This study examined the impact of maternal labeling of children as gifted on the sibling relationship in 144 pairs of firstborn and secondborn siblings classified as both gifted, firstborn gifted, secondborn gifted, or neither gifted. Five aspects of the sibling relationship were examined: warmth/closeness, status/power, conflict, maternal…

A total of 12 professional caregivers and 35 2- and 3-year olds participated in a study to determine caregivers' influence on the competence of preschoolers. Caregivers assisted children while the children performed classification tasks. Found that the sex of the children and the working conditions of the caregivers influenced children's task…

Outlines a cognitive process model of abstracting, indexing, and classification that is based on text comprehension processes. Text comprehension for indexing versus other purposes is discussed, including conceptual and perceptual processing; conceptual knowledge and the development of expertise are discussed; and characteristics of short-term and…

Identifies fundamental questions in the design, selection, and assessment of activities that need further scholarly attention, reviews recent findings, and offers a conceptual analysis and a list of principles as a potential tool for constructing and assessing curricular activities. (CJS)

Describes the economic and societal perspectives of information and its importance to society by analyzing the nature of the information sector. A new classification model of the information economy is proposed, and implications for policy decision making in an information society are suggested. (25 references) (LRW)

College undergraduates (N=136) studied a hierarchical plant classification system using a figural taxonomy or a pictorial mnemonomy. Mnemonomy students outperformed taxonomy students on (1) immediate and five-day delayed measures of classification system construction and use; and (2) a test that required solving analogies involving plant terms.…

Discusses the use of story models for hypertext design. Relevant research is reviewed; interactive fiction is examined; advantages of the story format in instructional design are described; and a taxonomy of five types of story structures for hypertext design is presented. (Contains 56 references.) (LRW)

Less emphasis should be placed on numbers of disabled people employed and more on their equitable distribution within organizations. An affirmative action model categorizing jobs as nonable-body dominated and able-body dominated would distinguish types of disability and reduce structural barriers to employment. (SK)

This response to Reynolds et al. (EC 605 232) commends the authors for refocusing the discussion from classification of students to eligibility for service but suggests that their 20/20 model may be an oversimplification and inadvertently systematize inequities of the current system, including urban/suburban differences and intraindividual…

Argues for an original structure for field guides, a structure that encourages induction on the part of the student and allows the student to create flexible taxa based on ecologically and evolutionary relevant field marks. Students will become more familiar with the multiple bases of taxonomy. (PR)

The following methods for selecting similar units in performance monitoring are compared: (1) cluster groupings; (2) index groups; and (3) benchmark groups. Advantages and drawbacks of each method are presented, with a discussion that demonstrates the statistical superiority of the benchmark grouping method. (SLD)

Two experiments examined preschoolers' ability to apply multiple labels to representational objects and to people. Found that preschoolers reliably produced or accepted several words per entity and accepted a high percentage of class-inclusive and overlapping word pairs. The mean number of words produced in labeling task was related to receptive…

Four studies assessed whether children and adults saw categorization decisions as objective matters of fact or as invented conventions. Found that preschoolers treated basic-level animal and human-made artifact category decisions as objective, with kinds of animals treated as more objective than kinds of artifacts. Adults' judgments were similar…

Examines 288 interpersonal-research articles published during the past 25 years in this journal. Develops a 17-part categorization system to account for each of the articles. Places the categories in relationship with one another to create a model of interpersonal communication consisting of seven components: culture, internal states,…

Compared parents and nonparents to examine differences in the use of gender stereotyping to classify children's toys, and differences according to children's ages. Findings for 206 toys suggest that while toys are gender stereotyped for all age groups, there is more flexibility in gender stereotyping of toys for infants and toddlers. (SLD)