A group of 31 institutionalized retarded adolescents responded to 18 conservation of number tasks. (Author)

Cuing, organization, and reduction constraints were systematically manipulated in a descriptive passage presented to 120 undergraduate students. Results showed strong effects for cuing on written summary qualities. Performance across treatment combinations on all four outcome measures was far below ceiling level. (Author/BS)

Acquisitions librarians at two different universities studied the performance of four serials vendors by ordering the same titles at the same time. The study shows which vendor performed best in areas of delivery time, discount, fulfillment, and service, and also provides supportive data for management decisions in acquisitions. (Author/EM)

Cocaine and nicotine are among stiumulants used by athletes to improve their performance or for escape. Negative effects of these stimulants are discussed. (Author/CB)

Conditions which call for the discovery of a problem were introduced to fifth graders in a divergent thinking exercise. Significant relationships were found between responses to personal drawings and creative attitudes and values, but not intelligence. Findings indicate that freedom to discover and solve problems appears to be the primary…

The potential effect of goal setting to improve the spelling performance of elementary school students was examined. While results tended to support the hypothesis that the setting of specific and difficult goals improved performance more than simply asking students to do their best, differences in group means were not significant. (Author/CB)

Three categories of information were hypothesized to be important information for successful execution of procedural assembly tasks: operational, spatial, and contextual information. Performance data for two tasks indicated that subjects using "complete" instructions finished the assemblies in less time and with fewer errors than did…

Concludes that strategies are not responsible for memory span development in children 7 through 13 years old. Running and fixed memory span tasks and a running probe task were administered to 38 children. The probe task showed age differences as great as with the fixed span task. Span was reduced by approximately half an item over all ages.…

The report provides preliminary findings of a study on the speed of processing visual information by partially sighted children. Findings revealed considerable variation in performance and suggested that some partially AL sighted children may not be able to cope with the test's time demands. (CL)

Determined whether shoppers would use nutrition information when making in-store choices among brands of five packaged products. Also determined whether information used would be affected by the number of nutrients appearing on signs displayed in the store, and/or by the perceived importance of the set of nutrients presented. (JN)

Exam-skilled, high-anxious college students performed comparably with skilled, low-anxious peers on the Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices, yet significantly worse on the concurrent backward Digit Span test. Conversely, high-anxious, unskilled subjects were exceeded by low-anxious, unskilled peers on both tasks. (Author/BW)

Speech-action coordination in 100 three and four year olds was measured according to a modified version of Wozniak's hammering-board task. Four instructional conditions (instructional, demonstration, vocalization, no vocalization) were presented in a numerical task ("Hit four times") and in two spatial tasks: three-color ("Hit red,…

Move sequence analysis revealed that, when presented with problems having subgoals difficult to order, 40 preschoolers between 45 and 70 months of age (1) tended to avoid backup; (2) were sensitive to incremental progress toward a goal; and (3) searched moves ahead for a goal. None of several indices of performance were reliably correlated with…

Fifth graders, ninth graders, college students, and persons over age sixty-five were given pencil-and-paper tasks in spatial development. Discusses results in terms of ecological validity, experience, and number of competing cues to be processed simultaneously. Used Piaget's formulation on adult cognitive development to explain elderly's…