We report 3 studies investigating children's and adults' interpretation of ambiguous focus in sentences containing the focus-sensitive quantifier only. In each experiment, child and adult participants compared sentences with only in a preverbal position and counterpart sentences without only against a series of pictures depicting events that…

Attempts to replicate findings demonstrating a relationship between the cognitive control (field articulation) and reading disability in school-aged children. Reading disability and nonreading disability groups were administered a series of cognitive control measures. Performance on field articulation significantly differentiated between children…

The differences between learning disabled (LD) and non-LD children's problem-solving protocols were analyzed during a picture arrangement task. Although the groups of 29 LD and 27 non-LD children were comparable in global mental processing and task performance, LD children had difficulty with representing problems and deleting irrelevant…

Until recently it has been possible only to measure the behavioral products of cognitive processing, e.g. reaction time. However, this is a rather indirect way of studying brain substrates of cognition. Psychophysiological techniques can be used to study the neural mechanisms of cognition. In this experiment brain electrical activity was measured…

Deaf children (N=52) were administered a videotaped presentation of a vocabulary test under one of five conditions: Total Communication (TC) with audio; TC without audio; Manual Communication (MC) with no mouth movement; Oral Communication (OC) with audio; and OC without audio. Modes using MC or TC yielded performances significantly superior to OC…

In this 4-part study, 1970 test data from 45 American Indian youth (aged 11-15) attending Riverside Summer Institute in Anadarko, Oklahoma, were examined. Part 1 of the study sought to identify the pattern of strengths and weaknesses on the "Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children" (WISC) of Indian students with average intelligence and…

In 2 experiments, 280 college students studied animations depicting a mechanical operation with concurrent oral narration of the process, successive animation and narration, animation alone, narration alone, or no instruction (the control group). Results are consistent with a dual coding model of retention and problem solving. (SLD)

A cross-cultural test measuring need-achievement motivation was developed and administered to 634 American Indian, Spanish American and Anglo high school seniors attending 24 schools, including Federal, public and private boarding and day types. Need-achievement was related to the following types of measures: academic, aptitude, intelligence, and…

The study determined if there is a significant difference between the amount and quality of technological knowledge held by the American Indian students as opposed to non-Indians in the 4th, 5th, and 7th grades. Also, do these Indian students possess this technological information in a form which can be used, or is it in a state of unrelated…

Study results indicated that the TEMAS (Tell-me-a-story), a new thematic apperception test which depicts ethnic minority figures, cultural themes, and urban backgrounds, produced increased responsiveness in 76 Hispanic children to culturally relevant stimuli and may be a promising instrument for assessment of minority children. (CM)

This study was conducted to determine whether the filmic coding elements of split screen, slow motion, generated line cues, the zoom of a camera, and rotation could aid in the development of the Euclidean space concepts of horizontality and verticality, and to explore presence and development of spatial skills involving these two concepts in…

The Inter-American Test of General Abilities (TOGA) for bilingual children has parallel Spanish and English forms which have been used to determine language proficiency and dominance. Generally, there has been little emphasis on measuring such physical test features as size, spacing, color, and typeface. The purpose of this study was to determine…

Five scales designed to measure the attitudes of young children toward arithmetic, reading, and art were developed. Two of the scales (Picture and Forced Choice) were ipsative in nature; the remaining three (Millimeter, Box, and Semantic Differential) allowed the child to express a more absolute attitude about each activity. The scales were…