Evidence supporting two roles of imitation in language acquisition was found in a single child's speech studied at ages 2.8 and 3.0. Imitation can serve to limit the language environment's complexity, and forms may appear in imitations before appearing in spontaneous speech. Use of "what?" is given as an example. (MSE)

The selection of appropriately simple and authentic reading materials for high school Russian classes is discussed in light of the temporal and lexical constraints of that instructional level. Teachers are warned against overly ambitious materials and analysis when language learning, not literature appreciation, is the primary objective. (MSE)

Undertaken within the framework of the best example theory of categorization, this study investigates category acquisition as a function of initial exposure to only good exemplars and as a function of exposure to single as opposed to multiple exemplars. Six severely handicapped children, ranging in age from 8 to 18 years, participated. (Author/MP)

Previous findings of a developmental trend from holistic to analytic modes of processing are subject to two possible interpretations: the ability to analyze according to dimensions increases with age, or a production deficiency for the strategy of analyzing decreases with age. This study tests these interpretations through an examination of…

A discussion of the effects of lack of congruency between children's language and the written language of reading materials is presented in relation to reading problems of learning disabled students. The premise that written language is simply "talk written down" is challenged. (Author)

Experiment I establishes that the ability to remember the slope of a line develops between three and four years of age. In Experiment II, 15 children with a mean age of four years and six months who had discriminated both slope and left-right problems under successive presentation were tested on these same discriminations under simultaneous…

Lists 12 reasons why college students have difficulty solving chemistry problems and 12 suggestions for improvement. Lists were compiled from students in an introductory chemistry course. (SK)

Examines the need for the evaluation of syntactic complexity of instructional materials in order to match them to students' needs, discusses the shortcomings of traditional analysis, and provides activities that can be used to introduce syntactic structures to students. (HTH)

Three types of concepts were examined: concepts defined by sufficient features, concepts which possessed necessary and sufficient features, and concepts composed of exemplars with distinctive features. Second- and fifth-grade subjects learned the concepts in a procedure encouraging abstraction of common features or a procedure fostering exemplar…

Examined the development of the ability of 5-, 9-, and 13-year-old children to produce elemental and complex facial movements intentionally. (Author/DB)

Small graphic changes made in normal letters of the alphabet changed the similarity relations among those letters. Children and adults classified letters of this distinctive font faster and with fewer errors than they did normal letters. Relations between letters in the stimulus set determined how difficult any particular letter was to classify.…

Observed subjects evidenced less tendency to attribute their failure to low ability than did nonobserved subjects and greater willingness to attribute failure to lack of effort. For a task intended to be of minimal relevance to subjects' identities, nonobserved subjects attributed failure to task difficulty. (Author)