Factors that may influence the picture-elicited narrative production of 4-year-old children were examined. Subjects were 70 children of 4 years of age who told narratives about two familiar events: baking cookies and going to the beach. Of the sample, 22 children in a description condition described each of 6 line drawings for each event. Another…

Two studies explored conditions in which preschoolers can understand and apply effective elaboration mnemonics. In the first experiment, 24 preschoolers ranging in age from 3 years, 10 months, to 5 years, 5 months were randomly assigned to interaction, no interaction, and control conditions. The experiment was designed to determine whether…

This document surveys the rehabilitation and independent living community in Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas for programs and practices that demonstrate especially effective service delivery and can serve as role models. Section 1, the introduction, identifies the background and purposes of the Regional Rehabilitation Exchange…

Three contextual factors, the gender of the principal, the choice of subject matter used for the demonstration of competence, and number of years of teaching experience, have been shown to have an effect on the outcome of teacher evaluation. The annual evaluations of 521 elementary personnel using the Florida state-mandated single assessment were…

Texas and North Carolina have exhibited strong levels of commitment to define and enforce standards of competent performance in the teaching profession. To make up for a prior lack of definition of what constitutes teacher effectiveness, both states have developed similar systems of teacher appraisal. In North Carolina, the Teacher Performance…

The relationship between test anxiety and performance on oral comprehensive examinations was studied, with special attention to the repressor phenomenon. Repressors are persons who report low anxiety, but are actually more stressed than are low anxious subjects, as evidenced on measures not relying on self-report. Subjects were 42 female graduate…

Female college students (N=59) filled out the Bem Sex Role Identity Scale, and were told that they would be asked to do an anagram task. Half of the subjects, assigned on a random basis to the masculine task condition, were told that males do very well on the task, and that it seemed to be related to the masculine personality. The other half of…

In order to ascertain the extent to which older persons' levels of behavioral functioning parallel their levels of intellectual functioning, 42 female patients, aged 61-99, of an outpatient comprehensive care geriatric clinic, completed the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), the Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale (IADL), the…

This study assessed the ability of third, fifth, and seventh graders to learn a problem-solving heuristic scheme and apply it to grade-appropriate tasks. A framework was utilized that focused on metacognitive aspects of task performance such as planfulness, strategy selection, monitoring, and evaluation. It was expected that use of the scheme…

Communication apprehension (CA) has emerged as the dominant paradigm for explaining communication stress and its corollaries. It has achieved this status largely because several key assumptions have not been challenged or assessed empirically. These assumptions are that CA (1) is a pervasive social phenomenon, (2) affects external outcomes of…

Two studies are presented which investigate the influence of various toy structures on the frequency of individual fantasy play forms in 3- to 6-year-old children. In the first study, the effects of high-realistic/high-complexity and low-realistic/low-complexity toy structures were compared. There were significant main effects for the factor toy…

A study examined a series of performance standards issues in the context of employment and training programs targeted toward the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) population. Telephone interviews were conducted with representatives from the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) and departments of public welfare programs in nine states.…

Although research in goal setting has demonstrated that specific, difficult goals lead to better performance, more refined research on the affect of participative decision making and supportive leadership on goal setting has produced ambiguous results. To investigate the relative importance of goal setting, leader supportiveness, and task…

This study measures performance frequency of leadership tasks of approximately 20 percent of Colorado's principals. Principals most experienced do not differ from others on the frequency assessment scale, yet spend more time on instructional leadership activities, which range from teacher support (professional growth opportunities, rewards) and…

Prior research indicates that language-handicapped children obtain higher test scores when tested by personally familiar examiners than when tested by personally unfamiliar examiners. The present investigation inquired whether this finding is due to examinees' actual differential performance across the two examiner conditions, or whether it is the…