This study investigated whether orthographic consistency and individual learner differences including working memory (WM), first language (L1) background, and second language (L2) proficiency affect Chinese L2 learners' literacy acquisition. Seventy American college students in beginning or intermediate Chinese classes participated in a character…

This monograph analyzes theoretical and methodological problems that may have prevented previous research from detecting retroactive inhibition with meaningful discourse and reports on two experiments based on the analysis. (Author/TA)

From evidence of this study it appears that a person will learn more from a prose passage if he forms images of the things and events described in the passage. (Authors/MB)

Purpose of this experiment was to explore to what extent people can acquire concepts from exposure to definitions and to determine whether a procedure that induces semantic encoding will have the same effect on concept learning as such procedures have on associative learning. (Authors/MB)

Findings clearly demonstrate that interference theory can account for the forgetting of meaningfully-learned, connected discourse. (Authors)

In two experiments a total of 662 high school students read a prose passage, took a verbatim or paraphrase quiz, and a week later completed a verbatim or paraphrase delayed test. Taking a quiz significantly enhanced performance on the delayed test. Performance was consistently much higher on the verbatim than on the paraphrase forms of quizzes and…

Results were in close agreement with interference theory and the findings of paired-associate research. (Author)

The hypothesis that thematic prompts facilitate learning by furnishing mediators was investigated in three experiments, two of which produced enhanced learning. (CK)

Two experiments investigated the impact of immediate knowledge of a correct response (KCR) upon learning in programed instruction. The 356 subjects completed a programed lesson on myocardial infarction taught by means of the PLATO IV computer assisted instructional system. Subjects who received KCR after responding learned significantly more than…

In two experiments, college students who supplied the last words of sentences they read learned more than subjects who simply read whole sentences. This facilitation was observed even with a list of sentences which were almost always completed with the wrong words. However, proactive interference attributable to acquisition errors appeared on…

In these studies, people recalled additional, previously unrecalled information from stories following instruction to take a new perspective. The data clearly show the operation of retrieval processes independent from encoding processes. (SW)

Text information relevant to questions was learned better than text information irrelevant to questions. Results are predicted by a theory that readers selectively allocate a greater volume of attention to question-relevant information, and that a process supported by the additional attention causes more of the information to be learned.…

The two studies outlined in this report gauged college undergraduates' ability to learn and to recall the content of certain passages when provided with "directed perspectives" or context clues. In the first study, 63 subjects were divided into three groups, were asked to read two stories, and were assigned a perspective (home buyer,…

In two experiments, undergraduates who completed the last words of sentences they read learned more than subjects who simply read whole sentences. This facilitation was observed even with a list of sentences that were almost always completed with the wrong words. (Author/GDC)