Involuntary musical imagery (INMI; more commonly known as "earworms" or having a song "stuck in your head") is a common musical phenomenon and one of the most salient examples of spontaneous cognition. Despite the ubiquitous nature of INMI in the general population, functional roles of INMI remain to be fully established and…

Spatial skills are embedded in all aspects of the geosciences. The teaching and learning of spatial skills has been a challenging, but vital, endeavor. To support student learning of spatial skills in undergraduate courses, we designed scaffolds for spatially dependent content in a mid-level geoscience course using playdough to allow students to…

In this paper, MTL, an approach for visualization-based pedagogy, is analyzed and contextualized in both Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) and Dual Coding Theory (DCT). Through MTL, lectures, tutorials, laboratory sessions and individual study in learning and teaching programming are all carried out using two cognitive channels; verbal and non-verbal.…

The studies regarding using a cross sectional view of speech organs enriched with attention cueing and written text to probe learners' learning efficiency and behavior through mobile phones is scant. The purpose of this study was to examine whether the presence of attention cueing can benefit learners with different amounts of prior knowledge in…

This study reports the strategies used by second language learners to comprehend computerized video material. In total, 211 students taking an English course in a public university in Taiwan joined the study, conducted over 1 academic year during which 63 students were involved in the pilot study in the first semester, and 148 joined the formal…

Empirical studies that focus on the impact of three-dimensional (3D) visualizations on learning are to date rare and inconsistent. According to the ability-as-enhancer hypothesis, high spatial ability learners should benefit particularly as they have enough cognitive capacity left for mental model construction. In contrast, the…

This paper takes a cognitive perspective in an attempt to analyze mental mechanisms involved in contextual learning. In the following, it is suggested that contextualized environments evoke mental mechanisms that support reasoning about "what if", imaginary situations--utilizing a powerful mental mechanism known from the history of physics as…

Six studies were performed investigating the relationship between digit span (DS) capacity and other memory and problem solving tasks: (1) Ss were administered a DS test, an aurally presented mental addition test, a similar multiplication task, and a written timed division test. DS correlated only with the second; (2) Ss were required to…

The nature of the target designation process--which involves forming interassociated mental structures to allow retrieval of individual items of information--was studied. It was shown that visual imagery instructions improved target identification as well as word recognition but did not appear to affect the representational format. (Author/MH)

This report describes a study of how maps are learned. Subjects (undergraduate students at the University of California) studied a simple map under various conditions and then answered questions about the map and drew the map from memory. It was found that local relations are learned before large-scale relations, that different types of map…

Skilled and less skilled beginning readers (n=54) were taught to read and define 10 printed pseudowords. Post-tests revealed that experimentals retaining spellings in memory as orthographic images remembered spellings better than controls who received comparable training without the memory component. (PN)

This study investigates performance differences between reflective and impulsive subjects on a recognition memory task. Results indicate that verbal recognition memory is sensitive to both cognitive style and presentation mode. (JMF)

Reading is fundamental to learning. Vital to learning is memory, which is the mental faculty used to retrieve what was read and understood. The human brain is about the size of a grapefruit and weighs about as much as a head of cabbage. The cerebral cortex is a kind of problem-solving and memorizing device. The hippocampus plays a critically…

The purpose of these studies was to provide evidence to support either the dual-coding hypothesis or the single-system hypothesis of human memory. In one experiment, college subjects were shown a mixed series of words and pictures either while simultaneously engaged in shadowing (repeating aloud) a prose passage presented via earphones or while…

A series of pilot experiments were carried out to investigate the influence of stress induced by load and interference on the acquisition and retention of a path finding skill, and to investigate the relationship between two path finding strategies--retention of strings of instructions and understanding of global relationships--as components of…