developmental uncertainty, based on his own research with extreme environmental manipulations.…

When children produce regularizations like "comed," not all verbs are equally liked to be regularized. It is argued that one predictor is which vowels are present in the base form vs. the past tense form, and that regularizations are likely when the base vowel is dominant and unlikely when the past tense vowel is dominant. (Contains 25…

Investigated contributions to individual differences in preschoolers' identification of basic emotional expressions and situations, emotion language, and self-generated causes for basic emotions. The contribution of socialization predictors to emotion understanding was moderated by gender only for negative emotional responsiveness, and children…

Examined the relationship between variation in 840 children's cognitive activities and child-care quality, interaction with teachers, and children's play activities and attachment security with their child-care teachers. In 7 of the 8 subsamples, 15 to 30% of the variability in cognitive activities could be predicted from positive social…

Discusses teachers' use of systematic instructional design practices; describes fundamental components of instructional design; explains a teacher planning inventory; and reports on a study of junior and senior high school teachers that examined their use of instructional design practices in their planning routines. (Contains 21 references.) (LRW)

This study examined the relationship of previously determined predictors of general delinquency to violent behavior of African American and Caucasian males in a sample of 3,761. With the exception of family structure, predictors of violence are similar to predictors of general delinquency. (SLD)