Effect of personalized basal stories on the reading comprehension of fourth-grade poor and average readers

Forty fourth-grade children were assigned randomly on a stratified basis to read either standard or personalized basal stories and answer comprehension questions. The results of the study indicated that children previously identified as poor readers comprehended more information when they read personalized, as opposed to standard, stories. No difference was found among children of average reading ability on this variable.     

Student behaviors, teacher reinforcement, student ability, and learning

Ninety-eight children were observed for 6-min periods on each of 10 days during 50-min, small-group classes in either mathematics, science, geography, or language usage. Two student behaviors (on-task behavior and accuracy of responding to teacher-directed questions) and three types of teacher reinforcement (verbal reinforcement for on-task behavior and accurate responding and tangible reinforcers) were coded during each observation period. A post-test of achievement, directly related to the content of the lessons, was administered at the end of the 10 days of instruction. The causal effects of student behaviors, teacher reinforcement, and student ability (reading achievement and intelligence) on achievement were evaluated using path analysis. The strongest effects were from student ability measures, with accurate responding by students and teacher reinforcement of accurate responding exhibiting smaller, but significant effects. Findings are discussed to qualify the relationship between overt classroom behaviors and degree of learning and the mediating effects of student ability.     

The function of response mode in the coordination of perspectives

Visual perspective taking has attracted research interest as a result of Piagetian formulations regarding its ontogenesis. Some investigators have interpreted failure as a consequence of egocentrism while others have hypothesized task variables as the source of failure. The present study directly compared the effects of a picture selection response with a rotational one. Forty 3-year-olds and forty 4-year-olds were compared on the response modes. Half the children indicated perspective inferences by selecting from a set of photographs while the others rotated a replica. Children were tested on three nonegocentric perspectives. The data were analyzed with a 2(age) × 2(response mode) ANOVA. Significant effects were found for response mode and the age × response interaction. It was concluded that while both 3- and 4-year olds were able to demonstrate perspective-taking competence, the 3-year-olds performed better with the turning task; 4-year-olds were equally successful in either mode.     

The role of stimulus salience in young children's ability to discriminate two-dimensional rotations: Reflections on a paradigm

Children's ability to discriminate reflections and rotations of visual stimuli was examined within the confines of a mental rotation task. It was hypothesized that success would be affected by both characteristics of the stimulus and by the subtlety of the discrimination required. Forty 3- to 4-year-old children were directed to mentally rotate a stimulus a given number of degrees and to discriminate the appearance of the rotated stimulus from among a set of alternatives. Four stimuli differing in the number of visual orientation cues were utilized across 24 trials. A significant effect was found for number of orientation cues, and data indicated the difficulty children experienced detecting reflections, a task which bears close resemblance to the yes/no option in prototypic rotation studies. Children were only successful with a limited range of stimuli when discrimination of a reflected foil was not required. Results are discussed in light of discrepant findings about children's kinetic imagery ability and the advisability of using this particular paradigm with young Children.     

Performance of Montessori and traditionally schooled nursery children on tasks of seriation, classification, and conservation

It was hypothesized that the Montessori curriculum accelerates the acquisition of a number of concrete operational skills. To test this, eighty 4-year-old children were given three Piagetian problems—seriation, classification, and conservation. Half of the subjects were from Montessori schools, and the other half were from more traditional nursery settings. Within each type of school, half of the children were first year and the other half were second year enrollees. Results showed that significantly more Montessori than traditional children seriated and classified objects like concrete thinkers but that there were no differences on the conservation problem. Year of enrollment did not influence performance on any of the tasks. It was concluded that the hypothesis was confirmed and that the failure to find acceleration of conservation performance was due to its advanced nature relative to the other problems and/or the tangential manner in which Montessori exercises deal with the critical concepts that underly it.     

Reconceptualizing perceptual development: The identification of some dimensions of spatial competence in young children

In this examination of young children's acquisition of geometric skills, spatial performances were conceptualized as specific combinations of actions applied within stimulus contexts. Since both actions and context can vary, a number of different combinations can be specified. In this study, the relationships among eight such combinations were examined and predicted patterns compared with observed ones. Fifty-four 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children were presented with 24 geometric displays depicting a variety of geometric relations. Subjects were required to either match or recall the displays in both a reconstruction and a recognition task format thereby responding across different types of action demands. The geometric displays depicted information organized either around a single axis (horizontal or vertical) or around both axes, the variation in context. The results of a mixed design ANOVA revealed a good fit with the hypothesized predictions. The findings are discussed in terms of the development of spatial skills, information theory, and of skill generalization.     

Children's learning as a function of variation in stimulus characteristics and motor involvement

Results of two artificial letter learning experiments are reported. In Experiment 1, 229 preschool children were randomly assigned to one of five conditions: Two-dimensional small print size (2DS), two-dimensional large print size (2DL), two-dimensional large where subject traced stimuli mounted on cards (3DL), or three-dimensional large stimuli where subject was directed to manipulate stimuli during the first study trial (3DLM). Errors in the 3DLM condition were significantly less than in 2DS, 2DLT, and 3DL. Also, errors in the 2DL condition were significantly less than in 2DS. A replication experiment with kindergarten children failed to show any differences among the treatments. Results are discussed in terms of stimulus dimensions and motor involvement in children's letter learning. Implications for instruction and future research are noted.     

