The benefits of peer collaboration on strategy use, metacognitive casual attribution, and recall

This study examined the benefits of a peer collaborative activity on cognitive strategy use and effectiveness, and on metacognitive understanding of strategy use. Children's knowledge about the effectiveness of the sorting strategy grouped them into lower and higher metacognitive understanding. Treatment group triads, consisting of children with lower and higher levels of metacognitive understanding, were given a collaborative recall task. Results indicated that interaction with children working at a higher level of metacognitive knowledge, in conjunction with directions to explicitly discuss strategies, increased strategy use and induced higher levels of metacognitive thinking in children who had been operating at lower levels of metacognitive thinking. overall, children's use of the sorting strategy and recall performance improved as a function of treatment group membership. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Quasi-kin relationships and marital quality in stepfather families.

Tested A. Cherlin's (1978) incomplete institution hypothesis to determine specifically if (a) couples where both spouses have children from a previous marriage (complex) exhibit lower marital quality than couples where only one spouse has children (simple), (b) the marital quality of divorced–remarried couples decreases as the frequency of interaction with quasi-kin (former spouses) increases, and (c) divorced–remarried women exhibit lower marital quality than men. 27 couples from complex stepfamilies and 13 couples from simple stepfamilies were divided into 3 levels of frequency of contact with quasi-kin groups (high, moderate, and low) and completed the Marital Adjustment Test, the Areas of Change Questionnaire, the Life Experiences Survey, and a Quasi-Kin Relationship Questionnaire. Ss from simple stepfamilies registered higher marital quality than Ss from complex stepfamilies. Ss who maintained moderate frequencies of contact with quasi-kin exhibited better marital quality than Ss who maintained either high or low frequencies of contact (these groups did not differ). The prediction that women would exhibit lower marital quality than men was not confirmed. Role strain and the concept of "permeability of boundaries" are used to interpret these findings. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relation of social class and educational aptitude.

The radical critique that denies that lower class or minority group children are deficient in any mental abilities is considered. It is suggested that current findings point to mental ability test differences as being "real". However, it is argued that consideration of social class and ethnic differences should be shifted from intelligence to scholastic aptitude. Four plans for educational change that would deal with the problem of the low scholastic aptitude of poor children are presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Black English phonology and learning to read.

Tested the hypothesis that phonological differences between standard and Black English interfere with the ability of beginning readers to learn sound–spelling correspondences in reading. 15 1st graders in each of 3 groups—low-socioeconomic status (SES), Black and White and middle-SES White—were asked to match spoken and written words. Mismatches were created by deleting final spoken consonants or by deleting initial consonants. The hypothesis that Black-English-speaking children of low SES would tend to make a match when final spoken consonants were deleted, whereas the White children of low and middle SES would not, was not supported. Decoding errors revealed that the 3 groups differed in word-attack strategies. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of metacognitive strategy training within a cooperative group learning context on computer achievement and anxiety: An aptitude–treatment interaction study.

Two aptitude–treatment interaction studies examined the comparative effects of metacognitive strategy training in self-questioning within a cooperative group learning context and a traditional direct instruction approach, on the acquisition of computing competencies, learning anxiety, and positive cognitions. When prior competence in using computers is controlled, students' initial aptitudes interact significantly with teaching method. Cooperative groups scored significantly better on achievement tests, self-concept, and sense of control-mastery than did the direct instruction groups. Paradoxically, for the initially high-anxious learners, some aspects of computing anxiety remained high in the cooperative group relative to the direct instruction group, suggesting that anxiety may facilitate learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Childhood depression and conduct disorder: I. Behavioral, affective, and cognitive aspects of family problem-solving interactions.

