Two classroom conditions (classroom demand and classroom attention) were systematically manipulated to explore their effects on performance under analogue assessments for a girl (age 7) with severe intellectual disabilities who exhibited aggressive behavior. Results demonstrated higher levels of aggression during demand analogue conditions when…

A study of 707 eighth-grade students investigated the influence of an instructional unit on the invention process and investigated the degree to which training influenced students' inventiveness. The students who received the instruction developed a significantly greater number of inventions, but the quality of the inventions was not significantly…

Scores on Raven's Progressive Matrices correlated positively with electroencephalogram-recorded alpha rhythm frequency (AF) in 101 healthy male adults, as did one test of verbal ability and one of mental performance. However, AF did not show significant relationships with general intelligence or spatial and arithmetic abilities. (SLD)

The nature of outstanding and weak performance in a teaching internship and how to predict that performance were studied with 100 interns. Personal qualities dominated the list of factors contributing to both success and failure. Expected indicators were not good predictors of success when judged independently of personal qualities. (SLD)

Two studies examined 9- to 15-month-olds' ability to deduce an abstract nonmatching rule from reward feedback. Results showed that physical connectedness between stimuli and reward was key to performance. In the absence of the perception that stimulus and reward were components of a single thing, even close spatial and temporal proximity were…

Links between theory of mind and episodic memory involving autonoetic consciousness were investigated in Japanese 4- to 6-year-olds. After age was controlled for, most theory of mind abilities showed no interrelations. Own and others' belief understandings on deceptive appearance tasks were solely related to source memory. Results suggest that…

A study involving three men with autism examined the effects of allowing the men to make their own activity schedules by writing down the order of their tasks. Social praise was provided contingent on the participant's task completion. Client engagement was substantially higher than baseline for all three participants. (Contains references.)…

This study compared 3- and 5-year-olds' reports of a true or false play interaction following repeated interviews. Findings indicated age-related improvements in performance. Three-year-olds questioned repeatedly about a false event made more errors in response to specific questions than their age-mates questioned about false details of a true…

Two studies examined whether preschoolers use whole-part juxtaposition to accurately interpret novel part terms. Results confirmed that children do use juxtaposition to guide learning of novel part terms and that such use was not due to memory effects nor to recognition of the grammatical frame accompanying juxtaposition. Children readily used…

The poor achievement of secondary students with learning disabilities in mathematics is often affected by prior low achievement, low expectations for success, and inadequate instruction. Good instruction involves careful selection of examples; explicit instructional design; a parsimonious use of time and resources; and techniques such as direct…

The Educational Testing Service Kit of Factor-Referenced Cognitive Tests contains 72 tests that are supposed to be markers of 23 latent cognitive constructs. Examination of the factor structure of four of these tests with 165 undergraduates suggests caution in using the measures as markers of distinct factors. (SLD)

Examined white-lie-telling behavior in 3- to 7-year-olds using task whereby the experimenter asked "Do I look OK for the photo?" with or without a visible mark on his nose. Found that most children in the experimental condition told white lies. Undergraduates viewing children's videotaped responses could not discriminate white-lie…

Four experiments examined whether letter names at the ends of words are equally useful as letter names in the initial position. Findings indicated that 4- and 5-year-olds derived little benefit from such information in reading or spelling, although adults did. For young children, word-final information appeared to have less influence on reading…

Three experiments investigated effects of complexity on 2- to 6-year-olds' understanding of a beam balance. Found that 2- to 4-year-olds succeeded on problems that entailed binary relations, but 5- and 6-year-olds also succeeded on problems that entailed ternary relations. Ternary relations tasks from other domains (transitivity and class…

This study examined preschoolers' performance on an observation task and a search task involving the invisible displacement of an object. Findings indicated that in the observation task, there was significantly longer looking to impossible than to possible outcomes among all children. Most 3-year-olds, but significantly fewer 2.5-year-olds,…