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.     

What time-series designs may have to offer educational researchers

The promise of time-series designs for educational research and evaluation is reviewed. Ten time-series designs are presented and discussed in the context of threats to internal and external validity. The advantages and disadvantages of various visual and statistical data-analysis techniques are presented. It is argued that time-series research paradigms are useful when researchers (a) wish to involve a single subject in experimental research (individuals as units of analysis) or conduct program-evaluation studies (aggregates as units of analysis), (b) are interested in nearly continuous measurement, (c) cannot meet conventional design and statistical assumptions, or (d) wish to specify individual differences through N = 1 research strategies. It is also suggested that more research endeavors be devoted to combining unique characteristics of time-series research with conventional multi-unit paradigms.     

Vicarious language instruction with bilingual children through self-modeling

The present experiment was conducted to determine the effectiveness of a self-modeling procedure and a self-modeling procedure combined with social reinforcement on the language acquisition of bilingual children. In the self-modeling condition the children were prompted to mimic portions of sentences on audiotape. These fragments were edited into complete sentences and served as models during instruction. Children in the self-modeling group displayed significantly more adjective usage and adopted more of the modeled content than children whose self-modeled responses were socially reinforced and children assigned to the two control conditions.     

Developing children's self-efficacy and skills: The roles of social comparative information and goal setting

How social comparative information and specific, proximal goals influence children's skillful performance and percepts of self-efficacy in the context of arithmetic competency development was explored. Low-achieving children in arithmetic received instruction in division and practice opportunities. One group was provided with social comparative information indicating the average number of problems solved by other children. A second group worked under conditions involving a goal of completing a given number of problems. A third group received both treatments, and a fourth group received neither treatment. Results yielded a significant main effect on perceived efficacy due to proximal goals. Children who received both goals and comparative information demonstrated the highest level of division skill. Results suggest exploring in greater detail how children weight and combine multiple sources of efficacy information.     

Score,rank, or evaluation: Does type of performance feedback make a difference?

Three kinds of information—a score, rank, or evaluation—were presented to subjects as feedback about their performance on a task measuring financial ability. The information was given under conditions where subjects anticipated working either alone or in a group on a similar ability-relevant task. As predicted, in the alone condition favorable evaluative information produced higher ability estimates than either scores or ranks. Only under conditions of expected group interaction did rank information produce ability estimates comparable to evaluative information. Subjects receiving raw scores generally made lower ability estimates than subjects receiving the other two types of information. The selection of riskier and more difficult future tasks was associated with higher ability evaluations. Relevance of these results to pupil evaluation in a school setting was discussed.     

Immediate and delayed recall of incidentally learned material: A comparison of paradigms across three developmental levels

Memory of incidentally learned material was investigated across three developmental levels in immediate and delay conditions. Subjects (56 first graders, 56 sixth graders, and 56 college students) were assigned randomly within developmental level to one of four experimental conditions: Type I immediate, Type I delay, Type II immediate, or Type II delay. In the Type I paradigm, subjects looked at pictures but were given no explicit instruction to remember, and in the Type II paradigm, subjects were instructed to remember specific pictures when shown all stimuli. Paradigm interacted with recall condition and significant amounts of incidental learning proved durable for sixth graders and college students. Incidental learning increased with age in both paradigms, suggesting that previously reported divergent developmental trends may not be the result of the type of paradigm.     

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.     

Individual differences in young children's recall and clustering of pictures

Children's incidental recall of pictures was examined in two related experiments. Extrapolating from adult research, it was predicted that categorizing pictures with respect to their semantic properties would yield greater recall than categorizing them according to their physical properties. In Experiment 1, second-grade children were exposed to 16 line drawings cross-classified to represent four taxonomic categories and four shape categories, with four instances per category. Control subjects simply looked at pictures. Semantic subjects identified each picture's semantic category, and Physical subjects identified each physical category. In Experiment 2, first graders freely sorted the pictures and were classified as Semantic or Physical sorters based on their predominant bases for sorting. Following exposure (Experiment 1) or sorting (Experiment 2), all subjects were asked to recall the picture names. Results of both experiments show that semantic classification yields greater recall than physical classification. Experiment 2 also shows that semantic sorting yields greater semantic clustering in recall and that sorting by physical category yields greater physical clustering. It was suggested that children's preferences for a mode of processing (Experiment 2) may constitute an individual difference dimension with fairly clear-cut instructional implications.     

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.     

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.     

The usefulness of teachers' characteristics in predicting teachers' ratings of racially and linguistically different students

The study was designed to determine whether professional experiential characteristics or stereotyped expectations best predict teachers' ratings of racially and linguistically different children. Sixty-eight white elementary school teachers rated 12 speakers who differed in race and dialect. Biographical information concerning teachers' training experience teaching black students was collected as were stereotyped expectancies. Results of maximum R² improvement techniques revealed that professional characteristics were unrelated to teachers' ratings, but that stereotyped attitudes predicted the teachers' performance. The results are discussed with reference to the implication for success of disadvantaged children in the educational system and for future in-depth research.