Data from this study of skilled and unskilled badminton players aged 10 to adult indicated the presence of systematic differences which transcend developmental age between the perceptual skills of expert and novice players. (JD)

Eight- through 11-year-olds watched photographic slides of faces of former preschool classmates and controls, once while their skin conductance was measured and again while reporting whether or not they recognized the faces. Both verbal report and skin conductance data showed low but above-chance differentiation between children's response to…

Educators must abandon the notion that intellectual excellence is somehow undemocratic and runs counter to practicality, emotion, and character development. Respecting intellectual differences does not require classifying students in stultifying categories or demeaning them with inappropriate judgments. Educational progress varies from child to…

Considers empirical evidence and theoretical issues that point out the need to reconceptualize individual differences in psychology. Studies use of arithmetic in everyday life and in the classrooms to explore consequences of cultural practices, the nature of individual differences in "ability," and links between practices and identity.…

Individual differences in procedural and declarative learning of a sequence-learning task by 455 adolescents were measured and compared to one another and to scores on a performance battery. A framework is proposed to explain the results based on a combination of approaches to explain dissociations found in memory. (SLD)

Examined association of individual differences in physical maturation with information-processing speed among 9- and 10-year olds. Found that early maturers were faster than late matureres, although this maturity effect was primarily the result of a significant effect for boys. The early maturers' faster processing times may be specific to boys or…

Responds to L. Eubank and K. R. Gregg article (this issue), suggesting that they present a narrow view of language that they wish the field of language acquisition to share. It is suggested that Eubank and Gregg contend that the only thing to be explained is the human capacity for grammatical competence. This belief discounts, misrepresents, or…

Four experiments tested four month olds on visual discrimination tasks. As the time allotted to solve these problems was shortened, infants who looked at stimuli for a short amount of time performed better than other infants, indicating that performance superiority was attributable to speed of processing. (BC)

Marian Matthews insists that she selected a school with exemplary cooperative-learning practices for her interviews with gifted students summarized in the October 1992 issue of "Educational Leadership." The students interviewed cared about their classmates but did not understand their differing values. Neither artificial incentives nor…

For students to become proficient critical thinkers and decision makers, they must be involved in a continuous process of skills acquisition and application. This article presents and illustrates an action model (comprising perceptions, thought processes, actions, and closure) allowing middle school students the opportunity to design their daily…

In response to Leonard (EC 600 867), this article stresses the importance of understanding the cause of specific language impairment and proposes a test which would compare the language abilities of siblings of language-impaired children to the expected values. A model containing two sources of causation is proposed. (Author/DB)

In a New Hampshire school, literacy portfolios enable students to plan a relevant curriculum for themselves. After learning what each student values, teachers seek ways to honor students' concerns and outside interests. Instead of passively awaiting the next assignment, students make their own plans and, with teacher coaching, become better…

Although teacher effectiveness research prescriptions predominate in today's classrooms, educational research is being influenced by the work of Piagetian cognitive psychologists and educational anthropologists like Shirley Brice Heath and cultural psychologists like Michael Cole. These experts stress the importance of personal invention and the…

Because developmental theories of Vygotsky, Piaget, and Bandura are far more complex than much of the empirical work based on them, researchers have concentrated on relatively narrow aspects of each man's ideas, in the process magnifying the differences between them. Nevertheless, basic differences do exist in each theorist's conceptualization of…

Agrees with proposition of Tudge and Winterhoff in the previous article that the differences between the developmental theories of Vygotsky, Piaget, and Bandura have been exaggerated over the last 30 years. Perceived differences that distinguished these theories in the early 1960s have diminished dramatically, due in part to the later work of the…