The effects of a prose passage's physical structure and semantic organization upon free recall performance was investigated. Passages, describing characteristics of fictitious countries, contained either five or nine paragraphs of varying lengths. Differences in the distribution of materials interacted with type of semantic organization to produce…

The effect of variations in the organization of information and in contextual features upon comprehension of prose was tested using four tasks. Organization was varied to contrast hierarchical information structures and list information structures, and to test the effect of linking the structural components of the passage into a conceptual…

The orienting role of objectives was examined in relation to text organization--defined in terms of ideational prominence of elements. Ideational prominence, which was manipulated, did influence learning, but lost its effect when relevant objectives were provided. Both orienting factors were also found to be little influenced by a time constraint.…

An examination of models which have been employed in making predictions about the interference effect is made. It is pointed out that investigators mainly have relied upon the paired-associate model borrowed from classical studies in the field of verbal learning. This basic paradigm, represented as A-B, A-C, A-B, has produced fairly consistent…

Presents a study of metacognitive responses of English school children examining four common metacognitive function measures. Discusses the content of each measure, the search for developmental commonality, and statistical relationships. Concludes that no evidence supported a common metacognitive factor or unified construct, although a common…

College students were trained on a hierarchical mapping technique designed to facilitate prose processing. The students studied a geology passage and five days later were given four types of tests. The treatment group significantly outperformed a control group; the major differences were attributable to concept cloze and essay exams. (Author/RD)

A series of seven experiments provided information on the relationship between the learning of prose and the structural importance of the linguistic subunits. Five samples of prose, including narrative folktales and two samples of textual prose, were studied to determine whether the patterning of learning corresponded to the structural importance…