Developmental priority of identity conservation: acceleration of identity and equivalence in normal and moderately retarded children

In an attempt to clarify the chronological relationship between identity and equivalence conservation, normal preschool-aged children (experiment 1) were exposed to brief videotape demonstrations of a model conserving identity and equivalence, identity only, equivalence only, or neither. Subsequent performances indicate that identity was easier to accelerate than equivalence, and training in both identity and equivalence appeared to be most effective in accelerating conservation. Trainable mentally retarded (TMR) children were then exposed to either the identity-equivalence-conserving or control model (experiment 2). This population, which some have argued remains at a preoperational level of functioning, was more likely to conserve identity than equivalence. In addition, conservation in the training group increased following training, though these gains were not maintained over a 3-week retention interval.     

Sex-related differences in response to practice on a visual-spatial test and generalization to a related test

93 first graders (mean age 6.5 years) were given a pretest and posttest on half of the items from the Children's Embedded Figures Test. Half of the children were randomly assigned to a training condition and received a brief training procedure on visual-spatial disembedding prior to the administration of the posttest. Children in the control condition received no training. The performance of girls improved significantly more from pretest to posttest than the performance of boys. Boys and girls showed similar beneficial effects of training in addition to the benefit of direct practice. The tendency that was observed for boys to perform higher than girls on the pretest, p less than .10, was not evident on the posttest. Scores on the pretest predicted scores on a different measure of visual-spatial ability only for children in the control group. The results are interpreted in terms of current theories of sex differences in visual-spatial perception.     

Stability analysis of nonlinear control systems with characteristics equations having complex coefficients

In this paper, the stability equation method is applied to the analysis of nonlinear systems with characteristics equations having complex coefficients. Three types of systems are studied: those with unstable open-loop poles, unstable characteristics roots or an equal number of open-loop poles and zeros.     

PPBS in higher education planning and management: Part II,the university of California experience

Part I provided an overview of PPBS, some discussion of PPBS implementation in the U.S. government, and a review of the arguments for adopting PPBS in postsecondary education and the various kinds of work that have been done toward this end. In part II, we discuss the experience of the University of California with PPBS from 1966 to 1971. Part III, to be published subsequently, will suggest some new departures in model construction and policy analysis which we believe represent a useful spirit in which further development can and should occur, and will also contain some general concluding observations.

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Résumé Dans la première partie, publiée antérieurement, on trouvait les principes généraux du PPBS (Program Planning Budgeting Systems) une discussion rapide de la mise en oeuvre du PPBS par les autorités gouvernementals aux Etats-Unis, quelques uns des arguments qui militent en faveur de l'adoption du PPBS dans l'enseignement post-secondaire ainsi que ce qui a été entrepris à cette fin. Dans la deuxième partie, nous soumettons à la discussion ce qu'a été l'expérience de l'Université de Californie en matière de PPBS de 1966 à 1971. La troisième partie, qui sera publiée ensuite, proposera quelques points de départ nouveaux pour la construction du modèle directeur et l'analyse des politiques; nous pensons qui'il s'agit là d'un point de vue utilisable qui peut et devrait donner lieu à de nouveaux développements; cette troisième partie présentera aussi quelques observations générales en forme de conclusion.