Assessed the family interactions of depressed, conduct-disordered (CD), mixed depressed-CD, and nonclinic children (aged 7–14 yrs) during a standardized family problem-solving discussion. The child's and the mother's problem-solving proficiency, aversive behavior, and associated affective behavior (depressed and angry–hostile) were observed. The child and mother also rated each other's affect during the interaction on Likert-type scales. Cognitive constructions about the interaction were assessed using videomediated recall. Although all clinic groups had lower levels of effective problem solving than did nonclinic children, their deficiencies were somewhat different. Mixed and depressed children displayed high levels of depressed affect and low levels of angry affect, whereas CD children displayed both angry and depressed affect. In addition, CD children had lower levels of positive problem solving and higher levels of aversive content than did non-CD children. Depressed and CD children had higher levels of self-referent negative cognitions than did mixed and comparison children, and depressed children also had higher other-referent negative cognitions than did all other groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning disabilities, low achievement, and mild mental retardation: more alike than different?

Children identified with learning disabilities (LD), low achievement (LA), or mild mental retardation (MMR) were contrasted on 41 measures of ability, academic achievement, social skills, problem behavior, academic engaged time, perceptual-motor skills, and school history. Both multivariate, univariate, and meta-analytic comparisons among the three groups showed relatively large differences on measures of aptitude and achievement, with the LD group scoring higher on measures of cognitive ability than the LA and MMR groups and the LA group showing higher tested academic achievement than the LD and MMR groups. Teacher ratings of academic competence showed similar levels of functioning for the LD and LA groups. No differences among the groups were found on measures of social skills, problem behaviors, or academic engaged time, or on most indices reflecting school history. Results were interpreted in light of studies contrasting LD and LA groups. Comparisons with earlier studies were difficult in light of demographic differences in samples and the lower cognitive and academic functioning of children in the present study. The current study showed that 61% of the LD group could be differentiated from the LA group, with LD-MMR and LA-MMR differentiation levels being 68.5% and 67.5%, respectively.     

Metacognitive emotion regulation: Children's awareness that changing thoughts and goals can alleviate negative emotions.

Metacognitive emotion regulation strategies involve deliberately changing thoughts or goals to alleviate negative emotions. Adults commonly engage in this type of emotion regulation, but little is known about the developmental roots of this ability. Two studies were designed to assess whether 5- and 6-year-old children can generate such strategies and, if so, the types of metacognitive strategies they use. In Study 1, children described how story protagonists could alleviate negative emotions. In Study 2, children recalled times that they personally had felt sad, angry, and scared and described how they had regulated their emotions. In contrast to research suggesting that young children cannot use metacognitive regulation strategies, the majority of children in both studies described such strategies. Children were surprisingly sophisticated in their suggestions for how to cope with negative emotions and tailored their regulatory responses to specific emotional situations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Linking teachers' memory-relevant language and the development of children's memory skills.

This longitudinal study was designed to (a) examine changes in children's deliberate memory across the 1st grade; (b) characterize the memory-relevant aspects of their classrooms; and (c) explore linkages between the children's performance and the language their teachers use in instruction. To explore contextual factors that may facilitate the development of skills for remembering, 107 first graders were assessed 3 times with a broad set of tasks, while extensive observations were made in the 14 classrooms from which these children were sampled. When the participating teachers were classified as high or low in terms of their "mnemonic orientation," in part on the basis of their use of metacognitive information and requests for deliberate remembering during instruction in language arts and mathematics, differences were observed in the use of mnemonic techniques by the children in their classes. By the end of the year, the children drawn from these 2 groups of classrooms differed in their spontaneous use of simple behavioral strategies for remembering and in their response to training in more complex verbally based mnemonic techniques. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gender differences in first-grade mathematics strategy use: Social and metacognitive influences.

Social and metacognitive contributors to gender differences in 1st grader's mathematics strategy use were explored. Fifty-eight children solved addition and subtraction problems individually and in groups of 3 in October, January, and May. The children's strategy use was assessed individually, as well as their metacognitive knowledge for mathematics strategies and their rationales for the use of different mathematics strategies. The children also solved addition and subtraction problems in groups. Gender differences were found: Girls were more likely to count on fingers or use counters (overt strategies); boys were more likely to use retrieval (from memory) to solve addition and subtraction problems. All children were less likely to use overt strategies and more likely to use covert strategies and retrieval in the group session. Metacognition was a significant predictor of strategy use. Social rationales for strategy use emerged at the end of the year. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Metacognition and problem solving: A process-oriented approach.

