This reports the effects of the number of relevant stimulus dimensions and figural versus verbal stimuli on the concept learning ability of college students. Results force a consideration of mediational variables in explaining this form of cognitive learning. A set of verbal materials analogous to a set of dimensionalized figural materials was…

Students in grades 4, 6, and 8 were required to indicate whether or not a stimulus word belonged in either of two semantic categories that were held in memory. Results indicated that even for the youngest children semantically similar categories required less search time than dissimilar categories. (GO)

This experiment was designed to determine whether children's inability to discriminate mirror-image oblique lines is a function of encoding in memory the left-right orientation or the degree of slope of an oblique line. (Author/SB)

Presents an overview of some of the major concerns for teachers of Image Study in higher education and offers examples of image sets useful for concept teaching. (MH)

This study examined first graders' use of strategic behavior (looking more during study and categorizing during study) in response to perceiving instructions versus remembering instructions. (BRT)

It was hypothesized that Piaget's argument on behalf of the reorganization of cognitive processes would gain empirical support from a color/form, matching similar objects problem for 52 6-year-olds from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds. (Author/MS)

From experiments showing that subjects differentially attend to parts of the visual field, psychologists have inferred a limitation on human visual information processing capacity. The model presented describes an optimal way to allocate a limited quantity of "cognitive resources", "attention" or "mental effort". An experiment tests this model.…

Assesses performance of 9-, 13-, and 20-year-olds on 3,840 trials of a mental rotation task in which subjects judged if pairs of stimuli presented in different orientations were identical or mirror images. Results are discussed in terms of possible mechanisms underlying the impact of practice. (Author/NH)

Results show that basic objects are shown to be the most inclusive categories for which a concrete image of the category as a whole can be formed, to be the first categorizations made during perception of the environment and to be the categories most codable, most coded, and most necessary in language. (Author/DEP)

Results indicated that the nature of a memory unit does not change with age, that memory improves with age, and that separate visual and verbal memories are operative in Ss in this age range. (Author)

After viewing pictures of simple objects varied in color and spatial location, first, third, and fifth graders were assessed for their abilities in automatic processing of spatial and color information. In general, no evidence was found to suggest that the processing strategies of younger children were less sophisticated than those of older…

Subjects judged whether aerial views would be seen by an observer oriented in various ways. For practiced subjects, time to answer was an approximately linear function of number of abstract spatial dimensions on which aerial view and observer's orientation were consistent. Ability correlated with linearity of response-time. (Author/RD)

A comparison was made between two procedures for testing whether an alpha-numeric character, which was pattern masked to prevent awareness, could access higher-order information concerning its category. (Author)

The influence of frequency of occurrence of a visual stimulus on encoding processes is investigated, to discover what mechanisms allow cognitive processes to modify perceptual processes. Six experiments are described and the results are discussed. (MH)