The purpose of this study was to measure the influence of prior knowledge on reading comprehension. Twenty second-graders who were reading at, or not more than one year above, grade level were pretested to determine the extent of their prior knowledge about the topic they would be reading. Based on their pretest scores, the students were divided…

This study represents the integration of several smaller studies and articles on how the fantasies of children between age 5 and 7 become structured by the socialization pressures of the media and the school and how this helps or hinders the growth of children's own imaginative processes. Paper 1 is a research review and theoretical overview of…

This paper, which presents a comparison of informal and formal preschool programs, describes the arguments used by proponents of the formal, more structured, teacher-centered programs and the informal, more child-centered, programs. Some of the evidence for the effects of early experience on child development and for the effects of teaching style…

In order to develop a humanistic approach to evaluating faculty, a pilot study was conducted of 27 students and 14 instructors in an associate degree program for medical laboratory technicians. Selected personal dimensions of the sample population were examined to chart each individual's personality, theoretical learning preferences, modalities of…

In behavioral science research, language has been increasingly seen to reflect the concepts that the child has acquired prior to, and hence independent of, the acquisition of language. Analyses based on this idea are confined largely to words that denote clear perceptual referents. Language, however, contains many terms that have no portrayable…

This study examining children's ability to organize information for the purpose of recall was designed to control for verbal ability differences. The participants were 10 boys and 10 girls each from kindergarten, 2nd, 4th and 6th grades. A modified "Simon Says" game was used to enable the children to respond to eight selected verbal and motor…

This paper explores the concept of metamemory, generally defined as the individual's knowledge of and awareness of memory. The concept of metamemory is compared to three other categories of memory and a model of what the growing child could conceivably acquire in the domain of metamemory is presented. Brief reviews of existing research relations…

The question of developmental synchrony within the concrete operations period described in Piagetian literature was investigated. The idea of synchrony has been challenged by Brainerd's initial groupement research, which indicated a two-dimensional structure, corresponding to class operations and relational operations. A review of the literature…

In a study of mathematics learning, taking a rule-oriented approach, students were taught to trade objects of type A for objects of types B and C. Children ranging from ages 7 to 9 were given rules for converting A to B and B to C and were then presented with the task of converting A to C. Of the 30, 6 succeeded. Of the 24 who failed, half were…

For years language teachers have conducted error analysis for remedial purposes. More recently error analysis has assumed a developmental purpose, namely as a clue to the process of acquiring a second language. Causes of learner errors, such as interference from the first language, confusing aspects of the second language, or learners fostering…

This research explored the fundamental processes involved in comprehending linguistic material: the duration of the process, the sequence of processes, and the sources of errors. One project examined the comprehension of affirmative and negative sentences that are read and verified with respect to a picture. A model developed to account for the…

This study compared 5 groups (45 each) of disadvantaged first grade children learning to read 16 basic sight vocabulary words. The subjects were enrolled in 1 of 16 classrooms on three campuses of a school district in Texas located on the southern border between the United States and Mexico. Furthermore, all spoke Spanish as their first language.…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of cognitive abstractness levels, interpersonal perception abilities, and task type (factual or social problem solving) on group performance as measured by time consumed and adequacy of solutions. Eighteen college classes from Kearney State College participated in testing of perceptual…

This report presents the results of the second year of a training program designed to help preschool kindergarten children who are deficient in interpersonal cognitive problem-solving (ICPS) skills. The ICPS skills have been demonstrated to indicate good or poor behavioral adjustment, defined in terms of the reflectivity/impulsivity dimension of…

This symposium report on current child development research in Germany includes abstracts from papers presented at the biennial meeting of SRCD, April 1975, and a short overview of the history and present status of developmental research and training in Germany. According to this overview, developmental theory and empirical research, which had…