This study examined the contribution of cognitive and emotion-based factors in predicting school-age children's risk-taking decisions when the social-situational context did, and did not, pressure for risk-taking. Using drawings of play situations that depicted three possible paths of travel that varied in injury risk and pitted convenience…

We provide here a brief historical analysis of a movement in progress from a belief-based "mystery" model to an evidence-based "mastery" model of giftedness and talent development. We have observed that educators concerned about exceptionally capable learners are moving from a categorical notion of "the typical gifted child" with somewhat…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether field- independent learners are better suited to agricultural distance education programs than their field-dependent counterparts. The sample population for this descriptive correlational study consisted of all students seeking a degree and/or advanced formal training in agriculture through an…

The psychological concept of consciousness is examined in this article. It is argued that the intentionality of an individual's behavior is the key to the measurement and representation of his consciousness. The experiment examined concerns groups of students of business administration and civil engineering as well as professional economists, and…

Focusing on the cognitive consequences of the present-day media environment and on the possible implications for cognitive assessment of these consequences, the information environment is discussed concerning the nature of its symbol system and electronic media. Also discussed are the information processing demands of television, the media and…

Fifty-five college students were assessed on four types of cognitive and metacognitive measures in math, language, and visual/spatial tasks. They were measures on self-reported general metacognitive skills, predicted performance, metacognitive behaviors, and actual performance. The students' self-reported assessments of their ability on a general…

An extensive literature review of the cross-cultural generalizability of the concepts derived from differentiation theory which focuses on the major proposition of the theory and its primary empirical expectations. Studies conducted in other cultural settings which were either guided by the theory or sought to evaluate it are discussed and…

This study assessed the music background and music achievement of 178 13-year-old rural students in southwestern Montana. The population for this study consisted of all 13-year-olds attending designated elementary schools in a six-county area in southwestern Montana. 1-, 2-, and 3-teacher K-8 schools were referred to as "rural" while…

Based on the assumption that the kind of instruction provided during testing is important when examining children's zones of proximal development, two methods of dynamic assessment, "graduated prompt" and "mediation," were compared to each other and to static assessment. In dynamic assessment, the examiner sets up a learning…

The effects of topical coherence on the comprehension of two groups of non-native (Finnish) users of English and a control group of English native speakers were observed, with reaction times from a visual word monitoring task as the dependent measure. The experiment examined the ability of intermediate and advanced second language students to…

The conceptions of information needs of seven American and seven Swedish mechanics employed by a Swedish multinational machine industry are compared by using perspective text analysis to analyze their verbal responses to three open-ended questions concerning their need for work-related information. The structures embedded in the texts are…

Researchers have attempted to develop paper and pencil Piagetian tests that yield results equivalent to manipulative Piagetian tasks and that can be administered in significantly less time. This study is an attempt to partially replicate and extend the findings of research by Paul Ankeny and Lyle Joyce who found significant positive correlations…

Social class, as reflected in socioeconomic status (SES), has such a profound influence on all aspects of performance that it is perhaps the most powerful predictor of academic achievement. Intelligence quotient (IQ) tests in one form or another have been used for quantitative assessment of academic ability since Alfred Binet first developed the…

This exploratory study investigated the leadership styles of selected administrators in Tennessee's public schools. Styles of leadership were viewed against a backdrop of current brain research, and the subjects' underlying patterns of cognitive processing were identified by means of a self-report measurement of brain dominance--the Herrmann Brain…

This study was designed to test the hypothesis that relatively field independent students will perform at a significantly higher level than relatively field dependent students in college-level, introductory economics courses. Previous studies focused on comparative pedagogies, or an examination of the student variables of gender, ability,…