Some comments are provided about challenges facing the "instructional theory community," and specific remarks are made about papers presented at a session on expectations about instructional theory at the 1998 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) (Session 2). An area of particular interest is that of…

Female (N=142) and male (N=191) college students read one of nine vignettes describing a male and female target character on a heterosexual first date, and then rated each character's desire to have sexual intercourse with the other. The vignettes varied only by the amount of alcohol consumed by each character (none/soft drink, moderate, high).…

Attributions for students described in case studies as exhibiting immature, unmanageable, or perceptually-delayed behaviors in the classroom were provided by 174 regular education elementary school teachers. The teachers' attributions for the students' difficulties were primarily "other-directed"; student or home factors were most often…

For people-helping professionals, the concept of burnout describes the physical and emotional exhaustion they feel on the job. A cognitive-behavioral model defines burnout as a state in which individuals expect few rewards and considerable punishment from work, due to lack of valued reinforcement, controllable outcomes, or personal competence.…

This study examined the development of smooth visual tracking in 11 infants 2 and 3 months of age, with particular attention given to the role of expectation in tracking complex visual motion. Data were gathered by recording the image of the infant's eye as he or she tracked a small computer-generated target as it moved in a sinusoidal trajectory…

Research in the field of alcohol abuse evidences a long history of attempts to predict outcome from alcohol treatment programs using situational and intrapsychic factors. To investigate whether alcohol reinforcement expectancies are related to drinking behavior, 42 male veteran graduates of an inpatient alcohol treatment program were interviewed 1…

Scales assessing absorption, or a predisposition to become highly involved in sensory and imaginative experiences in non-hypnotic contexts, have predicted hypnotic responsivity as well. To examine the effects of expectancy on hypnotic responding by measuring expectancies at different points in the hypnotic experience, and to test for possible…

A rationale for teaching study skills to black exceptional students is presented along with a suggested instructional approach. The importance of teacher and parent expectations is emphasized, as is the need for developing strategies for nurturing self-esteem, motivation, improved attitudes, and adaptive learning styles in exceptional black…

This study examines the expectations held by three generations of men and women toward women mixing careers with marriage and family. A questionnaire of 9 items was distributed to 46 women and 46 men from 19 years old to 72 years old who were undergraduate students or staff at the College of Saint Thomas (St. Paul, Minnesota) or the University of…

The purpose of this study was to obtain information on a variety of school skills that preschool and kindergarten teachers expect children to display in regular kindergarten classrooms. The Skill Expectation Survey for Kindergarten Readiness was administered to 21 preschool teachers and 28 kindergarten teachers from two school districts in Kansas.…

The literature on attrition points to the intake and first therapy interviews as sharing the highest dropout rates. Attrition is said to be related to client, therapist, and type-of-therapy variables. To look further into the intake session with an emphasis on client-therapist and client-clinic interaction variables, clients (N=45) rated their…

Recent research on women's lives has emphasized the complex interactions between situational constraints in the family and the workplace. To examine the relationship of situational variables and personality characteristics to career-related self-efficacy expectations and life satisfaction in women, 94 college women completed a questionnaire…

Research suggests that depression is associated with low self-efficacy expectancies and that enhancement of self-efficacy expectancies may be effective in the relief of depressive symptoms. To examine the causal relationships between self-efficacy expectancies for interpersonal skills and depressed mood, two independent experiments were conducted.…

The purpose of this study was to learn more specific research questions and hypotheses for more rigorous research about the life situation and personal experiences of youths who work. 272 youths were interviewed. Select findings from 51 cases are presented on the youth's orientation to their future. (Author/RC)