Discovery teaching advocates minimal teacher guidance. Materials from two curriculum development projects were evaluated with respect to this guidance. Results indicate a considerable discrepancy between curriculum intention and reality, as measured by the degree of teacher guidance afforded in the projects' instructional materials. (CP)

Based on a study of 50 children between the ages of 3;0 and 5;6, the reasons for the differential difficulty of various forms of "who,""why,""when," and "how" questions are postulated. (EJS)

In an experiment using graduate students, fear of success and fear of failure were highly related factors, but neither interacted with item difficulty to affect test performance. Neither fear of failure nor fear of success influenced males or females differently. (Author/GDC)

The hypothesis that multiple-choice exams load higher on Level II ability than on Level I ability was confirmed by correlating multiple choice tests with the Cognitive Abilities Test Nonverbal Battery, the forward digit span test, and essay measures. Differences in scores among Asian, black, white, and Mexican American students are discussed in…

Fifth-grade children prerated both abstract and concrete nouns for likability, and paired-associate lists were constructed by pairing nouns. High self-concept children learned liked noun pairs more efficiently than disliked pairs, while the low self-concept children learned disliked noun pairs more readily. These self-concept patterns were most…

The development and validation of the Test of Thematic Analysis (TTA) are described. The TTA measures the effects of liberal education as distinct from other kinds of education and general maturation. Scores were higher among seniors than freshmen at traditional liberal arts colleges. No significant differences were obtained at two vocationally…

To detect the underlying structural relationship or chain among certain memorized pairs, two groups of undergraduates verbally reordered previously memorized pairs of either concrete or abstract nouns. The superior performance of the concrete word subjects was attributed to the differential effect of imaginal versus verbal encoding. (Author/CP)

Structuring leader behavior can increase group member morale by decreasing perceptions of failure. Task nature determines how much discussants believe they can improve on future tasks. Style of leadership is an important determinant of member satisfaction. (Author/MFD)

Children's judgments of confidence were examined following performance on a cognitive task as a function of age and skill and the presence or absence of feedback. Results suggest that domain-specific knowledge, in conjunction with feedback, may help young children compensate for developmental factors associated with an unrealistically high degree…

A procedural model, designed to assist practitioners in working with students with learning problems, targets three stages of the diagnostic-prescriptive teaching process: (1) defining the problem; (2) assessing potentially causal mismatches between child, task, and setting; and (3) intervening by eliminating or minimizing mismatches. (Author/CB)

Examination of two "simplified" adaptations of literary texts for less advanced learners of English as a second language found that attempts for lexical and linguistic simplification and linguistic standardization sometimes rendered the texts more difficult to comprehend and resulted in loss of narrative interest. (Author/CB)

Examination of 99 mathematics teachers' ratings of item difficulty indicated that the ratings were influenced by the teachers' attitudes and characteristics and their interpretation of the skills measured by the items. Teachers who rated items as relatively easy tended to favor tougher standards, grade students in relation to other students, and…

Investigates children's difficulty in understanding (numerical) place value. A counting and estimating task, based on Piaget's number theory, was devised to determine if children in grades one through five evidenced this construction. (Author/BB)

When elderly (70-89 years) and younger (30-49 years) adults imitated complex sentences, younger adults were more able to imitate accurately and correctly paraphrase sentences regardless of length, position, or type of embedded clause. Elderly adults were unable to imitate or paraphrase correctly long constructions, suggesting an age-related…

A test score can be used for individual instructional diagnosis after determining whether: (1) difficulty of the test items was consistent with the complexity of the content measured; (2) items measuring the same underlying process were about equally difficult; and (3) partial credit scoring would increase the reliability of the diagnosis. (LMO)