Results indicated that negative instances were an integral part of concept acquisiton. The relationship between the positive and negative instances was based upon similarity of irrelevant attributes and sentence difficulty. (Author)

Results from the data analysis show that children learn mathematical concepts for clear cases, and that an analysis of attributes common to examples of a given concept is not a prerequisite to concept formation. The protocol findings provide information as to why this may be happening. (Author/PN)

In seven experiments, college or high school students studied texts containing either adjunct application or adjunct factual questions. Students were then tested for their ability to apply the presented concepts. Results suggested that the type of adjunct question had little influence on students' later ability to apply presented concepts.…

Results of two studies using the Esper paradigm to determine development of rule application and discovery are reported. Subjects learned and generalized when rule and structure were provided, but there was little evidence of rule discovery. Manipulations of memory and attention facilitated learning, but only attention facilitated rule discovery.…

The proposition was investigated that concept learning is a twofold process: acquisition of a prototype and development of generalization and discrimination skills. The assumption that formative evaluation procedures are necessary when attempting to prepare better instructional treatments for improved student performance was tested. (Author/GK)

Two computer-based instructional design strategies were investigated to improve the two-phase process of concept learning by being response sensitive to error patterns. The first strategy determined the format of examples by adaptive or fixed selection; the second strategy adjusted the selection according to rules of generalization and…