This article describes a project-oriented approach to teaching language awareness at the college freshman level. It is emphasized that it is important for students to realize that language is dynamic and that it changes because people change. The study of slang can make the student aware of the changeableness of a living language. Students were…

The processes by which the young child recognizes and regenerates some invariant and organizational properties of language are discussed. In these processes the child conjoins and contrasts recurrent segments--perhaps a recurrent word--of the messages presented to him. After repeated exposure to messages containing a common segment, the child…

This study assessed Chinese teachers' perspectives on why Chinese students perform well on spatial tasks. The study interviewed 17 male and 12 female teachers of Chinese language, math, science, and 6 other subjects, from elementary schools, high schools, and colleges of Beijing, China. The responses indicated that the Chinese teachers perceived…

Reports on the ability of preschool age children to interpret a black-and-white aerial photograph and to solve a simulated navigation problem on the photo. By placing the problem in a story context with personal reference points, the children were able to identify landscape features and solve simple problems. (MJP)

Reports on a study that investigated possible effects of visual information on non-music students' cognitive responses to music. One group rated the affective response of musical excerpts from the film "Fantasia" without the accompanying video while another rated the excerpts with the video. Reveals little significant difference between…

Major visuospatial and verbal abilities were assessed for 197 10-year-olds in Hong Kong and 170 10-year-olds in the United Kingdom. The Hong Kong subjects resembled their Japanese counterparts in having high Searman's "g," exhibiting abstract reasoning ability, high spatial ability, high perceptual speed, and low word fluency. (SLD)

Investigates the effects of field dependence-independence, gender, previous musical experience, and general music ability on music listening. College students recorded their observations about music excerpts. Weeks later they used these observations to identify the excerpts. Multiple regression analyses examined the contributions of subject…

The metacognitive performance of four groups of students was examined. The students' processes of visual analysis and discrimination of real-life pictures were used to measure metacognition. There were 61 participants: 18 hearing students, 18 deaf and hard of hearing students, 16 students with mild mental disabilities, and 9 students with physical…

The word and picture processing abilities of 11 children (ages 6-10) with partial vision were studied in a variety of ways over a period of 14 months. The studies found that in processing words partially sighted children, like fully sighted children, used both lexical and nonlexical processing, though perhaps in difference balance. Recognition and…

The purpose of this study was to adapt the Hidden Figures Test (a measure of field dependence/independence) to microcomputer display and to assess its alternate form reliability when compared to a paper and pencil test. Participants included 58 undergraduate and graduate students (91.4% female) at a southeastern university who were fairly normal…

A technique for studying how parents think, make decisions, and solve childrearing problems, Computer-Presented Social Interactions (CPSI), is described. Two studies involving CPSI are presented. The first study concerns a common parental cognitive task: causal analysis of an undesired behavior. The task was to diagnose the cause of non-contingent…

A training program was devised to develop automaticity of one subcomponent of reading--locating and disembedding multiletter units within words. The system involved the use of a training task that was implemented in a microcomputer-based game that required students to detect whether a target unit was presented within words that were shown in rapid…

The role of perceptual organization in motor learning is discussed, the literature is reviewed, and research findings are summarized. Measurement problems are discussed, including observations about motor skill learning. Four experiments are described which compare organized and random movement sequences. It is shown that organization (whether…

This study focuses on the semantic development of individual lexical items, as viewed from a semantic features perspective. It involves four narrow semantic domains, a sample of elementary school-children and their teachers, and two native language groups, English and Spanish. Semantic development is studied through the process of equivalence…

Representatives of a variety of disciplines concerned with either clinical or research problems in vision and learning disabilities present reviews and reports of relevant research and clinical approaches. Contributions are organized into four broad sections: basic processes, specific disorders, diagnosis of visually based problems in learning,…