Social-motivational development in first grade

Social-motivational changes during first grade were studied longitudinally on a population of 89 Caucasian middle- and lower-socioeconomic status (SES) children. Results revealed that children, on the average, had a more internal locus of control, were more optimistic, and scored higher on an effectance motivation measure at the end of first grade than at the beginning. Attitudes toward school and self-esteem did not change from the beginning to the end of first grade. Changes on some social-motivational dimensions appeared to be affected by children's SES and by their academic success in first grade.     

Cheating: The illusory edge

This experiment studied the relationships among cheating, overall test performance, and the relatedness of materials available and unavailable to the cheater. Subjects learned a free-recall list and were then tested for recall either when cheating was impossible or when half of the list had been left “carelessly” exposed. For half of the cheat subjects the exposed and the unexposed words belonged to different categories, while for the remaining halves the items belonged to the same categories. Recall was scored for both exposed and unexposed words. The results indicate that significant cheating did occur, that cheating did not improve overall performance, and that while cheating elevated the numbers of recorded exposed words it depressed recall of stored unexposed items (for both related and unrelated sets). This associated cost effect is discussed in connection with category retrieval, output interference, attention, and arousal.     

Mnemonics for phonics

Two experiments were run in which the effect of pictures as mnemonics for learning letter-sound pairs was investigated with prereading children. In both experiments the mnemonics had a substantial positive effect during training, but this effect disappeared on a transfer test with the mnemonics removed.     

Four components of Rotter's internal-external scale and cheating behavior

This paper studied correlations between classroom cheating and the four subscales of Rotter's I-E scale identified by Collins. One-hundred-thirty college undergraduates completed the Rotter scale converted to 46 Likert items and a 30-item multiple-choice, introductory psychology examination under crowded classroom conditions. Cheating, as indexed by answer overlap with adjacent neighbors as compared to answer overlap with distant subjects, correlated significantly with the difficult-easy subscale but not with the other subscales, and not with the overall I-E scale. Results are taken as justification for the Collins' subscales and are discussed in terms of the multidimensional aspects of the overall I-E dimension.     

Population differences in constructive memory

An experiment was conducted to evaluate constructive memory in fourth-grade low-SES black and middle-SES white children. The children were read nine short passages; each passage was composed of two premise statements and a filler sentence. The children were tested by a recognition procedure. Thirty-six test sentences were presented randomly. Four sentences were associated with each passage (true premise, false premise, true inference, and false inference). Subjects were asked to make yes/no recognition decisions based on whether the test sentence was identical to a sentence presented at study. Middle-SES white children made few errors, except to true inference test sentences. This pattern of performance is consistent with the constructive view of memory. Low-SES black children also had a high error rate to true inference items. However, this outcome may not reflect constructive memory because they also had a high error rate to some of the other types of test sentences.     

A transition model for placement of handicapped children in regular and special classes

Mainstreaming and deinstitutionalization are current phenomena which call for a variety of handicapped children to be transitioned to a range of educational settings not previously available to them. A model is presented in which critical transition parameters are conceived as functionally related continua, indicating degrees of readiness for both special and regular classroom settings. The model is based upon actual experience in placement of disturbed, learning disabled, and retarded children into school settings after discharge from a psychiatric hospital.     

Duration of response to teacher questions and statements

To examine the effectiveness of teacher questions in stimulating student participation, 26 high school discussion classes were tape-recorded and the duration of utterances timed by stopwatch. Analyses of variance performed on class mean duration of student response revealed three findings. (1) No significant difference was observed between response to questions and response to declarative statements. (2) By question type, opinion questions received significantly longer responses than factual ones, and closed longer than open; no differences were observed for six other ways of classifying questions. (3) Response to questions appeared unrelated to selected characteristics of classroom, teacher, and student. The findings offer little support to current emphases in theory and practice on the use of questions in discussion classes. The study may be situated within a body of recent research that has failed to validate traditional claims for the efficacy of teacher questions.     

