A survey of 39 elementary special education teachers in Colorado indicated that more respondents had knowledge of Down's syndrome than of fetal alcohol or fragile X syndromes. Respondents' level of education, date of most recent degree, and years of experience were not associated with greater awareness nor knowledge of fragile X syndrome.…

Using examples from public libraries and community parks and recreation, the author argues that increased emphasis on relevant performance comparisons with other local governments and appropriate standards could capture public attention and encourage greater accountability. (SK)

Students with severe/profound mental retardation performed functional tasks under training or probe conditions. Analysis of nine students' records indicated that students do not react to probe conditions as if they were extinction conditions; training data do not consistently reflect performance under probe conditions; and data collected under…

Sixty eight year olds in tutor-tutee pairs on two tasks (spatial-numeric and item recall) benefited from elaboration (being taught principles guiding task performance). However, when child-tutors generated their own principles for guiding learning, performance was not improved. (SK)

Etiology-specific profiles of intellectual abilities were compared in 30 males (ages 6-12) with fragile X syndrome, Down's syndrome, or nonspecific mental retardation using the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children. All three groups scored lower on sequential processing than on simultaneous processing or achievement, and etiology-specific…

This literature review on antecedents, behaviors, and consequences in the noncompliant behavior of people with mental retardation found that noncompliance is more likely when instructions are vague or task demands are too difficult and that noncompliance responds well to programs utilizing combinations of social and tangible rewards. (Author/JDD)

Stuttered sentences pronounced by 12 4- to 6-year-old children in spontaneous conversation were analyzed for length and grammatical complexity. Results indicated that sentences in which stuttering occurred within the first three words were significantly longer and more complex than sentences where no fluency failure was found. Implications for…

Surveys individuals teaching full time while at the "All but Dissertation" (ABD) stage to discover barriers and paths to successful completion of the dissertation while employed. Provides suggestions on how to successfully complete the dissertation while teaching full time. (SR)

Twenty-four hearing-impaired subjects (mean age 67 years) were tested for lipreading skills under 3 conditions (full face, eyes masked, only lips visible). Results show no significant association between facial visibility and lipreading ability. Results are interpreted in the context of the phonological and semantic components of speech.…

Assisted and unassisted performance of 14 average readers and 14 readers with learning disabilities (ages 10-13) were compared on a reading comprehension task. The groups differed in how easily they learned to find the main idea under different topic sentence placement conditions, with the learning-disabled readers requiring significantly more…

Investigation of grammaticality judgments and decision times for 21 children in 2 age groups (ages 6-7 and ages 8-9) found good sensitivity to grammatical errors, with errors in word order more readily detected than errors of morphological selection. Older children processed errors somewhat more quickly. (Author/DB)

Discussion of document retrieval systems and measuring system performance focuses on the upper bounds, or maximum performance, that can be obtained with a system. Topics addressed include bounds for retrieval performance; average search length; average precision; incomplete searches; an asymmetric measure of retrieval performance; and measuring…

Relationships between multiple-choice test answer changing and testwiseness skills, and between these two variables and examination performance were studied with 150 college business students. Answer-changing behavior was related to multiple-choice test performance but not to testwiseness or performance on the nonmultiple choice portion.…

A study involving 553 college students, 27% of whom reported a history of child abuse, investigated whether family of origin dysfunction was associated with poorer childhood memory. Weak associations were found between family of origin dysfunction and poorer general quality of childhood memory. (Author/CR)

A model of the intrapersonal processes impacting computer-related performance was tested using data from 75 manufacturing employees in a computer training course. Gender, computer experience, and attributional style were predictive of computer attitudes, which were in turn related to computer efficacy, task-specific performance expectations, and…