Fourth, sixth, and eighth grade students studied a word learning task and were tested on three consecutive days. Expectancy statements were made by half the subjects. These results seemingly contradict previous research, but the contradiction was explained in terms of task complexity. Expectations were found to be motivational. (Author/BW)

Thirty learning disabled and thirty nondisabled children (mean age 10 years) were compared on a paired associate learning task that simulated the process of sight word learning. Two instructional variables (response competition and stimulus complexity) that have been hypothesized as contributing to overloading in learning disabled children, were…

The effects of neutral, separate, and interactive imagery instructions on the learning performance of first and fifth graders were compared for both single-item and paired-associate tasks. Results revealed that both younger and older children using images did show facilitation, compared with those not using images. (Author/GK)

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…

Children's ability to produce and use natural language mediators on a paired-associate recall task requiring self-generated elaboration was analyzed. Elaborations were recorded and classified according to a semantic-syntactic scheme. Comparisons between grades were made to determine the effectiveness of elaboration categories in facilitating…

The ability of 45 educable mentally retarded children (mean CA-11 years) to acquire and retain a mediational strategy for paired associate learning was demonstrated by a training procedure which consisted of the sequencing of consecutive lists under varying degrees of mediational facilitation. (Author/CL)

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…

This study investigated developmental differences in the use of the common features abstraction strategy and the exemplar learning strategy for concept acquisition. Subjects were 30 second graders and 30 fifth graders. The concepts to be learned were two categories of artificial animals which differed on five dimensions. Each dimension had three…

This study is an attempt to investigate the usefulness of imagery instructions in learning PA nouns embedded in sentences and conjunction phrases with three different age groups (third grade, sixth grade and college students). In addition, six different item types are employed to convey increasingly dissimilar contexts from study to test trials.…

The present experiment investigated: (1) the effect of pictorial elaboration on low socioeconomic-status Mexican-American children's long term memory for noun pairs; (2) the effects of labeling mode on estimates of paired-associate acquisition and retention; and (3) the interrelationships between paired-associate task performance and school…