Examined the phonological analysis and verbal working memory components of the sound categorization task and their relationships to reading skill differences. Children were tested on sound categorization by having them identify odd words in sequences. Sound categorization performance was sensitive to individual differences in speech perception…

Illustrates the use of forced classification for assessing student solutions to ill-structured problems. The analysis, applied to discussions by children of a social problem, consists of content categorization; quality ratings within content categories; and categorical discriminant analysis, with student grade and judged quality as discriminating…

This reaction paper criticizes the characterizations of clusters used in a study concerning a taxonomy of lifestyles of families with severely mentally retarded children, by I. T. Mink and others (EC 211 387). The criticism focuses on the use of cluster scores on criterion variables and use of cluster profiles across studies. (JDD)

A lexicalist, or direct-mapping, view of the relationship between syntactic functions and surface syntactic relations and a link between semantic features and the assignment of arguments to syntactic functions are advocated. An experiment with 192 undergraduate students examines the issues as problems of language production. (SLD)

A study investigated the communication strategies used by successful and less successful early French immersion learners by analysis of the use of 10 specific communication strategies. Results show effective communicators used virtually all strategies, with more achievement than reduction strategies; less effective communicators used fewer…

A mathematical formula is introduced for the effect of integrating data. A method is then derived to eliminate the effect from correlations of variables, including mean composites, thus allowing for a clustering algorithm that requires allocation of variables according to the magnitude of their correlations. Examples illustrate the procedure. (SLD)

The influence of matched and unmatched application adjunct questions on the acquisition of problem-solving skills from a prose passage was studied for 78 undergraduates. Unmatched application questions produced superior problem solving, classification of novel examples (CNE), and recall of concept definitions. Matched application questions…

Five categories of microcomputer software for information storage and retrieval (ISR) are distinguished and characterized: classical retrieval systems; end-user software; indexing programs; full-text retrieval programs; and personal information managers. In addition, the special retrieval techniques of hypertext and best-matched searching are…

Conducted 3-year catch-up prospective study of 654 rural special education students. Record review of handicapped students from preschool through secondary school revealed that 32.8 percent had classification change. Changes in type of program occurred for 33.1 percent, and changes in frequency of services occurred for 71.2 percent of students in…

Explores the use of outdated reference materials in history instruction and the inadequacy of bibliographic training for history graduate students. Describes the explosive growth in the availability of reference works and their changes in form. Observes that historians still rely primarily on written reference works. Offers a taxonomy of U.S.…

Interrelates school and district data files from the National Center for Educational Statistics with county demographic files and county typologies from the Economic Research Service. Explores the usefulness of cross-tabulating rural versus urban status with metropolitan versus nonmetropolitan status as contextual categories for understanding the…

A connectionist model of argument strength that applies to categorical arguments involving natural categories and predicates about which subjects have few prior beliefs is proposed. This feature-based model was tested in argument strength rating studies with 34 undergraduates, and its validity is discussed. (SLD)

The comprehensive management of epilepsy in people with mental retardation requires consideration of four aspects of care: diagnosis and classification, anticonvulsant drug treatment, safety and protection from injury, and psychosocial functioning. This paper outlines what is known and unknown in these four areas and introduces articles in this…

Analysis of family and medical histories of 5 children (ages 11 to 16) with autism and hyperlexia and 5 sex-matched and IQ-matched children (ages 9 to 15) with autism but no hyperlexia suggested that children with autism and hyperlexia represent part of the continuum of autism rather than a specific syndrome. (Author/DB)

Normally achieving, learning-disabled and mildly retarded students (n=148, ages 6-9) were trained to select the odd picture of a 3-picture array. Mildly retarded subjects showed large, consistent performance differences from the other groups, but learning-disabled subjects could not effectively be distinguished from normally achieving peers.…