With more low-income children in the United States participating in center-based early childhood education programs than ever before, understanding the features of preschool classrooms that promote positive and equitable outcomes for children is of increasing concern to education researchers. Relatively little empirical work, however, has…

Decades of research suggest that learning styles, or the belief that people learn better when they receive instruction in their dominant way of learning, may be one of the most pervasive myths about cognition. Nonetheless, little is known about what it means to believe in learning styles. The present investigation uses one theoretical…

This research pioneered the investigation of the role of doctoral students' thinking styles in their program satisfaction and perceived intellectual competence. Participants were 285 STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) students in Hong Kong. Results showed that students' thinking styles as measured by the Thinking Styles…

Multimedia learning research has established several principles for the effective design of audiovisual instruction. The image principle suggests that showing the instructor's face in multimedia instruction does not promote learning, because the potential benefits from inducing social responses are outweighed by the cost of additional cognitive…

While it is hypothesized that providing instruction based on individuals' preferred learning styles improves learning (i.e., reading for visual learners and listening for auditory learners, also referred to as the "meshing hypothesis"), after a critical review of the literature Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer, and Bjork (2008) concluded that…

Two studies integrate the big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE; negative effects of class-average achievement on academic self-concept, ASC), which is based upon educational psychological research, with related social psychological research that is based on social comparison theory. Critical distinctions are the nature of the social comparison…

Reviews literature on the natural learning approach as it pertains to spelling instruction, which focuses on incidental and informal methods of learning to spell. Emphasizes there is only partial support for the inherent assumptions of the approach and reports young children who receive little or no spelling instruction do as well as their…

Results indicate Sex by Cognitive Style interaction effects with males more active and influential than females in field-dependent groups, males more active but not more influential than females in middle-range groups, and males and females equally active and influential in field-independent groups. (Author/MV)

Given the potential importance of using modality preference with instruction, the authors tested whether learning style preference correlated with memory performance in each of 3 sensory modalities: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. In Study 1, participants completed objective measures of pictorial, auditory, and tactile learning and learning…

Investigates the development of narrative thought by analyzing the structural complexity and social-psychological understanding displayed in the story compositions of 151 adolescents aged 10 to 18 years. A clear developmental progression was observed in structural complexity in terms of plot structure and the construction of flashbacks. (Contains…

Over fifteen hundred students were followed longitudinally from college entry into graduate and professional school. Relatively field independent students favored impersonal domains requiring cognitive restructuring skills (for example, sciences) and relatively field dependent students favored interpersonal domains which do not emphasize such…

Fourth and seventh grade reflective, impulsive, fast/accurate, and slow/inaccurate subjects were asked to paraphrase the meaning of ambiguous sentences and then to indicate their meaning through the selection of pictures. Results indicated that reflective children were more successful in some settings than impulsive or slow/inaccurate children.…

The effect of field independence-dependence match or mismatch within the context of a communication task was examined. Results showed field-independent matched dyads performed better than field-dependent matched dyads, with the mismatched conditions' performance falling between the matched ones. (Author/GK)

The relationship between cognitive restructuring and perception of the upright (tests of which may be used to measure field dependence-independence [FDI]) was investigated. Data analysis of 34 tests administered to high school seniors, including 12 measures of FDI, resulted in five dimensions, including two associated with FDI. (Author/AEF)

Investigates the relationship between performance on field-independence tests and two variables which may be thought of as important determinants of performance on a variety of cognitive tasks: impulsiveness and previous education. (Author/RC)