Eight experiments studied the following aspects of associative strategies in learning: classification; verbalization at three developmental levels; verbalization by normal and educable children; facilitation of associative learning among educable retardates; effectiveness of familiarization and differentiation training on the successful employment…

Since structural dimensions of knowledge and learner contribute to preferred message structure, an understanding of structural relationships can aid in the more effective design of instructional messages. Five studies were conducted to explore these relationships. Knowledge structure was defined as the iconic representation of the body of…

Tested the hypothesis that individual differences in immediate-verbal-memory span predict success in second-language vocabulary acquisition. In the two-session study, adult subjects learned 56 English-Finnish translations. Tested one week later, subjects were less likely to remember those words they had difficulty learning, even though they had…

Forty undergraduate college students participated in a computer-assisted instructional study designed to utilize right cerebral hemisphere functions in the learning and memory process. Two versions of a lesson on how a simple battery works were designed to present conceptual and topographic information either verbally or pictorially on a Plato IV…

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…

This research contrasts the learning effects of an affective dimension of meaningfulness with the word-quality of consonant-vowel-consonant trigrams. Subject rated trigrams for both "association value"--having word-quality versus lacking word-quality--and "reinforcement value"--liking versus disliking the trigram regardless of word quality. Paired…

THE REPORT DESCRIBES 13 EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES OF LEARNING IN CHILDREN BETWEEN FOUR AND 12 YEARS OF AGE. THE EXPERIMENTS CONCERN--(1) THE ISOLATION CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH ELABORATIVE FACILITATION OF LEARNING OCCURS, AND (2) THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ELABORATION AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN LEARNING PROFICIENCY. BECAUSE CHILDREN LEARN NOUN PAIRS AND…

Recall lists were presented to 40 black lower class and 40 white middle class children in this experiment. The purpose of the study was to examine a possible explanation of the relatively poor performance of black and lower class children on tasks requiring abstract learning abilities. It was reasoned that the threshold for the production of…

The inferior performance of external locus of control (LOC) subjects (Ss) on achievement tests has been attributed by many researchers to cognitive and perceptual deficiencies. Several studies have shown that advance organizers (AO) which provide optimal anchorage and mobilize existing relevant concepts, facilitate learning of verbal material.…

The central activity of literary criticism, the understanding of literature, is related to the process of establishing a context for the works of literature being studied. Choosing not to discuss the factual elements of literary criticism, the author clarifies and concentrates on the "lower" and "upper" limits of criticism. While the "lower" limit…

The frequency theory of verbal discrimination learning makes no distinction between silent and spoken rehearsal. Further, the frequency theory predicts that the study-test method of list presentation is superior to the anticipation method. College students, performing under silent and spoken rehearsal conditions, learned 16 low-frequency…

Free recall, cued recall, and clustering performance of fourth grade lower socioeconomic black and white children is studied under four conditions of teaching: random presentation, random presentation plus instruction, blocked presentation, and blocked presentation with instruction of categorically related list. Results indicate that both recall…

Reviews studies suggesting benefits of block play for literacy development that provides actual reading and writing experiences. Suggests that block play centers can be literacy-enhanced with materials that are authentic, useful, and appropriate, including: thematic books, magazines, architectural blueprints, envelopes, and adding machine tape.…

The symposium on which this report is based was motivated by the belief that scientific understanding of how man learns through language will some day help in the development and use of written instructional materials. The main purpose of the symposium was to take stock of the more promising findings and concepts about verbal learning processes in…

After intensively studying for several years the thinking processes of members of a tribal group in Western Africa, the Kpelle, the authors examine the relation between culture and cognitive development. The following issues are discussed: (1) an analysis of the terms "culture" and "cognition"; (2) an ethnographic description of the Kpelle…