Examination of several variables fails to indicate any transfer from the high school course to the college course.More than 500,000 students take high school psychology the spring of 1975; 35 had taken high school psychology, 79 each year (Dambrot & Popplestone, 1975;Zunino, 1974). A had not. All students were lowerclassmen, and all but two significant proportion of them will also take introductorv were freshmen. psychology in college. Some degree of transfer should be expected between the two courses. At the most students with high school psychology might be able to get advanced placement or credit by examination for the introductory course. At the least they should be better prepared for the introductory course than are their counterparts without exposure to the subject in high school.The use of advanced placement or credit by examination does not appear to be widespread. Furthermore, the data (Dambrot et al., 1975) suggest that students with high school psychology are not more academically successful in the introductory class in terms of final grades than are students without such a background. Academic performance as measured by final grades, however, may mask initial differences in knowledge or preparation between the two groups. Differences in final grades would certainly be insensitive if the teacher insured that there were no differences in academic performance between the groups by the end of the course. Yet transfer effects might still be manifested in such things as initial knowledge, study time, or attitudes toward psychology.Specifically, students with high school psychology should score higher on a pre-test in the introductory course than students without such a background. Additionally, they should experience a savings in study time during the course, and should have acquired familiarity with the vocabulary. They may also have more positive attitudes about the subject; high school psychology has been shown to be an important positive influence in forming students' attitudes toward the area (Titley & Vattano, 1972).The present study investigated whether students who had studied high school psychology and those who had not, all enrolled in the same introductory course in college, differed on certain specific dimensions: (a) pre-and post-test scores of psychological knowledge, (b) pre-and post-test scores measuring attitudes toward psychology, (c) study time, (d) class attendance, and (e) overall GPA. MethodSubjects. Subjects were 114 students enrolled in an introductory psychology course at Cleveland State University in Procedure On the first day of class students were told that the instructor was conducting a survey to determine: (a) what background beginning psychology students had in the subject, (b) what their attitudes toward it were, (c) how their over-all college achievement would compare with their performance in the specific course, and (d) how much time was spent in studying for each test. Students were then asked to indicate on a questionnaire whether they had taken high school psychology ...

This study investigated the extent to which various traditional measures (test scores, undergraduate GPA, and letters of recommendation) and less traditional measures (interview ratings and biographical information) would predict each of two criteria of success in a subdoctoral program in applied psychology: (a) academic competency defined as grade point average (GPA) in graduate school, and (b) faculty ratings of selected interpersonal skills. The traditional measures were significantly but modestly related to academic competency. The use of biographical information and interview ratings was supported in selecting for interpersonal skills. Ratings of letters of recommendation failed to show a relationship to either GPA or ratings of interpersonal skills.

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Twenty-eight third graders were administered the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT) during the middle third of their third-grade year. Their scores on all subtests of the PIAT were correlated with their Total scores obtained on the Screening Test of Academic Readiness (STAR), which had been administered to them prior to their kindergarten year of school. Results show that the STAR is a useful instrument for predicting third-grade achievement.