Current concepts of children's perceptions of control.

Beliefs about control have been identified as an important aspect of the occupational therapy evaluation process because of their potential influence over the course of action chosen. This paper reviews the current status of research and theory in this area as it relates to children. Issues addressed include the drawbacks of the downward extension of adult theoretical models and tests to children, the multidimensionality of perceived control, and the relation between cognitive development and changes in beliefs. Recent revisions in theoretical models and new measures that provide more differentiated information on children's beliefs about causality and personal efficacy are reviewed. The implications for the selection of instruments and interpretation of results for the assessment of children's perceived control in clinical practice are discussed.

The effects of an interactive instructional strategy for enhancing reading comprehension and content area learning for students with learning disabilities.

This study investigated the effectiveness of an interactive vocabulary instructional strategy, semantic-feature analysis (SFA), on the content area text comprehension of adolescents with learning disabilities. Prior to reading a social studies text, students in resource classes either completed a relationship chart as part of the SFA condition or used the dictionary to write definitions and sentences as part of the contrast condition. Passage comprehension was measured on a multiple-choice test consisting of two types of items, vocabulary and conceptual. Comprehension was measured immediately following teaching and again 6 months after teaching. Prior knowledge for the content of the passage served as a covariate. Results indicated that students in the SFA instructional condition had significantly greater measured comprehension immediately following and 6 months after initial teaching. These results are discussed in relation to concept-driven, interactive strategies for teaching content and facilitating text comprehension.