To explore the issue of the impact of group tradition on decision-making performance, the present study was designed to compare the decision-making effectiveness of ad hoc and established groups engaged in a consensus-type decision-making task. (Author)

Investigated with 296 hearing impaired young adults and adults was the effect of delay between auditory and visual aspects of the speech message in an oral-manual interpreting situation. (Author/CL)

The sensitivity of creative thinking measured by the Torrance Tests with an experimenter-induced response set was investigated. Subjects (n=198) were divided into four groups and each was given a unique set of instructions. A multivariate Dunnett test showed that the Torrance Tests were highly sensitive to experimenter manipulation. (Author/DWH)

The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), a measure of concept formation and set-shifting capacity, was administered to two groups of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients defined by clinical course. The chronic progressive patients achieved fewer conceptual categories due to significantly more perseverative responses than control patients, whereas the…

A study investigating the maintenance of a memory strategy after training indicated that one factor influencing preschool children's strategy maintenance was the size of the improvement on recall performance that the strategy produced. A second study showed that size of improvement did not influence strategy transfer. (RH)

Investigation of differences between male and female students' reactions to receiving or not receiving performance feedback indicated that both sexes showed lower self-confidence when they did not receive feedback and that lack of self-confidence impaired the performance of males more than females. Participants were 111 fifth- and sixth-grade…

To investigate sensory dominance in early development, a series of studies examined six-month-old infants' processing of multisensory stimulus compounds. Findings indicated that infants discriminated changes in the temporal characteristics of the auditory component but not in the visual component. This and other findings suggested that auditory…

Involving 10-month-old infants, a series of studies examined responses to temporally modulated compound auditory-visual stimuli. Findings indicated that, although the auditory modality can dominate the visual modality at 10 months of age, the visual modality can process temporal information when the temporal relationship of the information in the…

Reviews court cases since the classic Brito v. Zia (l973) decision dealing with terminations based on subjective performance appraisals. Examines professional interpretations of Brito v. Zia, criticizing them in light of professional practice and subsequent court decisions. Distills major themes and issues from the review of cases and discusses…

Motivation of band members was tested by asking them a series of questions related to whether they ever challenged for chair positions and their satisfaction with their present placement and skill. Concludes failure and lack of satisfaction with one's current level of performance resulted in fewer challenges and external attributions of success.…

A model is proposed that relates the personality dimensions of introversion-extraversion, achievement motivation, and anxiety to efficient cognitive performance. This general information-processing model also accounts for the systematic effects of motivational states on sustained information transfer and some aspects of short-term memory.…

Proposes a framework which builds on theories of subjective expectations and which combines a new model of beliefs about control with a process model of intentional action. Applications to the study of control beliefs on cognitive performance are outlined. (RH)

By varying task requirements within a common procedural framework, four experiments established conditions under which children exhibit different understandings of life. Overall, results suggested that even four- and five-year-olds know that people and other animals are alive and that almost all "inanimate objects" are not. (Author/RH)

Comments note that instructional design literature rarely mentions learner motivation and learning in the affective domain, while educational research maintains such an emphasis, and explains why designers should emphasize these areas. Works by Keller on motivating learners, and Hurst on integrating instruction to include the affective domain are…

Contrasted two theoretical models to explain the mathematics final exam performance of 143 undergraduates: social learning theory variables and the math aptitude-anxiety models. The social learning theory model accounted for significantly more performance variation, and each of the variables (skills, incentives, efficacy expectations, and outcome…