Explored professional development needs related to demographic characteristics of principals and examined the relationship of professional development needs and self-reported job performance ratings. Responses of 140 principals show a positive relationship between professional development needs and self-reported job performance ratings. (SLD)

A study involving eight toddlers (aged 22 months) with hearing loss found significant correlations between the children's receptive vocabulary sources and other subscales of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory, as well as other measures of language, aspects of nonverbal cognition, and an assessment of symbolic play skills. (Contains…

Evaluates the success of the Integrated Information Center (IIC) project at the University of Minnesota. Highlights include the functionalities of the IIC, the impact of the IIC on the work life of the end-users, and the IIC as a model for information delivery. (MES)

Three studies examined linguistic factors influencing preschooler's phonemic awareness task performance. Results indicated no performance differences between fricatives and stops. Subjects were more likely to mistakenly judge that syllables began with a target phoneme when the initial phoneme differed from the target only in voicing than when it…

Examines the increasing demand for and proliferation of commercial tutoring services for grade school students. Discusses the approaches of several such programs, as well as the goals and attitudes of parents enlisting such services for their children. (HTH)

Evaluated factors that influence junior faculty across disciplines in the pursuit of grants. Found that junior faculty who acquire some grant training as part of their doctoral or postdoctoral program still require some faculty development in the grant process. Barriers included teaching loads and inadequate support, while motivators included…

This study with 432 college students examined how variables influence the relative performance of groups and individuals on creative problem-solving tasks. Having more ideas available (through a priming manipulation) led to better individual performance. Group performance, however, was enhanced by training appropriate to problem content that…

Recent experiments are reviewed in three areas of research concerning reinforcement schedules: (1) behavioral history effects on schedule performance; (2) the role of instructions in schedule performance of humans; and (3) dynamic schedules of reinforcement. The paper concludes by identifying some general issues concerning reinforcement schedules…

This study employed an audiometric test battery with nine blindfolded undergraduate students to explore success factors in echolocation. Echolocation performance correlated significantly with several specific auditory measures. No relationship was found between high-frequency sensitivity and echolocation performance. (Author/PB)

Focuses on three areas that can affect how well a consultant serves the client: (1) decisions, including decision making, decision makers, and lines of communication; (2) illusions, including the need to address performance improvement; and (3) models, including defining, validating, and possibly changing the model. (LRW)

Sources of observed differences in difficulty between items in graph comprehension performance were studied using 132 items from the Psychometric Entrance Test, an Israeli college entrance examination. Results indicate that item difficulty can be predicted successfully on the basis of item characteristics and task demands. Implications for graph…

Three experiments examined the role of representations in adolescents' deductive reasoning. Findings indicated that, with age, conditional reasoning improved on tasks containing permission conditional relations; reasoning fallacies increased on tasks containing causal conditional relations. Valid conditional inferences were more common on problems…

Suggests that performance consultants are at their best for the benefit of clients when they assume the role of facilitator, not solver of clients' performance problems. Describes the four requirements involved in facilitation: Facilitators, Exemplary Performers, a Model, and Resources. Illustrates how to implement and use the four features of…

Examined visual search for compound patterns in 6-, 8-, 10-, and 22-year-olds. Found large improvements with age in search rate for long-range targets; search rate for short-range targets was fairly constant across age. This pattern held regardless of ease of perceptual access to target, supporting the hypothesis of different processes involved at…

Investigated 4- and 7-month-olds' perception of transparency, using computer-generated achromatic or color displays depicting a semitransparent box occluding the center of a rod. Found that 4-month-olds indicated perception of transparency in color but not in achromatic displays. Seven-month-olds showed some evidence of transparency perception in…