Academic Underachievers Research Articles

Multicomponent group interventions for academic underachievers

Abstract The authors discuss a group intervention for college freshmen who are academic underachievers. The intervention also serves the purpose of training beginning, graduate-level group counselors

Multi-Component Treatment for Academic Underachievers

This study evaluates the differential effectiveness of order of presentation of several multi-component treatment components in a program for academic underachievers compared to a no-treatment control. No differences in outcome were due to order of presentation of treatment components, and both treatment groups gained significantly in follow-up Grade Point Average compared to the no-treatment group. Examination of four additional outcome measures suggest that gains in GPA were due to treatment.

EEG frequency analysis in academic under-achievers

EEG frequency analysis in academic under-achievers

Antecedents of Adolescent Pregnancy

SummaryThe recognition of which girls are at risk of becoming pregnant before the age of 16 years is of interest to legal, educational, social and medical services. In this paper a large amount of data, available for a total population of schoolgirls, has been used to show that prediction is indeed possible. It was found that compared to a group of girls matched on a number of sociodemographic characteristics, those who became pregnant during adolescence were more likely to have been academic underachievers at age 11, to have made an appearance in a juvenile court, and to have been referred to a child guidance or psychiatric clinic at an early age. Difficulties over matching also suggest that they are more likely to have five or more siblings, to be illegitimate and to have mothers who were themselves teenagers at the time of their daughter's birth.

Antecedents of adolescent pregnancy.

The recognition of which girls are at risk of becoming pregnant before age 16 is of interest to legal educational social and medical services. In this paper a large amount of data available for a total population of schoolgirls has been used to show that prediction is indeed possible. It was found that compared to a group of girls matched on a number of sociodemographic characteristics those who became pregnant during adolescence were more likely to have been academic underachievers at age 11 to have made an appearance in a juvenile court and to have been referred to a child guidance or psychiatric clinic at an early age. Difficulties over matching also suggest that they are more likely to have 5 or more siblings to be illegitimate and to have mothers who were themselves teenagers at the time of their daughters birth. (Authors)

Item Instability on the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale for Academic Underachievers with High, Middle, and Low Self-Concepts: Implications for Construct Validity

Test-retest item instability indices for low, middle, and high scorers on the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale were calculated in order to test Wylie's (1974) hypothesis that low scores are invalid because of unreliability of responding. Academic underachievers served as subjects, and the results failed to support Wylie's prediction. Children with high self-concept scores exhibited significantly less item instability than did children with either middle- or low-self-concept scores, while the latter two groups did not differ on the item stability variable. The obtained results were discussed in terms of age-progressive self-concept "crystallization."

Low Test Anxiety as a Potential Indicator of Underachievement

Several lines of evidence suggest that academic underachievers are characterized by low motivation and that low test anxiety may be an indicator of this. Compared with high-test-anxious students, those with low scores on both scales of the Achievement Anxiety Test were less anxious before a test, studied less for it, and got more sleep the night before. Low-anxious students also performed less well on the test and showed improved performance when made more anxious. Although not all of the differences were statistically significant, the pattern of results was congruent with expectations.

Selective Attention and Cognitive Tempo of Low Achieving and High Achieving Sixth Grade Males

There is much clinical and subjective support for the notion that academic underachievers of normal intelligence (learning disabled children) exhibit both impulsivity and poor attention. This study compared high and low achieving children on two experimental tasks previously designed to measure impulsivity (Kagan's MFF) and selective attention (Hagen's Central-Incidental Task). Results generated empirical support for more impulsivity and less selective attention in low achievers than high achievers. Results indicated the 2 measures were correlated, suggesting a link between selective attention and cognitive tempo.

Intensity of Meaning Discrimination in Academic Achievers and Underachievers

Academic achievers and underachievers were compared on an index of meaning discrimination to see whether achievers would display a finer degree of discrimination between high and low meaningful verbal stimuli than underachievers. The hypothesis stems from a previous finding that underachievers tend to be linguistically rigid, from which it was inferred that underachievers may be poor in discriminating the uniquely meaningful features of their environment. When the index of meaning discrimination was administered to 25 achievers and 25 underachievers, defined according to predicted performance in university, data supported the hypothesis, showing for these Ss definite differences in discrimination of meaningfulness.

Combinatorial Thinking in Adolescents from Graded and Ungraded Classrooms

25 adolescents from graded classrooms and 25 from ungraded classrooms (academic underachievers) were matched for age, sex, and IQ. All Ss were administered a test of combinatorial reasoning. Results indicated that young people from the ungraded classrooms made significantly more errors and were more concrete in their strategies than was true for the adolescents from graded classrooms. The results were interpreted as supporting the view that proficiency with symbols is a necessary condition for the effective utilization of combinatorial logic or formal operational thought.

Appropriate and inappropriate group counseling with academic underachievers.

Appropriate and inappropriate group counseling with academic underachievers.

Discussion Courses Spur Bright Underachievers

Adolescent academic underachievers are not well thought of in the adult academic com munity. Neither are they well understood—by themselves or their elders. One school tells here of its program to help each group get to under stand the other somewhat better and, in the process, bring underachievement under control.

All-inclusive conceptualization in academic achievers and underachievers

All-inclusive conceptualization in academic achievers and underachievers

Psychological characteristics of high school male and female potential scientists in comparison with academic underachievers

Psychological characteristics of high school male and female potential scientists in comparison with academic underachievers

A Comparison of Values Among Teachers, Academic Underachievers, and Achievers

THERE HAS been continuing speculation concern ing the importance of value congruence between high school students and their teachers as a possible fac tor in level of academic achievement (5, 7, 8 ). Wil son and Goethals (12) have documented value differ ences between students and teachers but without ex amining the possible significance of the observed differences in relation to level of academic achieve ment. Bills' (1) research on the relation between teachers' values and level of academic performance was equivocal; there was a significant relationship in one class but not in the other class. There are two facets of the problem that merit investigation: 1) Are value differences between teachers and students of distinctive orders accord ing to the level of academic performance of the stu dent, and 2) What is the nature of the values in volved in any observed differences ? The assump tion that value differences may, in fact, arbitrarily bias grade giving' ' by teachers depends to a great extent on the second question.

The use of the Parent Attitude Research Inventory with the parents of bright academic underachievers.

The use of the Parent Attitude Research Inventory with the parents of bright academic underachievers.