The reactions of 60 gifted students and 60 regular students in grades 4, 6, and 8 to an audiotape of age-appropriate riddles, jokes, puns, satire, and nonhumorous items were compared. Results indicated that gifted subjects performed significantly higher in spontaneous mirth response and comprehension of verbal humor than the general population…

This study of the story composition abilities of 46 students (aged 11-14) with learning disabilities found that subjects had a rudimentary knowledge of story form, but this knowledge was less developed than that of their nondisabled peers. Subjects also had greater coherence problems in their writing and were less fluent writers. (Author/JDD)

The current level of implementation of 18 basic middle school principles in the 147 Missouri schools that met the definition of middle schools is the focus of this study. Questionnaire responses were received from 101 of the schools' administrators. Mean scores, standard deviations, and mean percentages of the maximum possible scores yielded by…

A survey of 1,353 college students who received tuition rebates for tutoring disadvantaged students, grades four-nine, revealed: (1) tutor motivations differed, (2) intrinsically motivated tutors rated tutoring success higher than extrinsically motivated tutors, and (3) tutors declaring only extrinsic motivation were more critical. (IAH)

Glossometric measures of tongue positions of 10 normal hearing and 10 profoundly hearing-impaired children (ages 11-15) were compared during production of the 8 vowels. Compared to controls, the HI subjects produced vowels using a reduced vertical range and singular flat, high-back tongue shape. (Author/JDD)

Results of divergent thinking tests (administered to 228 intermediate school students, of whom about 43 percent were gifted) and calculated correlations between creativity and intelligence measures did not support the threshold theory which posits that creativity and intelligence are related only up to an intelligence quotient of about 120.…

Young adolescents (n=396) from single- and two-parent families carried pagers for one week, reporting on daily activities, companionship, and quality of subjective experience. Found that adolescents' overall patterns of time use and subjective experience were similar in both family types, although similarity was achieved by reorganization of…

This study was conducted to determine the relationship between suggested practices observed in ten randomly selected middle schools scoring in the lowest quartile, and ten randomly selected middle schools scoring in the highest quartile, on the student attitude section of the 1971 Michigan Assessment Test of Basic Skills, for Grade 7. The study…

The focus of this study is the current level of implementation of 18 basic middle school characteristics as perceived by principals of two groups of Ohio public schools, those organized by grades 6-8 and those organized by grades 5-8. Questionnaire responses were received from administrators of 166 of the 208 schools that met the definition of…

This study examined the self-perception and motivational orientation of 49 intellectually gifted fourth and seventh graders. Compared to controls, the gifted children perceived themselves as more scholastically competent, better behaved, but less athletically competent. Gifted girls perceived themselves as more scholastically competent than either…

Thirty learning-disabled students in grades five-eight read several passages and attempted to identify and remember main ideas. Students were assigned to one to three conditions: control, monitoring and self-questioning, or mnemonic. The monitoring strategy was most effective for main-idea finding, whereas the mnemonic strategy was most effective…

Gifted students in grades 6-8 were divided into two experimental groups, one receiving traditional creative problem-solving training and the other receiving creative problem-solving with transfer strategies infused; there was also a control group receiving training in various memory tasks, analogical skills, and logic exercises. After the…

Based on a search of the literature, a series of eight propositions were derived to describe the basic middle school language arts program being portrayed in the literature. Fifty principals and language arts department chairpersons were asked to rate, on a scale of one to five, the degree to which their language arts department accepted and…

Outlines six activities for grades six through nine designed to illustrate the processes used by archaeologists. These processes include observation, comparison, classification, communication, use of numbers, and hypothesis formation. (AM)

Studied the attitudes and perceptions of children towards computers in classrooms. For one school year, questionnaires were distributed to children in grades four through seven before and after single computers were placed in each classroom. Overall, the children had positive attitudes toward computers, although girls were less positive than boys.…