Determined the readability of large circulation, metropolitan newspapers in 11 different languages using the formula of sentence length plus word length. Swedish language newspapers were the most readable, Russian language newspapers the lease. (AEA)

The Raygor Readability Estimate, described in this article, is much like the widely used Fry Readability Graph, except that it determines vocabulary difficulty by counting words of six or more letters, rather than by counting syllables. An evaluation found that Raygor was faster and easier to use and more objective than the Fry method. (RM)

To rate 40 validated educational projects from the National Diffusion Network and Georgia, an instrument was developed to identify and measure four dimensions of project complexity: (1) need for teacher creation of project elements; (2) need for administrative arrangements; (3) need for a new analysis of pupil needs; and (4) need for involvement…

Investigates the effect of feedback delay in computer-assisted instruction on short- and long-term retention of mathematical material, by college students. Difficulty level of material and original learning are also considered. Results show that a delay in feedback may have a detrimental effect on retention. (Author/JJD)

A set of four experiments investigates the relationship between phonological coding and reading ability, using a picture-word interference task and a decoding task. Results with regard to both adults and children suggest that while poor readers possess weak decoding skills, good and poor readers show equivalent evidence of direct semantic and…

Practical suggestions are given for teachers wanting to improve classroom computer assisted instruction, including the use of title, instructions, error-proofing responses, feedback, prompts, remediation, personalization, scorekeeping, levels of difficulty, timing, and variety. (Author/MSE)

Tested the hypothesis that increased task difficulty elicits more efficient problem-solving strategies from older adults, using "Twenty Questions" tasks with either 64 or 10,000 possible solutions. Although younger adults were more efficient, there was not evidence that task difficulty affected problem-solving for either age group. (Author/JAC)

Discusses a straw-vote study seeking to gather data that would give some indication of the courses in journalism that most instructors find the hardest to teach. (HOD)

A distinctiveness of encoding hypothesis, as applied to the facilitative effects that higher order objectives have on readers' prose recall, was evaluated in three experiments. Results suggest that distinctiveness of encoding may offer a theoretical basis for the effects of adjunct aids as well as a guide to their construction. (Author/GK)

Investigates the syntactical level of spontaneous and echolalic utterances of 26 autistic boys at different stages of phrase speech development. Speech samples were collected over a 90-minute period in unstructured settings in participants' homes. Imitations were not deliberately elicited, and only unprompted, noncommunicative echoes were…

Examined whether different levels of task complexity result in variations in group decision making. Groups (N=7) discussed problems varying in levels of complexity. Findings suggested that group decision making is a cyclical process with the number of cycles affected by task complexity. (RC)

Reveals that the Rauding Scale of Prose Difficulty provides results closer to Spache and Dale-Chall values than does the Singer Eyeball Estimate of Readability (SEER) technique. (FL)

This study examines the receptive skills of severely deaf subjects employing either oral or total modes of communication in the comprehension of a wide range of syntactical and semantic structures. For almost all types of structures investigated, the total system was found to be the more effective method of communication. (Author/SJL)

Two forms of an undergraduate examination were constructed. Tests varied with respect to item truth value (true, false) and method of phrasing (positive, negative). Negatively stated items were more difficult but not more discriminating than positively stated items. False items were not more difficult but were more discriminating than true items.…

Examined differences between five-, seven-, and nine-year-olds' ability to estimate their counting accuracy for large set sizes on tasks of three levels of counting difficulty. With increasing age, children's estimates of their counting accuracy increasingly corresponded to their actual counting accuracy. (Author/DB)