Ausubel asserts that his work is impugned in various ways in Anderson, Spiro, and Anderson. This paper argues that a more careful reading of the original paper obviates most of Ausubel's concerns. (Author/GK)

Anderson, Spiro, and Anderson (EJ 189 658) assert that the author's assimilation theory of meaningful learning and retention is "hopelessly vague." Documented examination of these assertions indicates that they are unspecified, unsubstantiated, undocumented, and based on indisputable misrepresentation of published material and on logical…

The main findings of a meta-analysis of 23 research reports were the following: giving behavioral objectives, learning directions, or questions before an instructional text is read leads to some improvement in the learning of goal relevant material; however, these preinstructional acts impede the learning of goal irrelevant materials. (Author/BW)

Grade 10 students were taught a hierarchy of intellectual skills in three different contexts: skills taught in isolation; additional verbal instructions provided; and skills taught in relation to a relevant anchoring idea. Results showed that use of the anchoring idea context enhances meaningful learning of complex skills. (Author/GK)

One hundred thirty-five studies of the facilitative effect of advance organizers on learning and retention were examined. Grade level, subject area studied, organizer presentation mode, and subject ability level were examined in relation to advance organizer effect. Advance organizers were shown to have a small facilitative effect. (Author/GDC)

High school students read textual passages organized around a semantic, temporal, or random theme. Free recall, semantically, and temporally-cued tests measured recall. During free recall, the organized passages yielded greater recall. For the cued tests, more words were remembered when the passage organization matched the type of test cue.…

The effects of behavioral modification strategies in pretraining subjects was contrasted with no pretraining in notetaking systems. Test mode expectation was a second variable measured. Analyses of variance on performance scores and scores reflecting the efficiency of notes showed several significant interactions between the two independent…

Eighth-grade students read passages that described three dichomtomized attributes of eight North American minerals. Mnemonic instruction, given to one-third of the students, generally produced greater memory for the minerals' attributes. Implications of the findings are discussed with specific regard to remembering scientific taxonomies and their…

Sixth graders from a semirural midwestern community were randomly assigned to one of four different learning strategies--imagery, overt repetition, covert repetition, and control. Results showed that imagery instructions facilitated learning performance; overt repetition interfered with performance; and covert repetition was similar to the control…

The results of this investigation are generally supportive of the hypothesis that the learning of prior presented high-order concepts and rules can result in both a facilitation and acceleration of the learning of meaningfully related subject-matter concepts and logical operations. (Author)

This study sought to determine: (1) if an advance organizer could establish a function concept as a subsumer for new concepts; and (2) if an established subsumer would facilitate learning, transfer, and retention of concepts on lives and scope. Students in a remedial college mathematics class were subjects of the study. (Author/LMO)

The effects of three types of advance organizer lessons (containing high-order social studies concepts, high-order rules for hierarchical classification, or both) on learning social studies concepts and hierarchical classification, as defined by Piaget, were evaluated for 237 rural children in kindergarten, third, and fifth grades. (Author/MH)