Three experiments investigated whether spatial and nonspatial components of visual attention would be influenced by changes in (healthy, young) subjects' level of alertness and whether such effects on separable components would occur independently of each other. The experiments used a no-cue/alerting-cue design with varying cue-target stimulus…

Previous studies indicate that the benefits of dividing an information processing load across both cerebral hemispheres outweigh the costs of interhemispheric transfer as tasks become more difficult or cognitively complex. This is demonstrated as better performance when two stimuli to be compared are presented one to each visual field and…

Summarizes results from a series of psychological experiments about how people process information from television and discusses the results in relation to six issues, including size of stimulus units and complexity of television stimuli. (DF)

Paivio's Dual Coding Theory has received widespread recognition for its connection between visual and aural channels of internal information processing. The use of only two channels, however, cannot satisfactorily explain the effects witnessed every day. This paper presents a study suggesting the presence a third, kinesthetic channel, currently…

One of the most basic theoretical areas in the study of visual communication and visual literacy is the nature of representation. Some of the important research in this area is reviewed in this paper, and a model of representation is developed that satisfies many of the philosophical concerns. The paper begins with a discussion on the relationship…

Both acquisition and retention were better when the hierarchy was learned graphically rather than as a list of associations, although the effect was greater on acquisition than on retention. (Authors)

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…

The effects of types of both memorized items and probes (digit, word, and dot pattern), using Sternberg's character-recognition procedure, were studied. Reaction time (RT) was a linear function of the set size of memorized items consistent with a serial search model. Response type (positive or negative) affected the encoding time (intercept of RT…

The data indicated that disadvantaged children required more time to process visual information than did middle-class children, but the processing speed for the 2 groups tended to become more similar as grade level was increased. (Author)

First, third and fifth graders performed semantic acoustic and orthographic orienting activities to different words in a list. Their free recall of the words was tested after the orienting activity. The semantic task yielded better results than the other two which did not differ. (Author/MS)

Investigates the supportive side of current technology in the visual process of learning and the issues instructional designers must address to utilize these capabilities and maximize their effects. Provides an overview of visual memory and discusses information processing and analogic reasoning, cognition and visual information processing, visual…

The cognitive styles, aptitudes, and abilities of 50 right-handed subjects were measured through a battery of paper-and-pencil tests to determine the feasibility of using event related brain potentials (ERPs) in the development of adaptive training techniques keyed to the information processing styles of individual students. Visual, auditory, and…

This study was designed to investigate the effects of modeling or training with and without rule provision on the employment of strategies in solving four-dimensional, discrimination-learning problems. Subjects were 144 second and sixth-grade children from the New York City Public Schools. The blank-trial hypothesis testing paradigm was used. The…