Since verbal responses are a salient and easily documented index of acquisition of learning skills, a project was undertaken in 1972 to collect and analyze the verbal response of viewers of "The Electric Company." A data collection instrument was designed to tally: (1) reading of print on a television screen; (2) spoken anticipation of…

On an optical scanning survey form listing 66 basic mathematics skills, all secondary vocational teachers in Pennsylvania were asked to identify mathematical skills essential to success and skills in need of remediation for their specialties. Of 4,839 forms sent out, data from 3,404 yielded the 122 tables (121 pages) of findings arranged according…

The use of computers in areas of testing, selection, and placement processes for those in military services' training programs are viewed in this paper. Also discussed is a review of the motivational and theoretical foundation of admissible probability testing, the role of the computer in admissible probability testing, and the authors' experience…

This paper presents three research studies. The first study investigated the use of boys' and girls' play areas, each stocked with sex-type toys, by day care children with male, female, or mixed teacher teams. Examined were the sex of play areas users and the effect of sex of teacher team on the structure of play in each play area. The second…

This experiment was designed to study the value of oral response as opposed to nonoral response in learning by kindergarten children. Approximately 108 kindergarten children were used. About 80 of them were placed in the two experimental groups (that is, the oral and nonoral groups), and the others were placed in a control group. Phase I involved…

Research into the effects on attitudes of persuasive communications has continued to focus primarily on the empirical analysis of communication and source effects. While theory has been used to guide the work, it is less of the grand and overpowering variety, and more of the kind that employs assumptions about basic psychological processes that…

A tailored testing model employing the beta distribution, whose mean equals the difficulty of an item and whose variance is approximately equal to the sampling variance of the item difficulty, and employing conditional item difficulties, is proposed. The model provides a procedure by which a minimum number of items of a test, consisting of a set…

The issue of multiple-choice (MC) vs. created-response (CR) test-item formats was reexamined at the eighth-grade level in three subject areas: general science, American history, and arithmetic. In each subject area, alternate forms with the same item-content but differing in which items were in which format were prepared from standardized tests.…

Likert-type inventories of children's attitude toward the world of work were administered to approximately 1,500 students in grades 2-8. The positively and negatively stated scores were analyzed separately. Agreement with positively stated items showed almost no difference among the various grades. However, the trend toward more disagreement among…

The present series of studies was undertaken to explore intersensory processing in the very young. In the first experiment 1-, 4- and 7-month-old infants experienced simultaneously their mothers' faces and voices. The various conditions consisted of displacing the voice from the face. The results indicated that infants as young as one month of age…

How the mode of input of stimuli affects the quality or type of response was studied by comparing the number of paradigmatic responses and syntagmatic responses to both orally and visually presented stimulus words. The following groups, totaling 194 subjects, were involved in four experiments: (1) 18 institutionalized disturbed adolescents, (2) 96…

Criteria and methods for developing a taxonomy for different situational categories are presented. (CK)

The forced-choice and a questionnaire format of the Thorndike Dimensions of Temperament were administered under regular and desirability directions to college students. The forced-choice format produced low scale intercorrelations under the regular directions, but under the desirability directions a common factor appeared. The same factor appeared…

The relative effectiveness of client-centered, rational-emotive, and desensitization therapies in reducing test anxiety among high school students was investigated. The sample was drawn from 2336 students in grades 10 through 12 who were administered the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). Thirty-three subjects with high State…

The stated purpose of the text is to review and interpret current behavioral research in mental retardation (including that done abroad) and to provide a forum for theories and new approaches. Eight chapters by different authors focus on the following subjects: medical-behavioral research; recognition memory: a research strategy and summary of…