Inventory for appraising adult creativity

An adult creativity survey, the Preference Inventory (PI), was based upon the assumptions that creatively productive persons, more than the average, mentally examine and play with ideas. Such people also are very curious, strong in needs to create, and are highly original. Scores on the PI were significantly correlated with scores on the Sounds and Images test, ratings of art and writing samples, and an objectively scored Statement of Past Creative Activities (SPCA). The SPCA was considered the most reasonable validating criterion. A regression analysis showed that different patterns of PI subscales were the best predictors of different criterion measures.     

The effects of effort feedback and performance patterns on children's attributions and task persistence

This study examines the effects of performance patterns (ascending versus random) and attributional information regarding the causes of that performance (effort feedback versus no feedback) on attributions and task persistence. Subjects were 40 fourth and fifth graders with dispositional tendencies not to perceive effort as a cause of their school-related performance. Results indicated that performance patterns did not systematically influence either children's attributions or persistence. As predicted, children given effort feedback exhibited greater levels of task persistence than those given no feedback; unexpectedly, however, this effect was not mediated by children's attributions.     

The effects of test expectations based upon goals on the free recall of learning from text

The number of facts college students correctly recalled was not affected by whether they were provided goals which did or did not encourage them to reorganize the passage material they studied. This held both for learners asked to recall all facts they could and those asked to recall only a portion of the goal-targeted facts. Learners whose recall exhibited reorganization of passage material did not differ in number of correctly recalled facts from those who failed to reorganize the passage material. Learners were more apt to reorganize the text materials when asked to recall only a portion of the goal-targeted facts than when asked to recall all facts they could. Self-report data suggest learners primarily use goals to rehearse the targeted material only after they carefully read a study passage.     

Change in strategy: The relationship of attribution,expectancy, performance,and satisfaction

The purpose of the study was to examine the degree to which change in examination preparation is related to measures of attribution, expectancy, prior performance, perceived success/failure, and satisfaction. Subjects were students in an intermediate graduate statistics course. Although performance is the single best predictor of change in preparation, three attribution measures and satisfaction contributed unique predictive variance. While expectancy was significantly related to change in preparation, it did not add uniquely to the multiple correlation.     

The episodic/semantic memory distinction as an heuristic in the study of instructional effects on cognitive structure

Previous attempts to measure the effects of instruction on students' cognitive structure have produced inconsistent and ambiguous findings. One reason may be that researchers have not distinguished between well-learned, abstracted information and memorized facts or formulas. Using the distinction between episodic and semantic memory as an heuristic, a procedure was designed to increase the likelihood that student performance on structure tasks was indicative of semantic rather than episodic memory. Significant correlations between measures of cognitive structure and performance on achievement test items were observed. In addition, partial correlations revealed that the measures of cognitive structure are correlated with the achievement items tapping higher-order cognitive processes and not with items tapping lower-order processes. These results are interpreted as supporting the argument that related research needs to be guided by theory-based definitions of cognitive structure.     

The role of objectives in guiding the organization of information learned from text

This study was designed to identify how objectives influence the organization of the information recalled from text. Three hypotheses were investigated: (1) that objectives affect the sequence of attention to information in text, (2) that they affect the sequence in which information is rehearsed during a review period, or (3) that they serve as a set of cues at retrieval. One hundred college students read objectives either before or after reading a passage (varying the opportunity for objectives to affect the sequence of attention). They then either had or did not have a review period (varying the opportunity to use objectives to sequence rehearsal and also varying the presence of the objectives in memory at the time of retrieval). One hundred more students read the passage in control conditions with objectives available throughout the reading or with no objectives available. Results showed that students given objectives after reading but before a review period had more clustering by objectives in free recall than did those who never saw objectives, supporting the hypothesis that organization by objectives occurs during rehearsal. No evidence was found to support the notion that organization by objectives occurs during encoding or retrieval phases.     

Feedback complexity and corrective efficiency

College undergraduates read a 2400-word passage, responded to 16 multiple-choice questions, and received one of four types of feedback following their responses. Complexity of feedback was inversely related to both error correctability and criterion efficiency taken as a ratio of feedback study time to post-test corrects. The results were discussed in terms of depth of processing and instructional comprehension.     

Measures of cognitive structure: Do they assess learning at the level of comprehension?

One purpose of this study was to determine whether cognitive structure, assessed by psychometric measures of concept interrelatedness, can be developed when the students initially do not know what concept relationships exist and what they mean. The second purpose was to apply those measures to a learning situation that has produced a nonspecific transfer effect, i.e., the facilitative effect of concrete examples on learning abstract passages, to attempt to explain this effect more completely. Five groups of 20 students each read two prose passages and took recall and structure assessment tests on the second passage. Results (1) indicated that the nonspecific facilitative transfer effect was replicated and (2) offered some support for the contention that the cognitive structure which proximity measures assess can be trained to correspond to content structure, but that related recall remains low. With resolution of some of the methodological issues surrounding these measures, however, clearer explanation of transfer effects and assessment of higher order learning may be facilitated.     

