title: Influencing students' observations.
abstract: This article presents a study concerned with the influence of a descriptive introduction on occupational therapy students' perception of a child's behavior. Seventy-two students were divided into four groups. Each group received different information or set before seeing the same seven-minute videotape of a four-year-old boy doing a series of developmental tasks. This study measures the effect of prior information on the students' choice of descriptive words and on a narrative paragraph they wrote after seeing the videotape. Word choice results were significant at the .05 level for two of the four groups.
mesh_terms: D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D002652:Child Behavior; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003142:Communication; D003657:Decision Making; D006281:Health Occupations / Q000193:education; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009788:Occupational Therapy; D010465:Perception; D012718:Set, Psychology; D013336:Students, Health Occupations; D009626:Terminology as Topic; D014743:Videotape Recording