This report is one of three concerning the 1972-73 field test of the Inquiry Role Approach (IRA) to biology teaching developed by the staff of the Mid-Continent Regional Educational Laboratory (McREL), Kansas City, Missouri. This paper is focused on the measurement of social skills and attitudinal development of IRA biology students. The IRA…

This study provides evidence for the validity of the Social Adequacy subscales of the Psychosocial Maturity Inventory: Social Commitment, Tolerance, and Openness to Change. A group of students who invested substantial time and energy in social action projects directed toward helping others was compared with a randomly chosen control group. The…

To enhance knowledge of television content, a prosocial code was developed by watching a large number of potentially prosocial television programs and making notes on all the positive acts. The behaviors were classified into a workable number of categories. The prosocial code is largely verbal and contains seven categories which fall into two…

The purpose of this paper is to examine the function served by self-adaptor type behaviors (defined here as "hand touch" on the face, body, the other hand, and the fingers) in order to discover why people perform self-adaptors and what happens when they do. Following an extensive review of the literature, it is proposed that…

This volume of a 2 volume report presents an historical study of collective student conflict and violence in America and a framework for analyzing the internal and external dynamics of current student disorders in America. In the historical segment collective student behavior is categorized into 4 classes: faddism, deprivation, normative action,…

A study was conducted to observe the behavior of preschool children (1) varying in age, sex and identified by teachers as thriving or not thriving; (2) in day care programs differing in mode of choice-making, i.e., teacher initiates or child initiates; (3) in the context of an analysis of physical setting and program structure; and (4) in terms of…

The study of children's group formation employs Piaget's cognitive-development theory along with ethological concepts and methods used in the naturalistic study of the social behavior of animals. It represents the first application of ethological ideal to a study of the child's conception of his social world, and focuses on his conceptions of the…

This investigation used social psychological concepts in analysis of social processes among pupils engaged in a cooperative task. It explored several ways of increasing interdependence among participants and determined the effects of such conditions on pupil performance. The subjects were 228 randomly selected fourth and fifth grade students. The…

A study was conducted to examine social behavior by one-year-old boys over the course of a three-month playgroup experience. The "clusters" chosen for examination consisted of temporary groups (often less than a minute) the toddlers formed to focus on a single activity. Socially directed behavior is defined here as vocalizing, laughing and…

Age differences affect children's understanding and evaluation of television content, and these differences may be related to social behavior after watching television. One type of age-related changes concerns changes in the cognitive skills that children must use to comprehend content. Studies have shown that children as old as third graders…

The classroom teacher should be proficient in the use of the operant conditioning principles of positive reinforcement and extinction. An eight-step outline of one approach to modifying classroom behavior uses and builds on these principles. People have been afraid to use scientific knowledge of human behavior because of their fear of being…

Any attempt to gain insight into the effects of television on the viewing public must also include an assessment of the amount and patterns of viewing by the various segments of the general population. This fourth volume of technical reports to the Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior attempts to provide a new picture of…

In this research competition is examined conceptually in order to develop a functional definition that will facilitate systematic research on the process. Competitive behavior is defined as behavior that is a positive function of a comparison of the results of one person's behavior with the results of another's behavior. Comparisons, in turn, can…

A 1955 survey of the effects of television on 10 to 14 year-old children in Great Britain is reported. A discussion of the problem investigated is presented first--the impact of television on children. Next a summary of the main findings is offered detailing the amount children view and the way in which different children react to television. A…

Three studies were conducted to investigate stereotypes of men of various hair colors by middle-class Anglo college students. Study 1 found an increase of perceived blondness with status, while lack of status was associated with red hair. Study 2, using semantic differentials (after Osgood), found blonde males to be significantly more beautiful,…