In this study 27 third graders and 27 sixth graders were given varying degrees of practice in sorting salient, categorized word lists. The purpose of the practice conditions was to encourage different levels of grouping strategies in a subsequent free recall task using similar categorized materials. Children in a Materials Only condition were…

A study was conducted to determine how children in preschool/kindergarten and third/fourth grades would predict whether a boy or a girl would succeed on cohort-defined masculine, feminine, or sex-neutral tasks. Older children predicted the winners along sex-typed dimensions. Boys and girls predicted a male more frequently when the task was…

Social comparison is an important influence on motivation, capability self-evaluations (self-efficacy), and skillful performance. In addition, social comparative information provides a standard against which students can judge their present performance level. Students may experience an initial sense of self-efficacy in attaining a given standard;…

Differences in children's interpersonal perceptions and in their conceptions of behavior disorders in hypothetical peers were investigated in a sample of 34 boys between the ages of 10 and 13. Two groups of subjects were formed: 17 subjects attended special classes for the emotionally handicapped and were classified as exhibiting conduct problems…

A majority of the school districts that desegregate use magnet schools as part of their effort. Magnet schools offer enriched academic or vocational programs to attract committed students whose neighborhood schools do not offer the coursework and activities they seek. This paper is concerned with science magnet schools. This study was designed to…

A study was conducted to investigate the peer concepts held by 16 second-grade, 17 fourth-grade, and 17 sixth-grade students. A paired comparisons sociometric procedure was used to obtain children's descriptions of their classmates in the areas of reading, mathematics, drawing, and an athletic skill (running). In addition, the procedure measured…

Little is known about how teachers encourage memory activity and strategy use in children. In order to gain such information, 69 teachers of grades K through 6 were observed in five 30-minute periods. A total of 292 strategy suggestions and 15 instances in which the teacher attempted to suppress spontaneous strategy use were observed. Teachers…

Examined the ability of three-year-olds, four-year-olds, kindergartners, and second graders to predict how certain internal and external conditions affect behavior. In two studies, a forced-choice procedure revealed that even the youngest group could predict the effect of various causes, while a third study examined more complex types of causal…

First and fifth graders participated in this assessment of ways in which differential experience with objects in a spatial array might establish relative landmarks within the array. Results suggest that different levels of experience can establish elements as relative landmarks in spatial memory. (Author/RWB)

Two experiments look at factors influencing the ways children construct an abstract representation of story structure that contains the characteristics described by story grammars. (RWB)

Investigates whether dyslexic children use word identification processes which are qualitatively different from those used by normal readers at the same stage of reading acquisition. Results suggest that dyslexics and normal readers use essentially the same processes to recognize words, but may differ in knowledge of correspondence rules. (RWB)

Examines the development of feminine and masculine patterns of sexual identity in boyhood and the relation between these patterns and later sexual orientation. (Author/RWB)

Findings suggest that (1) dyslexia is more prevalent in the United States than in Italy, (2) reading disabilities are strongly associated with disorders of verbal processing in both countries (although some American dyslexics also show visual-motor deficits), and (3) there is a greater dissociation between reading comprehension and decoding in…

Tested hypothesis that understanding validity of inference is a relatively late development by asking fourth and seventh graders and college students to sort sets of deductive arguments. None of fourth graders, 45 percent of seventh graders, and 85 percent of college students used validity as basis for distinguishing arguments. Experiments…

Describes two experiments that examined word recognition processes of second, fourth, and sixth graders. Shows that older children use meaning frequency to narrow the amount of information kept active following word recognition. (HOD)