Use of clustering techniques in deriving psychoeducational profiles

This study explores whether a synthesis of clinical and statistical data taken from the psychoeducational reports completed on a group of 42, 9- to 11-year-old boys referred to a Child Psychiatric Outpatient Department for school-learning problems, would yield discrete clinical categories or clusters of children. An amalgamated hierarchical clustering technique which formed clusters by subjects based on a measure of euclidean distance was used. Forty-two reports were evaluated by licensed educational psychologists in five input areas: Developmental History, School History, Cognitive Functioning, Sensorimotor/Perceptual Functioning, and Academic Achievement. One of three educational placement recommendations was identified for each subject: No Educational Placement Intervention Necessary, Special Tutoring or Remediation, and Special Class Placement. Using clinical characteristic ratings given by the evaluators on each variable, a similarity-dissimilarity matrix was formed which classified subjects into four discrete clusters based on their clinical profiles. A χ² test determined that there was a significant association (p < .01) between cluster membership and educational placement recommendations.     

Project 12-ways: Measuring outcome of a large in-home service for treatment and prevention of child abuse and neglect

Described here is Project 12-Ways, a large service project employing an ecobehavioral approach to the treatment and prevention of child abuse and neglect. By ecobehavioral it is meant that multifaceted in-home services are provided to clients, and that in-home data are collected on as many variables related to these services as possible. Four levels of research, data collection, and assessment are used to evaluate these services: Included here is a discussion of these levels of assessment. They are: data collected for clinical purposes; data from single-case experiments; research through the use of single-subject design logic applied to several subjects or groups of subjects, or by group statistical research designs; and program evaluation. The particular focus here is the program evaluation data which compare incidents of abuse and neglect during and after treatment between 50 families served by Project 12-Ways and 47 comparison protective service families. The data showed significantly fewer combined abuse and neglect incidents among the families served by Project 12-Ways. Suggestions for additional program evaluation data are provided along with a discussion of the limitations of the current analysis.     

Effects of two types of letter rehearsal on word memory in skilled and less skilled beginning readers

Skilled and less skilled beginning readers were taught to read and define 10 printed pseudowords. Then they rehearsed the spellings of the words in one of two ways. Experimental subjects performed activities to retain spellings in memory as orthographic images. Control subjects rehearsed the letters similarly but with the correct spellings in view. Post-tests revealed that experimentals remembered spellings better than controls. This indicates that the activity of committing letters to memory is better for learning spellings than copying letters which is what most spelling programs have learners do. Experimental subjects' superior knowledge of spellings, however, did not enable them to read the words faster or more accurately than controls, possibly because of overlearning. Comparison of good and poor readers' word-learning behavior revealed greater deficiencies in phonological than in semantic processes. Correlational analysis indicated that background skills are much more powerful than specific learning experiences in accounting for individual differences in reading and spelling performances.     

The relationship between perception of locus of control and academic achievement: Review and some educational implications

In an attempt to explain the evidence which indicates that internal perception of control is postively related to academic achievement, this paper suggests that mediating motivational and cognitive reactions, which differentiate internals from externals, may account for this relationship. Furthermore, on the basis of data which suggest that the perception of locus of control is a changeable disposition, this paper calls for structuring environments that will induce and maintain realistic internal perception of locus of control.     

High school student satisfaction and perceptions of the school environment

The satisfaction of high school students was studied using an adaptation of reinforcement theory. An instrument entitled Students and Their Schools was developed to assess the perceived availability and value of 35 different academic and interpersonal dimensions of the high school environment and student satisfaction with these areas. This was distributed to 411 students in two city and three suburban public high schools. Availability of resources alone is more highly related to satisfaction than their value. Small but consistent differences were found between male and female students, with suburban females reporting lower levels of availability and satisfaction but higher value ratings than other students. City students have higher levels of satisfaction, but lower levels of value, than suburban students. Most of the differences concerned academic aspects of school and interactions with administrators and faculty. If students perceive a high availability of rewarding aspects of their school environment, they report higher levels of satisfaction with school. Thus, an adaptation of reinforcement theory can be used as an empirical measure of student satisfaction with school.     

