This book presents a critical and integrative review of extant literature on child abuse, and the methodology and results of a study investigating relationships among types of abusing parents (disciplinarian parents and inadequate parents), parental attitudes about childrearing and perceptions of their children, and severity of child abuse.…

The theoretical and methodological concepts available to and needed by research on aptitudes as cognitive processes are discussed. Contemporary views of cognitive processes are examined in relation to individual difference constructs and the methods used to examine their reliability and validity. Individual difference constructs are discussed in…

The purpose of the study was to establish dimensions of functioning accounting for interindividual variation in behavior in the later infancy period and to investigate the stability of the dimensional structure during the infancy period. Factor analyses were performed on parent questionnaire data for 357 infants, aged 11 to 15 months. An 8-factor…

The purpose of this study was to apply factor analysis techniques to delineate dimensions of early infant behavior and to establish categories of functioning which can be seen as a source of individuality in early childhood. Data about the behavior of 791 infants in two age groups (11-25 weeks and 26-41 weeks) were obtained using a questionnaire…

One hundred and seventy-four Texas Christian University developmental reading students participated in an investigation which applied the residual gain technique to individual reading gains as measured by the cloze procedure. Comparisons were made between cloze crude gains and cloze residual gains and between cloze tests constructed with lexical…

When experience shows that certain behavior has a low expectation of leading to valued goals, alternative behavior, which has a greater expectation of leading to these goals, or of coping with failure to attain them, will be adopted. This principle serves as the basis for the central hypothesis in this study: that as two goals (academic…

A series of five papers is presented here in an effort to relate the problems of instructional technology to insights and evidence from the behavioral sciences. One paper describes the application of present knowledge and empirical methodology, in the form of the systems approach, to the solution of particular behavioral problems. A second paper…

This paper discusses the processes that determine the characteristics of professional sub-cultures. It was postulated that mechanisms of attraction, formal and informal selection, promotion and reinforcement of desired characteristics serve to shape the personality which characterizes the members of a profession and can be expected to result in a…

A strategy for investigating which individual difference variables have transfer value at various stages of acquiring effective reading skills was discussed. Definitions of basic human abilities, including intrinsic and extrinsic individual differences were reviewed. In examining the required subskills in the reading process, it was pointed out…

A study examined the effects of verbal and perceptual aptitudes in relation to the efficacy of two different kinds of modeling procedures (written and filmed presentations) in the acquisition of a teaching skill (analytic questioning). It was anticipated that for Ss receiving the film-mediated model, criterion scores would show stronger relation…

Value judgments play a role in evaluation by determining the anticipated behavioral outcomes, what is measured, techniques for measurement, and decision making. Value judgments are usually faced only at the decision-making stage. Methods to analyze values will hopefully be given more emphasis in future evaluation enterprises. Studies using…

According to this book of "psychological talks to parents and teachers," the American education system is a major social tragedy because it fails to recognize the potential of the individual. Individual differences are often ignored in the "assembly-line" approach to education and labeling children according to test scores is a way of dehumanizing…

The effects of individual personality differences and awareness of experimental demands on the acquisition of a verbal behavior were investigated. Awareness was determined by a recognition task. The personality variable was a measure of the agreeing response set to Likert-scaled personality items. Subjects were grouped as extreme or moderate…

A mailed survey was conducted of the drinking practices of students at the University of Minnesota. Responses were received from 402 of the 496 individuals in a random sample of students at the Twin Cities campus. Key findings include: (1) the majority of students, 56 percent of the men and 61 percent of the women, were classed as moderate…

This document deals with nurturing creativity in the culturally different. It begins by pointing out that every person has a unique set of experiences and could therefore be considered "culturally different". The same methods are used to encourage creativity in those commonly labelled "culturally different" as are used with any individual. If…