Benefits of synchronous presentation of multisensory compared to unisensory cues are well established. However, the generality of such findings to children's learning with visual and haptic sensory cue pairings is unclear. Children aged 6 to 10 years (N = 180) participated in a novel tabletop category-learning paradigm with visual, haptic, or…

Haptics in the sense of active touch, as well as internally felt bodily sensations, add an important dimension to learning sessions at historical sites. Drawing on observations of primary school pupils visiting historical sites in Sweden, and interviews with pupils, teachers, and site educators following the visits, this study investigates in…

Purpose: The current study examined the role of attention and language ability in nonverbal rule induction performance in a demographically diverse sample of school-age children. Method: The participants included 43 English-speaking monolingual and 65 Spanish-English bilingual children between the ages of 5 and 9 years. Core Language Index…

Thinking Maps is a language of eight visual patterns, each based on a fundamental thought process, designed by Dr. David N. Hyerle. The visual patterns are based on cognitive skills and applied in all content areas. Not only are they used in different combinations for depth and complexity, but are also used by all members in the school community.…

Asking children to gesture while being taught a concept facilitates their learning. Here, we investigated whether children benefitted equally from producing gestures that reflected speech (speech-gesture matches) versus gestures that complemented speech (speech-gesture mismatches), when learning the concept of palindromes. As in previous studies,…

Paired associate learning by children was studied as a function of age (4 vs 7 yr), stimulus type (line drawing, color photograph, or object), and mode of elaboration (visual or verbal). Results showed that objects and photographs both surpassed line drawings in terms of learning and that they did not differ significantly from each other. (SBT)

A paired-associate task relational or non-relational visual and linguistic stimuli was presented to kindergarten and fifth-grade students. Results indicated that a relationship in both modes facilitated recall better than a relationship in only one mode, and that a relationship in either mode was better for recall than none at all. (DP)

The purpose of these four studies (two pilot studies and two experiments) was to investigate the effects of verbal processes and dimensional preferences in children's learning and transfer. Experiment I investigated the effect of verbal instructions upon motor responses. Discriminate verbal instructions produced statistically significant higher…

This study examines attention to stimulus presentation mode (SPM) by children when subdivided by age and sex, and the interaction between these variables. Except for the crossover period, female and male subjects' responses to auditory and visual stimuli follow the same general pattern; younger subjects respond at a greater rate to visual stimuli.…

Examines the hypothesis that an attentional preference for an imitator is a function of the magnitude of reinforcement associated with that person, and measures response uncertainty, a construct considered important in the effectance arousal theory often used to explain "being imitated" effects. (Author/RH)

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…

Examines the importance of (1) dimensional characteristics of stimuli present in discrimination transfer tasks, (2) having contrasting stimuli presented simultaneously, and (3) subjects age. Subjects were rural Mexican youths, ages 4 to 10. Reversal and nonreversal type discrimination transfer problems were used in the study. (DP)

Reports research demonstrating that fourth-grade subjects could not solve a basic transverse patterning problem involving pairs of geometric forms even after 90 trials. The addition of one nonspatial dimension, however, resulted in solution. Also, the greater the number of nonspatial dimensions present, the better the learning. (Author/SDH)