The COVID-19 pandemic has forced governments and educational institutions around the world to look for viable alternatives to campus-based education. However, pedagogical methods such as Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) might need to be adapted to low-interactivity distance learning environments, such as datacasting. This paper describes VTS+, a…

The article is devoted to the issue of learning from the cognitive perspective. As life-long learning is an integral part of our modern life, the authors were attracted by the phenomenon when even young people demonstrate cognitive "resistance" to learning. This particular study is focused on cognitive destructions as challenges to…

To succeed in STEM, students need to learn to use visual representations. Most prior research has focused on conceptual knowledge about visual representations that is acquired via verbally mediated forms of learning. However, students also need perceptual fluency: the ability to rapidly and effortlessly translate among representations. Perceptual…

This study investigated the research construct of encoding specificity using an applied research orientation. Encoding specificity considers the effects on memory of the interactive relationship among encoding, the stored memory trace, and external retrieval cues. Subjects were 273 undergraduate students enrolled in the College of Engineering at…

This study is an attempt to partially confirm the hypothesis that first grade children, generally lacking the skills and/or capacities for efficiently organizing their memories for verbally-presented information, benefit from illustrations which provide a simple external memory. The sample consisted of 32 first grade (second semester) children,…

This study examines attention to stimulus presentation mode (SPM) by children when subdivided by age and sex, and the interaction between these variables. Except for the crossover period, female and male subjects' responses to auditory and visual stimuli follow the same general pattern; younger subjects respond at a greater rate to visual stimuli.…

Research on three types of visual symbols is discussed in terms of the implications of the findings for instructional developers. The research in question focused on which of three symbol stimuli--concept-related graphic, arbitrary graphic, or verbal label--would most rapidly bring a psychomotor response under control and would maintain control…

Examined were the effects of number of stimuli and of two different stimulus modalities on the discrimination learning of 17 autistic children (mean age 57 months). Discrimination training was carried out in three groups with varied light and sound stimuli. Among findings was that mental age was negatively correlated with trials to criterion and…

This study examined the ability of preschool children to process and use conceptual category information in a disrcimination learning task. A total of 60 boys and girls between the ages of 2 1/2 and 4 years completed a 3-choice discrimination learning task. On each of 12 trials, a child was presented with three magazine photographs: one of an…

This study was designed to determine whether adults' memory for pictorial and word stimuli might be differentially affected by age. Twenty female secretaries, median age 22.1, and 20 female members of a senior citizens' center, median age 69.4, were asked to learn lists of pictorial and word stimuli under free recall conditions. Eight trials were…

This paper discusses a mental model of learning based on the processes of attention, perception, processing, and application. The learning process starts with attention, such as curiosity, excitement, expectation, or fear; in pedagogy this is called motivation. New impressions are dependent on and interpreted against the background of previous…

This study investigated the effects of two stimulus manipulations (spatial distinctness and number of dimensions) on the performance of 24 kindergartners and 24 fifth graders in (1) tasks requiring distributed attention and (2) tasks requiring selective attention. Results suggest that kindergartners attempt to use one processing mode (distributed…

The effects of different levels of rehearsal quality on serial recall, over and above simple labeling, were studied in a sample of 104 kindergartners. Subjects were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions. In one condition the subject and experimenter rehearsed together; in a second condition only the experimenter rehearsed; in the third…

In a study of the effects of pictorial stimuli on story recall, 64 second graders were randomly assigned to two experimental groups and two control groups. The learning materials consisted of two orally presented ten-sentence stories. The experimental subjects viewed pictures while the stories were read, and the control groups followed the printed…

Four experiments investigated phonemic and visual similarity effects in 5- and 10-year olds. Results suggested that young children rely on modality-dependent codes, which are probably automatically activated, and do not use a speech-based memory code for drawings and words. This pattern of findings appeared to be independent of culture and…