Conceptual process as a function of age and enforced attention in learning-disabled children: Evidence for deficient rule learning

Adapting a modified reception paradigm, three bidimensional rules (conjunctive, disjunctive, conditional) and two instructional conditions (enforced attention vs standard rule learning) are used to test the assumption that deficient rule learning rather than inattention is responsible for poor learning with learning-disabled children. Main findings indicate learning-disabled children are deficient on binary conceptual rule tasks for three age groups (6 to 7, 8 to 9, 12 to 13) compared to normal children matched on sex and IQ regardless of experimental instructions. For both groups, learning is retarded by rule complexity while rate of learning diminishes with increasing age. Data reflect a truth-table logic at all ages for both groups, although there is evidence that disabled children perseverate with a rule-learning hypothesis characteristic of younger nondisabled children. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that rule learning is deficient in children with learning disabilities.     

Determinants of foster care placement for the maltreated child

This study examined the records of the North Carolina Central Registry of Child Abuse and Neglect to determine which social, family, and child characteristics were most influential in the decision to place a child in foster care. These records contained all theoretically relevant factors as well as demographic data. Analysis included the computation of odds ratios for foster care for each of 250 variables. A maximum likelihood logistic regression model was constructed to obtain the independent and cumulative contribution of each factor. Some expected variables such as parental stress factors (substance abuse) and types of abuse (burns and scalds) placed a child at a significant risk for placement in foster care (p < 0.01). However, less obvious factors such as referral source (law enforcement agencies) or geographic area also placed children at risk. Overall, the model explained little of the variance of these decisions (R² = 0.168) and poorly predicted placement (sensitivity 66.3 per cent, specificity 74.6 per cent). Using existing data. we were unable to adequately describe the decision process in selecting foster care.     

The literature of educational psychology and the literature used by writers in educational psychology

Using Psychological Abstracts as the source of the original sample (“first-level”), various characteristics of the literature of educational psychology are compared with the characteristics of a “second-level” literature (defined as the literature that the first level cites). In particular, the scatter (dispersion) of periodical articles over periodical titles is looked at for both levels. The journals most cited within the literature of educational psychology are identified.     

Comparative functions of preschool learning style and IQ in predicting future academic performance

Early assessment programs frequently rely on intelligence tests for making predictions regarding children's future school performance. Unfortunately, IQ scores provide little information to those who must develop educational interventions tailored to the unique ways in which children respond to learning situations. Alternatively, measures of children's learning style focus on distinct patterns of learning-related behavior manifested in classroom settings. Each dimension of learning style is composed of observable skills that are potentially teachable or alterable through available instructional procedures. In order to examine the relative contributions of learning style dimensions, IQ, and their interactions to the prediction of subsequent performance, 100 kindergarten children were evaluated by teachers using the Study of Children's Learning Styles scale and were administered the Kuhlmann-Anderson Intelligence Test. Fifteen months later the children's first-grade achievement was determined through standardized tests and teacher-assigned grades in reading, language, and mathematics. Relationships between the predictor and criterion variables were studied through patterns of bivariate correlations, canonical variate loadings, and standardized regression weights. Although IQ was found the better predictor, learning styles accounted for appreciable and statistically significant proportions of the variability in later achievement. The learning style dimensions functioned differentially across areas of achievement to enhance overall prediction either by complementing or interacting with the predictions afforded by IQ. The results are examined in the light of earlier research on learning-related behavior.     

The effect of labels and instruction on concept attainment in the educable mentally retarded

The present experiment examined concept attainment in 80 educable mentally retarded and 80 normal boys of high and low mental age. The concept of an equilateral triangle was assessed following random exposure to one of four experimental conditions assessing the influence of verbal labels and instruction on the labels. A 2 × 2 × 4 multivariate analysis of variance revealed a significant effect of mental age; however, retarded and normal subjects did not differ in mean performance on any of the five dependent measures. The hypothesized treatment effect was significant at the formal level of concept attainment. The findings were discussed in terms of theoretical and educational implications.