The primary purpose of the present study was to determine whether recent findings documenting the benefits of text-related motor activity on young children's memory for reading passages [Glenberg, A. M., Gutierrez, T., Levin, J. R., Japuntich, S., & Kaschak, M. (2004). Activity and imagined activity can enhance young readers' reading…

Experiments showed that in verbal discrimination learning imaging the referent of the correct item was more facilitative than vocalizing the correct item, as long as the imagery structure was executed in the company of relevant motor activity. No difference between the two strategies was found in pictorial discrimination learning. (Author/BJG)

The paired-associate learning of 52 fourth graders was related to measures of cognitive ability obtained the previous year. Subjects were administered the paired-associate task under one of three variations: at a comfortable rate with standard instructions; at a comfortable rate with a potentially effective learning strategy (visual imagery); and…

Children in kindergarten, third grade, and fifth grade were presented a list of either pictures or words (with items presented varying numbers of times on the study trail). In both picture and word conditions, half of the subjects estimated how many times each item had been presented (absolute judgments) and the other half judged which of two…

Three experiments were conducted to determine the effectiveness of verbal and imaginal rehearsal strategies in children's discrimination learning. With verbal materials, imaging the referent of the correct item was more facilitative than vocalizing the correct item, as long as the former strategy was defined in a manner conducive to effective…

A total of 45 fifth grade students were the subjects of an experiment offering support for a component of learning strategy (memory imagery). Various theoretical explanations of the image-tracing phenomenon are considered, including depth of processing, dual coding and frequency. (MS)

Prose-learning strategies are classified in this paper as prose-dependent (those that authors can use to optimize communication) or processor-dependent (those that learners can use to optimize reception) and are cross-classified as stage-setting (those that prepare the learner for upcoming prose information) or storage-retrieval oriented (those…

The present study affords an explanation for the consistent, but not always statistically significant, pattern showing superior verbal discrimination learning performance for low- as compared to high-frequency words. In a frequency judgment task it was found that relative to high-frequency words, low-frequency words for which subjects (sixth…

This summary of a program of research in children's learning describes the effects of pictures and visual imagery on children's cognitive performance. The role of individual differences is highlighted throughout the paper, as are variables which potentially limit the effects discussed. Some of the conclusions were that in a large number of…

Research concerning the applied educational potential of Richard Atkinson's mnemonic "keyword method" is reported in this paper. Included are possibilities for stretching the limits of the keyword method by combining it with other mnemonic and prose-learning strategies. The first half of the paper provides an overview of mnemonics--the…

High and low achievers listened to 20 sentences under imagery or repetition instructions. The next day, learning was assessed by multiple choice items in which correct alternatives were stated in either verbatim or synonym form, and incorrect alternatives contained either familiar or new words. Implications for test construction were discussed.…

Previous research has demonstrated that requiring children to trace from memory the correct member of a pictorial discrimination pair markedly facilitates performance. The subjects for the first experiment in this study were 45 fifth grade students. The control group was given regular discrimination learning instructions. The image-trace group was…

Partial pictures facilitated performance when presented with verbal information, but not when presented with the test questions. Sentence repetition facilitated performance only on questions presumed to reflect relatively shallow information processing. (Author/STS)

The purpose of this study was to determine whether motor activity, previously assumed necessary to induce visual imagery in young children's associative learning, actually has to be executed in order for children to generate images. The results of an experiment with 96 kindergartners clearly suggest not: in conditions where subjects simply planned…

Two experiments compared the effectiveness of two separate mnemonic devices for learning the states and their capitals--one a complex key word system using substitute words for each syllable, the other a simple key word device interacting key words from the state and capital names in an illustration. In the first experiment, 88 fourth and fifth…