A study was performed to investigate the storage and retrieval dynamics that occur during paired-associate acquisition by means of the storage-retrieval separation technique discussed recently by Chechile & Meyer (1976). Thirty subjects learned an 18-item paired-associate list to a criterion of three perfect trials. In the test phase of each…

Two studies were performed to investigate the effects of material and task variations in the acquisition of cognitive learning strategies. Groups of undergraduate students were taught to use mental imagery, meaningful elaboration, and grouping. The type of training task or the order of training and test materials differed for each of the…

Constant-order paired-associate lists were used in which the numbers 1-24 were stimulus terms, and 24 nouns were response terms. The order of the nouns was varied across five lists to produce a different number of the hierarchical conceptual levels in the lists. There were two degrees of original learning and three types of retention tests after…

The reports of eight studies testing the effects of elaboration on the learning of children are compiled in this document. Mental elaboration is "thinking while learning" which occurs as the learner actively adds context to the material he is asked to process. Supplied elaboration, included in these studies, occurs when the learner is provided…

The ability of 45 educable mentally retarded children (mean CA-11 years) to acquire and retain a mediational strategy for paired associate learning was demonstrated by a training procedure which consisted of the sequencing of consecutive lists under varying degrees of mediational facilitation. (Author/CL)

An information processing model was fitted to individual learning of paired associates and word definitions for 378 fifth to tenth-grade students. Reliable individual differences in acquisition rate and long-term retention were found. Correlations with traditional aptitude and achievement scores were discussed; no significant sex or ethnic group…

This study explored the developmental changes in children's effective utilization of verbal versus pictorial stimuli in forming connections between stimulus and response elements in a paired-associate task. A total of 112 children (56 males and 56 females), half of them 4-year-olds and half 8-year-olds, were tested under eight conditions involving…

The research reported here was directed at two distinct but related problems: (1) the assumption of bipolarity underlying standard semantic differential scales, and (2) the demonstration of the similarities between D-4 (the square root of the sum of squares of the difference between each word's mean rating and 4.00 on a number of scales) as a…

Paired-associate (PA) learning of children was investigated as a function of age, stimulus-type, and mode of elaboration. Sixty nursery school children (average age 53 months) and 60 first graders (average age 84 months) were selected as subjects. Each child studied nine pairs of objects, photographs, or drawings for two trials of PA learning by…

A series of pilot and regular experiments were conducted to investigate memory checking processes. The first set of experiments developed a set of six different tests for the measurement of memory checking. Correlational studies of these tests demonstrated that they could be used reliably and that the different tests are measuring the same basic…

In this study, the self-reported strategies of fifth, seventh, and ninth grade subjects used to learn a list of paired associates were correlated with actual learning performance to test the hypothesis that proficient learners are elaborators. (Author/SB)

Contextual facilitation appears to depend upon the mode of analysis of the prime. If the prime is analyzed as a meaningful unit, facilitation occurs. However, if it is subjected to a more discrete, letter-by-letter analysis, the priming effect vanishes. (Author/CP)

An earlier study showed that responses are remembered better when subjects produce them from cues, than when subjects read cue-response pairs. The decided memory advantage for generated targets relative to read ones is known as the generation effect. The present research is designed to study the generation effect for cues, following a…

To obtain an a priori estimate of natural language mediators (NLM's) 320 pairs of words with the consonant-vowel-consonant-pattern (CVC's) were broken into four series of 90 pairs and presented to 240 male and female undergraduates. Pairs were shown for 15 seconds while the subjects wrote down any associative device or NLM they could generate that…

This study attempted to investigate the effects of school experience on performance on visual perception tests involving line figures and forms. The subjects were 120 first grade students selected from two public schools in the same community. The experiment involved an Experimental Treatments X Age X Time of Testing factorial design. All subjects…