William E. Hauck

The Relationship of Humor to Intelligence, Creativity, and Intentional and Incidental Learning

Eighty elementary school children completed an intentional and an incidental associative learning task. Each of three groups stratified on intelligence and creativity made either humorous, unusual, or usual associations among common objects. Intentional learning, only, differentiated IQ groups (p<.05); incidental did not. Ss who made unusual associations recalled more information in both incidental and intentional learning than those making usual associations (p<.05) . Humor facilitated retention resulting from incidental learning (p<.05) but not intentional. Intelligence, creativity, and humor were correlated. The independence of creativity and intelligence was verified by a low correlation (r = .29); however, sense of humor correlated highly with both creativity (r = .89) and intelligence (r = .91) .

Racial Prejudice, Interracial Contact, and Personality Variables.

This study examined the relationship of the racial prejudice of school-age children to the actual race of the child, interracial contact, grade, sex, intelligence, locus of control, anxiety, and self-concept. A scale was devised to measure five facets of racial prejudice: a total index of racial prejudice, dating and marriage, school, social relationships, and racial interactions in restaurants. The subjects were 93 black children and 307 white children in grades 6 through 10. The results indicated that white students appear to be more prejudiced than blacks in situations requiring prolonged interracial contact; however, no differences were noted in circumstances involving minimal intimate social relationships for short periods of time. No differences in prejudice were found among grade levels; however, females were generally less prejudiced than males. Black males of low prejudice were more intelligent, more external, and less anxious than black males of higher prejudice. It is suggested that integration...

Conditioning Children's Attitudes toward Alcohol, Smoking and Drugs.

The researchers investigated the effects of classical conditioning procedures on the attitudes and choice of social behavior of elementary and secondary students associated with drinking, smoking, and the use of drugs. The experimental treatment involved the pairing of words having negative connotations with the concepts smoking, drinking, and the use of drugs. The results indicated that the experimental group expressed more negative attitudes toward smoking and drinking and chose the use of drugs in social settings less frequently than did the control group.

The Interactive Effects of Consonant and Dissonant Teacher Expectancy and Feedback Communication on Student Performance in a Natural School Setting

High, neutral, and low statements of success expectancy were paired with positive and negative success feedback statements in a 2 x 3 factorial design involving 43 low-achieving high school students. The communication was applied to reading comprehension lessons in 10 daily class sessions with two dependent variables, comprehension (test scores) and effort expended as measured by the rate of lessons completed on 33 reading exercises. Incongruent communication combinations (e.g., high success expectancy-negative feedback) produced higher comprehension than congruent combinations (e.g., high success-positive feedback). There were no reliable differences in effort expended. The results are amenable to both an arousal theory and an attribution theory interpretation with some evidence that the attribution interpretation explains the findings more adequately.

Attitudes, Social Choices and Substance Use

This research investigated the effects of four conditions on attitudes and social choices regarding substance use, i.e., involvement with smoking, drinking, and drugs. Three conditions, the treatment dimension, consisted of the presentation of negative evaluations, legal consequences, and physical consequences of substance use, and the remaining condition, a stratification variable, comprised the social reasoning ability of the subjects. The data, produced by 160 students in the 4th and 11th grades, were analyzed in a repeated-measures design which included the treatments, stratification, and the repeated variable, retention. The results indicated, generally, that young childrens attitudes and social choices were more negative than those of adolescents and also showed greater resistance to change. Surprisingly, legal threats to drinking produced greater positive attitudes toward drinking among adolescents and were more effective than physical punishment in this respect for all students. Of importance was the outcome that over time, all students made more favorable social choices for substance use with the exception that young childrens social choices for drinking remained negative. Because of the significant interactions which occurred, many of the results can be explained in terms of differences in both social reasoning ability and developmental levels. Implications for practitioners and researchers are discussed.

The Effect on Children’s Performance of a Discrepancy between Adult Expectancy and Feedback Statements

Ninety-six high-achieving fourth-graders performed a memory task before which either positive or negative expectancy statements were made by an adult and after which either positive or negative feedback statements were given. The resulting dissonant or consonant expectancy-feedback combinations were delivered over a four-day period. Results indicated that for high IQ children, performance was higher for those given discrepant rather than consonant combinations of expectancy-feedback statements. However, for low IQ children, performance was higher when given negative rather than positive feedback regardless of expectancy. The results are discussed in light of an uncertainty theory of motivation and arousal.

Verbal Learning and Self- and Super-Imposed Organization

The study was designed to test the general hypothesis that the acquisition of information is greater when the learner is trained to use a self-imposed organizational system rather than one which has been super-imposed on him by others. The results supported the hypothesis with a significant main effect for type of organization in favor of self-imposed training. In addition, it was found that with regard to the acquisition of information, serial memorization is more effective than self-imposed or super-imposed organizational systems in which no training is given; self-imposed testing situations are superior for retention; and self-imposed learning tested in self-imposed testing situations is superior to all other combinations of organization and testing.

Factors Influencing the Accuracy of the Feeling-of-Knowing

The accuracy of the feeling-of-knowing was assessed with regard to recall and recognition under three conditions: advanced or non-advanced organizers; learned or non-learned information; and sex differences. Twenty subjects learned pair-associates and were tested for recall and recognition accompanied by ratings of feeling-of-knowing strength. The lack of differences between feeling-of-knowing hits and feeling-of-knowing misses found in other studies was attributed on a statistical basis to population differences. The feeling-of-knowing was not accurate for recall of information; however, it was for recognition. The degree of information storage significantly affected the feeling-of-knowing; sex did not. Finally, advanced organizers facilitated the recognition of information but had no effect on the feeling-of-knowing.

Differential importance of hierarchical learning, abstractness, and imagery.

This research examined the relative contribution of hierarchical sequencing, abstractness, and imagery to learning. In the past, hierarchical, logical sequencing was not shown to be superior to other modes of instruction, and the interaction of imagery, abstractness, and sequencing had not been examined, especially regarding the possible superiority of any of these as a contributor to learning. The data were produced by 108 high school students who studied sequences of hierarchically related information arranged in a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design the dimensions of which varied according to the degree of imagery (high and low), abstractness (abstract and concrete), and type of sequencing (logical and scrambled). Analyses of the amount of learning under these conditions showed that hierarchical sequencing is not only relevant to learning but more related than either imagery or the abstractness of material to be learned. Additional suggestions are made regarding instruction and research especially in relation to matrix rather than hierarchical arrangements of information.

The Effect of Risk on Concept Acquisition.

Thirty-six ninth grade Ss were randomly assigned to six treatments requiring concept acquisition with regard to various kinds of concept instances. Two groups received good positive instances (GP), two good negative and good positive instances (GN), and two poor negative and good positive instances (PN). One group of each set performed under risk conditions and the other under non-risk conditions. Risk was established by presenting S with money which was removed for incorrect learning. It was found that Ss using GP instances performed best and that risk interfered with the use of GN instances. Risk improved the performance of GP and PN Ss.