Four studies were conducted to demonstrate that the positive effects of verbalization on solution transfer found in previous studies were not due to verbalization per se but to the metacognitive processing involved in the effort required to produce explanation for solution behaviors. In Experiments 1, 2, and 3, a distinction was made between process-oriented, problem-oriented, and simple "think aloud" verbalizations. The process-oriented (metacognitive) solvers performed significantly better than nonprocess control groups on both training and transfer tasks. Experiment 4 further demonstrated this effect by showing that process-oriented participants consistently form more sophisticated problem representations and develop more complex strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ability grouping in army basic training.

"This study investigated the effectiveness of heterogeneous ability grouping as a method of increasing proficiency in Army Basic Combat Training. In each of two companies, low-ability trainees were trained under three conditions of ability grouping… . In spite of a system of competition that made privileges dependent on squad performance, a proficiency test given at the end of eight weeks of training failed to show a significant difference between the learning of low-ability men who had high aptitude men in their squads and those who did not. Achievement at all ability levels was unusually high, but low men who were trained in squads by themselves were just as proficient as low men who were trained in squads with higher ability men." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Problem-solving strategies in learning disabled and normal boys: Developmental and instructional effects.

A developmentally sensitive problem-solving task, the 20-Questions Game, was utilized in this study to examine development- and treatment-related variables among 48 learning disabled and 48 normal boys of two age levels (8–10 years old and 11–23 years old). Subjects performed on three different versions of the experimental task before, immediately after, and two weeks after receiving one of two treatment packages, which differed in their emphasis on task-specific and metacognitive strategies. Results indicated that both younger boys and learning disabled boys demonstrated less efficient problem-solving skills than their older and normally achieving peers. In all subject groups, boys' ability to make use of specific problem-solving skills was highly influenced by variations in stimulus characteristics. Brief training was effective in improving the performance of all subject groups on trained and untrained materials at posttest and follow-up trials. However, expected differences in effectiveness between treatment packages were not realized. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A noncognitive correlate of performance among lower aptitude men.

The Hand Skills Test, a device which measures "persistence beyond minimum standards on tiring tasks," was used to predict school grades and job performance evaluations for higher and lower aptitude Navy personnel. 3 enlisted samples and 1 officer candidate sample were employed. Within each sample men were divided into higher and lower aptitude groups at the median of their aptitude test scores. Principal findings were: (a) the Hand Skills Test significantly predicted school grades of the 2 lower aptitude enlisted samples (grades were not available for the 3rd enlisted samples) but did not predict for higher aptitude enlisted men or for officer candidates, and (b) the Hand Skills Test significantly predicted job performance evaluations among lower aptitude men in all 4 samples, but again validities were not significantly different from zero among the 4 higher aptitude samples. From Psyc Abstracts 36:05:5LD76K. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personal adjustment and prediction of academic achievement.

The hypothesis tested was that "better" adjusted students would be more predictable than maladjusted students. Predictability was determined by correlation coefficients between aptitude test (CEEB-M and CEEB-V) scores and both 1st-quarter and 1st-yr grades. The sample consisted of 188 freshmen male business students who were classified into positive-, average-, and negative- adjustment groups on the basis of the means of the 10 Guilford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey (GZTS) trait raw scores. Comparisons of the adjustment groups on correlations between the mathematics and verbal scores and grade averages indicated that the adjustment groups did not differ in terms of academic predictability. Analysis of differences between the groups on both high school achievement and college achievement revealed, however, that the positive-adjustment group earned significantly higher grades than the negative group. These results indicated that although the adjustment groups did not appear to be significantly different in terms of academic predictability, a definite relationship did exist between the groups on levels of achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An integration–theoretical analysis of cultural and developmental differences in attribution of performance.

