Presents an approach for helping students to explore the auditory level of meaning of a poem in a step-by-step manner. (TJ)

Reports on a study that examined the effect of intended audience and mode of discourse on the syntactic complexity of compositions written by sixth- and tenth-graders, and that attempted to determine whether there were increases in syntactic complexity from grade 6 to grade 10 for each audience and in each mode. (DD)

Four experiments are presented that examine the affective and the informational explanations of risk-preference behavior. Experiments I and II provide a phenomenological analysis of the affective and informational determinants of choice behavior while Experiments III and IV investigates at what level of difficulty individuals most desire…

On each of 10 trials, 80 college students were presented with a different set of five anagram tasks varying in complexity. Half the subjects rated the tasks for the amount of interestingness and half for the amount of pleasantness. (Editor/RK)

Examined possibility that arousability as manifested in sensitization contributes to individual differences in infants' attentional profiles. Sensitization tended to occur more frequently with more complex than with less complex checkerboards. Infants showing sensitization looked longer and did not habituate as readily as infants who showed no…

Interviews with 10 high school students with learning disabilities identified 3 themes concerning homework: (1) factors that make homework easy (such as assigning homework early in the class); (2) factors that make homework difficult (such as low ability); and (3) recommendations for teachers, students, and parents (for example, students should…

It is often presumed that software technology will increase group productivity, but this may not be the case. Examines the impact of technology on time-to-complete-task, member satisfaction, perceived information load, number of contributing transactions, and task complexity. Three appendices provide examples of complex and simple tasks and the…

Results of three studies, involving 606 high school and college students, show that the perceived randomness of a sequence is better predicted by its encoding difficulty than its objective randomness. Results imply that judging the extent of randomness of a sequence is based on the attempt to encode it. (SLD)

The degree to which an undergraduate mathematics curriculum matched the item difficulty levels of representative mathematics problems based on that sequence was studied with 62 items and 423 undergraduates and 937 high school seniors. Results suggest congruence between curriculum sequence and item difficulty levels. (SLD)

Addresses difficulty levels and the importance of providing experience at all levels. Levels are count and land, at which children do not understand if the number arrived at is reasonable; number sense and relationships, where children are developing a sense of reasonableness; and parts of numbers, when children are able to work flexibly with…

Four autistic children, age 8-15, exhibited fewer correct responses to a stimulus as the number of stimulus components was increased from 1 to 4. Training was effective in producing some generalized increases in responses to complex stimuli. (Author/JDD)

Linguistic performance of 7 children (mean age=68 months) with spina bifida, hydrocephalus, and average intelligence was evaluated. Subjects dealt with the semantic-pragmatic requirements of linguistically posed problems in an age-appropriate manner. Performance declined as task demands increased but no more than performance of nondisabled…

Describes knowledge mapping, a tool developed to increase the objectivity and accuracy of task difficulty ratings for job design. Application in a semiconductor manufacturing environment is discussed, including identifying prerequisite knowledge for a given task; establishing training development priorities; defining knowledge levels; identifying…

Severely hearing-impaired students (n=187, ages 7-23) at eight reading levels were evaluated to determine their ability to comprehend common English modals. Although subjects' modal comprehension improved with reading level, subjects at the highest reading levels did not demonstrate complete mastery of modals. Modals tended to be acquired in a…

Seven rigidity tests varying in difficulty were administered to 45 retarded subjects, with a mean age of 10, and 45 mental age-matched nonretarded subjects. Subjects did not differ on 3 easy tests, but retarded children were more rigid on 4 difficult tests. (Author/JDD)