Educational Psychology Commons^™

The Effect Of Word Abbreviation On Decoding Speed And Accuracy, Frances Piccione

Masters Theses

An experiment was conducted to verify the existence and determine the magnitude of the human response latency differential between words and their abbreviations in a decoding task. Forty-eight Naval Officer Candidates learned a set of abbreviations obtained from operational aircraft cockpits. Abbreviations and corresponding words were divided into easy and hard difficulty levels. Subjects responded by saying the correct whole-word for both stimulus types. Response times measured by a voice key revealed a mean of 0.534 seconds for words and 0.662 seconds for abbreviations. An analysis of variance produced significant main effects (p < .05) for stimulus types and difficulty levels; the interaction effect was not significant. Also, t-tests for correlated scores revealed significant differences (p < .05) between difficulty levels within stimulus types.

Personality Predictors Of Academic Success In Underachieving First Year College Students, Carolyn Wilson-Garrison

Dissertations

In this study, the role of nonintellective variables as predictors of academic success in underachieving first year college students was explored. Traditional predictors of college grades, high school grade point average and standardized scores on the American College Testing examination (ACT), were also examined.

The purpose of this study was to assess whether college grades at the end of the first year would differ according to underachieving students' personality styles, expressed concerns, and behavioral correlates thereby offering the possibility that such nonintellective factors may be useful in the prediction of grades.

The sample was a randomly selected group of eighty-seven …

An Investigation Of The Effectiveness Of Study Aid Formats, Mary Anne Saint

Masters Theses

The effectiveness of matrix organizational format versus outline organizational format versus self-structured study notes was tested with high school subjects. Contrary to predictions, results of a multiple choice and essay question posttest revealed a nonsignificant study aid effect, F (2, 53) = 1.17, p > .05. An interaction between passage order and subject sex was significant, F (2, 53) = 4.68, p < .05. An analysis of recall, application and analysis levels of learning again revealed a nonsignificant study aid effect, F (2, 68) = 1.53, p > .05. A difference among recall, application and analysis posttest scores was significant, F (2, 4) = 93.25, p < .05. It was noted that the mean of the Matrix Group was somewhat greater than other groups across all five measures. The probability of one of three groups outscoring other groups across five analyses would result in a chance level of occurrence of .0039. It is speculated that additional experimentation will demonstrate a significant difference in the effectiveness of study aid formats.