R. Singh et al (see record 1980-32377-001) proposed that American and Indian college students differ in their beliefs on how motivation and ability determine performance. Americans follow a multiplying rule, which implies that effort will be more effective with persons of high than of low ability. In contrast, Indians follow an equal-weight averaging, which implies that effort will be equally effective with persons of low and high ability. The present study tested this cultural-difference hypothesis using 120 Ss from 5 age groups: children 6–7, 8–9, 10–11, and 12–23 yrs old and college students 17–29 yrs old. As predicted, the Ss averaged information about past performance, motivation, and ability when predicting student performance. There was no support for the American finding that Performance?=?Motivation?×?Ability. Developmental differences appeared at the level of integrational capacity. These results illustrate the potential power of information integration theory for cross-cultural and cross-age comparisons in social perception and cognition. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual characteristics and children's learning in large-group and small-group approaches.

Investigated aptitude–treatment interactions (ATI) in 100 4th-, 5th-, and 6th-grade students learning in large-group and small-group teaching approaches. Each of 2 elementary teachers taught a 2-wk fractions unit to 2 classes of randomly assigned Ss. Each class received only 1 approach. Students completed aptitude measures (Raven Progressive Matrices and Sequential Test of Educational Progress, Series II) at the beginning of the study and achievement, attitude, and retention measures (including the Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Questionnaire, the Math Anxiety Scale, and a test of attitudes towards math) at the end. Regression analyses showed significant ATI for preference for approach and for ability. Students who initially preferred small groups actually did worse in that approach than in the large-group approach. High-ability Ss and low-ability Ss did better and had more positive attitudes in the small-group and large-group approaches, respectively. High-ability Ss benefited by "teaching" their peers in the small group. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selecting examples for solving word problems.

College students studied the solution of a simple and a complex example, then they used the examples to construct equations for algebra word problems. The frequency with which they referred to each example across 8 test problems that varied in complexity was recorded. In a 5-factor ANOVA, instructional format, test-problem order, and aptitude were between-Ss factors, and example complexity and test-problem complexity were within-S factors. Evidence for good metacognitive skills regarding selection of examples included students' ability to match examples with test problems and their preference for the complex example. However, neither finding interacted with instructional format or aptitude. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predicting achievement early and late in the semester: The role of motivation and use of learning strategies.

Relations among motivation, learning strategy use, and achievement were examined. Questionnaires were group administered to 283 high school students in geometry classes early and late in the semester. Path analyses were used to determine the effects of motivation (ability perceptions, expectancies, and perceived value) and use of learning strategies (metacognitive, general cognitive, geometry specific, and effort) on achievement early and late in the semester. Early, both expectancies and value predicted the use of strategies; expectancies and use of geometry specific and effort strategies influenced grades. Later, value predicted strategy use; geometry self-concept and metacognitive strategy use influenced grades. No sex differences were found. Results concerning motivation are congruent with previous reports. Strategy use findings suggest that teachers emphasize the use of content specific strategies early in a new course and metacognitive strategies later. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The down side of help: An attributional-developmental analysis of helping behavior as a low-ability cue.

Two studies examined the possibility that unsolicited help can function as a low-ability cue. In Experiment 1, children 5–12 years old viewed videotaped teaching sessions depicting two boys working on a set of math problems. One boy received assistance from a help giver (teacher or peer); the other received no such help. Participants then judged both students"" ability and effort. In Experiment 2, children 4–12 years old viewed one videotape and then made inferences about attributions, affects, and expectancies of the students. They also indicated which of the two they would prefer as a workmate. All children except 4–5-year-olds in Experiment 2 inferred that the helped student was lower in ability than his nonhelped counterpart. Age-related differences in young children""s judgments about affects, expectancies, and preferred work mate showed the same developmental pattern. The implications of these findings for the development of attributional understanding and for communicating low ability in the classroom are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)