Examined the validity of Bruner's theory that any subject can be made appropriate for any child at any stage of development. This was not valid with the topic of the Civil War. However, with the topic of the Great Depression, the opposite results were found, and Bruner's theory partially confirmed. (Author/BEF)

The performance of 76 students (ages 10 to 15) with learning disabilities on four tasks of arithmetic computation within each of the four basic operations was examined. Tasks varied in difficulty level and number of strokes needed to complete all items. Intercorrelations between task sets and operations were examined as was the use of…

Outlines a three-stage strategy for teaching appreciation of French literature. The first stage is a global approach to the work, giving an overview of its structure and presentation. The second stage looks at the text type and generic characteristics, and the third focuses on the specific treatment given these characteristics and the details of…

The influence of feedback on the cognitive task performance of 30 adults with mental retardation having either high or low self-esteem was assessed. All subjects performed two memory tasks (easy, difficult) under one of three feedback conditions (social, computer, and no feedback). Social feedback was most effective in altering the positive…

Investigated mothers' instructional strategies during concept-learning tasks, and the effect of this interaction on subsequent child performance. Found that interaction with mothers influenced children's posttest performance positively; more assistance was provided to three-year-olds than to five-year-olds and more on difficult than on easy tasks;…

Compared coupling characteristics of clapping simultaneous with walking or galloping, consistency across trials, and phasing variability among 4-, 6-, 8-, and 10-year-olds. Found that for walk/clap tasks, children adopted adult-like coupling patterns by age 8 and with the same consistency by age 10. Across age, children became less variable in…

Examined 3-year-old boys' pride and shame reactions to success and failure on a "rigged" achievement situation. Found that pride and shame were related to task difficulty and success versus failure but unrelated to temperament after one year. Children whose parents were more positive in previous parenting displayed less pride and…

The study found the on-task behavior of one of two high-achieving as well as of a low-achieving fifth graders increased when the difficulty level of mathematics problems was manipulated to insure a greater than 70 percent success rate. (DB)

Results of five experiments showed that in certain situations recall varied with processing difficulty for both children and college students. This was primarily due to enhanced cue discriminability. The relation between processing difficulty and developmental increases in recall seemed to be mediated by constructability problems and resource- and…

Examined potential central processing strategy differences among subgroups of children on a series of elaborative encoding tasks. Children in lower verbal and learning ability subgroups differed from those in higher ability groups in how they shared, discriminated, and selectively allocated resources between recall tasks. (RH)

Discussion of task motivation focuses on study that investigated the choice behavior of college students within a computer problem solving task as they controlled and selected problem difficulty levels which maximized either intrinsic interest or extrinsic reward. Sex differences are examined, and treatment for experimental and control groups is…

Investigated the range and limits of cognitive reserve capacity as a general approach to the understanding of age differences in cognitive functioning. Group differences were magnified by training to such a degree that age distributions barely overlapped at posttests. The testing-the-limits approach promises increased understanding of cognitive…

Presents the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages' guidelines for determining proficiency in writing, speaking, listening, and reading Arabic. Definitions for both generic and Arabic proficiency skills are provided for low-, mid-, or high-novice, -intermediate, and -advanced levels. (CB)

Causes of differential item difficulty for blind students taking the braille edition of the Scholastic Aptitude Test's mathematical section were studied. Data for 261 blind students were compared with data for 8,015 non-handicapped students. Results show an association between selected item categories and differential item functioning. (TJH)

This study of 67 intermediate grade students with reading difficulties found that students in a peer-mediated sustained reading condition performed better than peer-mediated repeated reading students and control students receiving typical reading instruction, on fluency but not on comprehension. No effect for the level of text difficulty was…