A study was conducted to examine young children's ideas about a psychology study in which they had participated, and to assess their perceptions about the voluntary nature of their participation. Subjects were 28 third-grade students and 28 fifth-grade students. Findings indicated that while no significant grade level differences existed in…

Questions designed to assess children's reactions to the ending of friendships were asked in structured interviews involving 64 children (30 third graders and 34 sixth graders). Subjects, divided almost equally by sex, were mostly white and primarily middle-class. Questions were specifically designed to elicit information regarding (1) why and how…

This practicum was designed to improve and increase the problem-solving skills of third-grade students. Using a specially designed 20-item test consisting of mathematical word problems, a preassessment was made of the addition and subtraction skills of 843 third-grade students from high, middle, and low socioeconomic levels in four Florida…

Previous research with adult subjects has indicated that the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) Socialization Scale (SO) is one of the most useful assessment instruments for the identification of individuals with antisocial personality disorder. In order to develop a simple measure to better identify those children at risk for future…

This research investigates how individual differences in strategic abilities affect problem solving and, more particularly, the extent to which hypothesis-generating skills predict effective hypothesis testing. Additional questions concerned the effects of content and timing of instructional advice on children's problem-solving strategies, and…

This report presents a methodology for examining perceptual development in the arts and describes a study based on this methodology. The purpose of the study was to chart the developmental course of perceptual skills used in the arts and to investigate whether these skills generalize across art forms and aesthetic properties or whether they are…

Suggests that inner speech is a manifestation of the need to prestructure oral utterances. Among the results, inner speech was found to be acquired by normally developing readers between the ages of 8 and 11, and children comprehended text better when certain prosodic features were made visible on the text. (Author/CB)

States that the combination of group rewards (based on group members' individual learning) and peer interaction on learning tasks is necessary to produce learning gains characteristic of effective cooperative learning methods. Discusses research on group contingencies and cooperative learning in the elementary school classroom.(NH)

Involving 82 preschool children and grade 2 students, a study was conducted to (1) determine whether heart rate, facial, and self-report indices could be used to differentiate between different vicariously induced negative emotional states; (2) examine developmental differences in the degree of differentiation; and (3) assess the pattern of…

Two experiments examine the sorts of cues that might be available to facilitate children's ability to discriminate between memories for their own actions. Results suggest that the differences in discrimination performance demonstrate the importance of kinesthetic cues and visible consequences for children's memory discrimination. (Author/RWB)

Examines the influence of prior knowledge on the quality of fourth-grade students' responses to three process-approach tasks: writing, conferencing, and revising. Results suggest that prior knowledge is a significant factor in all phases of process-approach lessons. (NH)

Examines the relation between attention to target and context information and target recall in an incidental learning task for children and adults. Results support a distinction between context-interactive and context-independent situations and suggest that the attentional patterns that are efficient for memory may differ with the kind of…

Study uses two language conditions for evaluating ability in class inclusion. Estimates strategic components of performance on basis of differential consequences of inclusion logic, subclass comparison, and guessing. Results indicate children compare subclasses more frequently with a standard question and guess more frequently with a…

Investigated the relationship between developmental shifts in the organization of materials and developmental changes in deliberate strategy use. Subjects were second and fourth graders. (HOD)

Spontaneous expressive control of negative emotion was examined in two studies of children three- to nine-years-old using an experimental "disappointing" situation. Study 1 examined facial expressions, verbalizations, and spontaneous references to emotional expression control. Study 2 examined the expressive behavior of 20 preschool…