Discusses a study which determined empirically that potential users of new social studies materials do not perceive the attributes of the materials as has been assumed in the innovation adoption literature. Willingness to adopt new materials seems to be based upon observable benefits, degree of difficulty, investment requirements, and familiarity.…

English-language Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventories (MMPI's) were administered to 40 bilingual Mexican-American and 109 Anglo-American psychiatric patients in a community mental health center. With K corrections, Mexican-American subjects scored higher on the L and K scales, but no significant differences were found on clinical scales…

A principal axis factor analysis of 58 occupational and nonoccupational scales of Form T of the Strong Vocational Interest Blank (SVIB) was performed using data of 1068 males representing a wide range of age and socioeconomic status groups. Both occupational groupings and personality correlates showed substantial agreement with Holland's (1966)…

Commentary based on Frank Riessman's book "The Inner-City Child." Concludes that whatever is done to build on the strengths that inner-city children bring to school will be done by individual school people who find the personal and professional strength to do it. (Author/IRT)

Reviews development of rehearsal and organizational strategies based on cross-sectional and longitudinal research, focusing on the Munich Longitudinal Study. Found that longitudinal data reveal greater individual variability in strategy acquisition, suggesting that canonical development patterns inferred from cross-sectional studies obfuscate…

Used Visual Expectation Paradigm to describe information processing changes and individual differences during first year of life. Found regular age changes in mean reaction time and variability but not in minimum reaction time, suggesting that growth rate of sensory-detection information is constant during first year but age changes occur in level…

Speculates on underlying processes for the reaction time variance and age differences in anticipation latency using the Visual Expectation Paradigm. Discusses the dichotomization of reactive and anticipatory behavior, limitations of longitudinal designs, drawbacks in using standard procedures and materials, and inferences that can be made…

This research examines high school students' performance on an interactive multimedia tutorial for learning physics concepts in conjunction with their individual differences. Performance was compared between the initial portion of the tutorial where students learned concepts and the final portion where they applied the concepts. (Author/LRW)

This training study combined within-subjects (N=12) comparisons of several literacy tasks with individual case studies of first and second graders with dyslexia over a five-month reading intervention. Training focused on phonological awareness, letter-sound associations, and guided reading. The children made significant gains in standard scores on…

Discusses the feasibility of Basic Variety (BV) principles proposed by Klein and Perdue, arguing that some of them need clarification with learner varieties and that they are not part of Universal Grammar (UG) as they exclude phenomena (e.g., psych verbs) that cannot be excluded from the core of natural language. (15 references) (Author/CK)

Reviews the literature on various factors within the mentor-protege relationship that foster preservice teachers' development of competence and self-efficacy belief. Discusses Vygotsky's mediated learning as a factor in the development of mentor-protege and protege teacher efficacy, teacher self-efficacy beliefs, roles and characteristics of…

Used hypothetical student profiles to investigate factors other than achievement that influence kindergarten teachers' retention decisions. Found that teachers were not more likely to recommend retention for boys, nor for children born in August, although the trend was to retain younger students. Teachers were more likely to retain children…

Identified social schema by correlating memories of problematic encounters with self-esteem for 84 adolescents and adults. Found that adolescent self-esteem is localized in relationships with peers rather than parents and is based on different relational schema for females compared with males, suggesting need for preventive interventions to…

Examined memory functions in individuals with and without autism. Found that the group with autism performed significantly worse than the nonautistic group on temporal order memory, source memory, supraspan free recall, working memory and executive function but not on short- and long-term recognition, cued recall, or new learning ability. (MOK)

Not all home schoolers are politically conservative, suspicious of public education, or separatists. The Holtrop family's home-schooling philosophy stresses what is best for individual learners. They prioritize objectives like love of learning, critical thinking, integrated subject areas, learning through life experiences, and development of…