Overt and covert use of objectives of different cognitive levels

College students provided objectives along with a study passage scored significantly lower on a multiple-choice post-test than students given the same objectives plus an overt task for the content of each objective. Scores on lower level post-test questions were significantly higher than scores on higher level questions. Students did not perform better on the post-test on content for which they had been given higher level objectives than on content for which lower level objectives were provided. This finding was not in keeping with what would be predicted from learning from text studies employing inserted study questions of different levels.     

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.     

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.     

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 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.     

Adjunct question effects with review

The effects on retention of adjunct questions either placed at the end of a passage or inserted after their respective paragraphs within the passage were examined. The high school subjects were encouraged to review the materials after encountering the questions, a departure from traditional procedures in the field. Both treatments led to superior retention of the previously questioned facts when compared to a passage-only control group, but did not increase retention of previously unquestioned facts. The position of the adjunct questions did not differentially affect performance. The discrepancy of the results from those traditionally reported are interpreted in terms of the procedures employed.     

Expectancy and halo effects as a result of artificially induced teacher bias

This investigation examined the effects of deviancy labels on teachers' expectations of child behavior and their ability to evaluate child behavior objectively. One hundred elementary school teachers were randomly assigned to one of four label groups. Each group dealt with one label (emotionally disturbed, learning disabled, mentally retarded, normal), and each group participated in two separate treatment phases. During Phase I teachers identified behaviors they expected to be displayed by hypothetical children characteristic of the label condition. They were asked to complete a referral form for either a hypothetical normal, mentally retarded, learning disabled, or emotionally disturbed child. During Phase II, each group saw the same videotape of a normal fourth grade boy and completed a second referral form based on the behaviors displayed during this presentation. Experimental procedures were identical for the four groups, except each group was told the child was a member of a different category.Results indicated that teachers hold negative expectancies toward children categorized with a deviancy label and maintain expectancies even when confronted with normal behavior, behavior inconsistent with the stated label. Maintenance of this bias is sufficient to cause teachers to misinterpret actual child behavior, resulting in a halo effect. Results further indicated that the label of educable mentally retarded generated a greater degree of negative bias than did the labels learning disabled or emotionally disturbed, although all three deviancy labels produced negative expectancies and halo effects significantly different from those found under control conditions.     

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.     

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.     

Factors related to third grade achievement: Self-perception,classroom composition,sex, and race

The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between self-perception and academic achievement among third grade black and white disadvantaged school children. Race, sex, IQ, self-perception, and student's perceptions of their teacher's perceptions were examined as sources of variance in academic achievement. Data from one-hundred-sixteen students were analyzed by means of stepwise multiple regression. Results suggest that self-perceptions account for more variance in academic achievement for students who are of the same sex and race as the teacher than for those who are not. Self-perceptions of black students in all black classrooms account for more variance in respect to achievement than do self-perceptions of black students in integrated classrooms.     

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.     

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.     

Teacher characteristics and teacher performance

This study investigated effects of seven demographic and psychological characteristics of teachers on their performances during student teaching. Student teachers' performances were examined in relation to their ages, prior student teaching experiences, scholastic aptitudes, attitudes toward teaching, moral reasoning abilities, conceptual levels, and degrees of ego development. Results indicate that student teachers' performances were dependent in a nontrivial way on their ego development and to a much lesser degree on other characteristics.     

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.