The article describes a research project which tried to determine if dogmatic students take less than average time to study non-complex tests, and if they do, whether this is because of a "know-it-all" attitude or to avoid decision-making anxiety. (CD)

In secondary-task reading experiments, easy text filled cognitive capacity more completely than difficult text. A cognitive interpretation is that, in reading easy passages, the cognitive processors are full. But in difficult passages, frequent breakdowns in comprehension temporarily empty processor spaces, leaving cognitive capacity for the…

Good, normal, and poor third grade readers were required to read easy, moderate, and difficult one-syllable nouns under three conditions: control condition with no pictures, identifying-picture condition, and unrelated-picture condition. Reading performance of poor readers was influenced by pictures under all conditions. Individual differences…

Two experiments investigated the effects of four teaching treatments on sixth graders' learning of an ecology curriculum. Recitation was more significant in improving learning than the other treatments--probing or followup questioning; redirection of a question to another student; and higher cognitive questioning. (Author/CP)

Providing examinees with advanced knowledge of the difficulty of an item led to an increase in test performance with no loss of reliability. This finding was consistent across several test formats. ( Author/JKS)

Describes a study which revealed that teachers scoring high on a test of complexity contributed more positively than did low-complexity teachers to student written ability to interpret literature. (DD)

Attempts to provide an empirical basis for conducting present and future research into communication structure emphasizing the analysis of the complexity of the communication structure. (MH)

Argues that three tenets of the traditional wisdom about teacher questioning are based on inadequate research: (1) it is useful to classify questions as fact (lower level) or reason (higher level); (2) higher level questions are better; and (3) questions are good in general because they stimulate thought. (MBR)

The contribution of passage variables, question types, and format variables to reading comprehension was assessed for 50 successful and 50 unsuccessful readers. A three-stage conditional regression assessed the predictability of 20 predictor features on item difficulty scores. The location of response information and stem length accounted for…

Despite the complexity of current financial aid application forms, federal officials want to stabilize the process of assessing financial need and are not likely to simplify the forms soon. (MSE)

In comparison with full-term infants, seven-month-old high-risk preterm infants exhibited deficits in visual recognition memory and in the ability to recruit, sustain, and shift attention. (RH)

Examines the relation between attention to target and context information and target recall in an incidental learning task for children and adults. Results support a distinction between context-interactive and context-independent situations and suggest that the attentional patterns that are efficient for memory may differ with the kind of…

This study observed 36 fourth-grade teachers and randomly targeted students in each class to see if teacher-student interaction patterns which facilitated low-level mathematics learning were the same as those which facilitated high-level learning for boys and girls. Results are discussed. (Author/MT)

Qualitative evidence for the operation of partial knowledge is given by two findings. First, performance when second and subsequent choices are made is above the chance level. Second, it is positively related to first choice performance. A number of theories incorporating partial knowledge are compared quantitatively. (Author/LMO)

Contrasts a fixed-rate presentation list with one in which half the items in a single list were presented at a fast rate and half at a slow rate during paired associative learning with 24 children (aged 8 to 22 years) who were diagnosed with having an attention deficit disorder. (HOD)