This report presents the results of a study undertaken to test the possibility that pre-existing attitudes could explain the previously reported association between fitness improvement and attitudes and self-confidence. Recruits from four Marine Corps basic training platoons (n=265) provided data for the study. Scores on the standard physical…

Discusses the problems of grading, including the estimation by students of their own performance level. (Editor/PG)

We compared the performance of three heuristics with that of subjects on variants of a well-known combinatorial optimization task, the Traveling Salesperson Problem (TSP). The present task consisted of finding the shortest path through an array of points from one side of the array to the other. Like the standard TSP, the task is computationally…

Children of ages 5 and 8 years were given one of three learning tasks: a component selection problem, in which the two components of the stimuli were redundant and could both serve as functional cues, and two incidental learning tasks, in which one stimulus component was task-relevant and the other was incidental. Results suggest a developmental…

To determine whether the distraction effect associated with material rewards in discrimination learning can account for the superior performance of reward groups in probability learning, the performance of 144 school children (preschool, second, and fifth grades) on a two-choice successive discrimination task was compared under three reinforcement…

Results of a survey show that all of the employers surveyed were apparently trained to use "tough talk" to control employees. In an experimental case described in the article, the application of behavioral technology to business problems resulted in tremendous payoffs, both to employer and employee. (Author/SC)

This study replicated the story completion part of the earlier research on fear of success by Horner, and introduced three variations in the cue used to measure fear of success, which was slightly more characteristic of honor students than others. (EK)

Developmental changes in preschool children's awareness of the relative effectiveness of four nonverbal strategies in a memory-for-location task were investigated. Fifty-two preschool children (12 three-year-olds, 20 four-year-olds, and 20 five-year-olds) made paired comparison judgments as to the mnemonic effectiveness of marking, touching,…

The impact of false information concerning the effect of the menstrual cycle on test performance and subjects' perception of the adequacy of that performance were investigated. Women (N=65) were studied either during the premenstrual or midcycle phase. Subjects were given one of three interpretations: (1) they should do well because of their…

The effect of television on the performance of 20 learning disabled children (6-10 years old) was investigated. Television was employed as a means of presenting a formal diagnostic measure (the Visual Sequential Memory Subtest of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities). The subtest was administered via videotape by a fictional character…

Three experiments examined the influence of videotaped classroom events on the classroom performance and study behavior of groups of 17 reading disabled and 17 normally reading elementary school children (ages 7 to 12). In the first two experiments the presentation was experimenter controlled, and the distractors resulted in poorer performance in…