The role of fantasy figures in the regulation of young children's behavior: Santa Claus,the Easter Bunny,and donations

The present study examined the influence of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny on children's donations near the Easter season. Kindergarten and first-grade children were asked to tell stories about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or pets, for which they received nine pieces of gum. They were then encouraged to donate any amount of their gum to handicapped children. Main effects were found only for grade, with first-grade children donating significantly more than kindergarten children. In addition, a significant interaction was obtained between grade and type of story elicited from the child. This interaction revealed that for kindergarten children, the type of story failed to influence donations, whereas for first-grade children, stories referring to Santa Claus increased donations relative to stories told about the Easter Bunny or pets.     

Irrelevant information: Some effects on children's problem-solving

Children of 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 years of age were given simple, social-matching problems. Two conditions were employed: each involved verbal presentation but in one (Condition V) no concrete representation was involved while in the other (Condition M) models were also used. Within each condition, information was provided which was (a) sufficient, (b) superfluous, (c) irrelevant or which displayed a combination of these characteristics. For all age groups, the problems containing only irrelevant information were the most difficult, although Condition M enhanced the performance of younger children while depressing that of 7- and 9-year-olds. The results were interpreted as supporting the view that a major source of difficulty for the child may lie in selecting the appropriate referent. Some inferences are drawn regarding the abilities of children to cope with ambiguity.     

Automatic conceptual encoding of printed verbal material: Assessment of population differences

The release from proactive interference task was used to investigate categorical encoding of animal and clothing items with fourth grade low-socioeconomic status black and middle-socioeconomic status white children. The print mode of verbal presentation and an ordered recall requirement were used in order to provide hospitable conditions for the detection of population differences. The results indicated parity in buildup and release from proactive interference for the two populations. The results of this study, consistent with previous estimates of release from proactive interference for these groups (e.g., D. W. Kee & L. Helfend, Journal of Educational Psychology, 1977, 69, 344–348; S. Y. Nakayama & D. W. Kee, Journal of Educational Psychology, 1980, 72, 386–393), indicate that low-socioeconomic status black and middle-socioeconomic white children do not differ in automatic conceptual encoding. Conceptual encoding differences, however, have been detected between these populations when the free recall method has been used. Thus, discussion of the present results includes a consideration of factors which may be responsible for population differences in free recall performance and preliminary evidence on this issue is provided.     

Causal attributions of students and student-proctors for performance on a university examination

Undergraduate psychology students rated the importance of several causes of examination outcomes both prior to and after taking a course exam. Similar attributions were made by advanced psychology students who served as course proctors. Students rated proctor characteristics as more important and their own characteristics as less important determinants of exam outcomes, particularly successful outcomes. Results suggested that positivity biases rather than egotism biases are operative in actual classroom settings. Further, contrary to expectancyconfirmation theory, student and proctor preexamination confidence was not strongly related to postexamination attributions.     

The effect of modifying the cognitive tempo of reading disabled children on reading comprehension

The present investigation was concerned with teaching poor readers to use a reflective cognitive style. It was hypothesized that such a strategy would facilitate the reading ability of poor readers. To test this hypothesis, approximately half the poor readers and half the average readers were divided into experimental and control groups. The experimental group of children was taught to delay their responses and to use more efficient search and scanning techniques. All groups were tested before and after training on the Matching Familiar Figures test and the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test. Poor readers' vocabulary and comprehension scores and level of reflectivity improved following training. It was concluded that imposing slow reading strategies on impulsive children is an important factor in developing educational programs for children with reading disabilities and that teaching poor readers a reflective cognitive strategy may have important consequences on the child's reading performance.     

Latent variable models: Applications in education

Most theories in the social sciences involve relationships among constructs which are not directly observable. Behavioral measures exist of all constructs, such as intelligence, creativity, and other cognitive traits, aggressiveness, sociability, and other personality and affective characteristics; but these observed measures are usually assumed to be imperfect indicators of the (presumed) underlying construct. The imperfections exist because of errors of measurement and because the observed behavior may be influenced by other underlying constructs in addition to the one of primary interest. Statistical methods, called latent variable models, have been developed to provide rigorous tests of theories involving unobserved variables. This paper describes the major types of latent variable models, shows how they can be applied in educational research, and gives representative examples of their use from the literature.     

Effects of administrative scheduling and directions upon student ratings of instruction

Using temporal proximity of instructor/course evaluations to critical in-course events, together with psychological set provided via directions, the present investigation sought to assess (1) the appropriateness of within-course time-series analyses for instructor ratings, and (2) the potency of inducing rater perceptions of the rating process as an interactive variable in course evaluations. A 2 × 2 (temporal proximity by psychological set) factorial design used students enrolled in two sections of an undergraduate course in educational psychology as subjects. Using both midterm and final examination time periods as data collection points, the results of this investigation suggested that preexamination instructor/course evaluations tend to be more favorable than postexamination evaluations, and that a specific positive psychological set prior to evaluations tends to produce more favorable evaluations than very general, brief instructions.