This study explored retention of idioms and novel (i.e. newly created or grammatically generated) expressions in English-speaking girls following exposure only once during a conversation. Our hypothesis was that idioms, because of their inherent holistic, nonliteral and social characteristics, are acquired differently and more rapidly than novel…

There are many reasons to be curious about the way people learn, and the past several decades have seen an explosion of research that has important implications for individual learning, schooling, workforce training, and policy. In 2000, "How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition" was published and its…

The current study compared the effects on comprehension and memory of learning via text versus learning via argument map. Argument mapping is a method of diagrammatic representation of arguments designed to simplify the reading of an argument structure and allow for easy assimilation of core propositions and relations. In the current study, 400…

Gestalt psychologists proposed two distinct learning mechanisms. Associative learning occurs gradually through the repeated co-occurrence of external stimuli or memories. Insight learning occurs suddenly when people discover new relationships within their prior knowledge as a result of reasoning or problem solving processes that re-organize or…

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…

Two studies investigated the relationship between learning names and learning concepts in preschool children. More specifically, we focused on the relationship between learning the names and learning the intended functions of artifacts, given that the intended function of an artifact is generally thought to constitute core conceptual information…

Studies of the effects of imagery instructions and other imagery induction on prose learning are included in this progress report. Five experiments were conducted to establish a developmental trend for ability to use imagery-related mediation in whole passage learning. Observations indicate that six year olds are inhibited in paraphrase recall of…

Two experiments were conducted to test three hypotheses related to comprehension. The hypotheses were: that actions are harder to modify than states; that implications or inferences from modified concepts would also change in memory; and that propagation of modifications would be less likely to states than to actions. The first experiment tested…

Thirty-six undergraduate students participated in a two-hour experiment that measured the effect of fact and inference text annotation on the integration of information. The subjects were asked to read four pairs of meaningful stories, each of which contained four pairs of related facts about a mythical country. The texts of the experimental group…

Presents a model of information processing that demonstrates how to facilitate knowledge acquisition. Various instructional strategies designed to reduce the effect of impositions are described, such as use of novelty, mystery, and questioning techniques; reducing complexity of instructional messages; and the automaticity of secondary skills. (JKP)

This report reviews and synthesizes psychological and educational research on learning strategies. The report contains an overview of strategy modification; a review of factors influencing strategy selection and use (including intellectual aptitude, personality variables, cognitive style, reception preference, motivation, sex, and prior…

The effects of sentence imitation and picture verification on the recall of subsequent digits were studied. Stimuli consisted of 20 sentences, each sentence followed by a string of five digit names, and five structural types of sentences were presented. Subjects were instructed to listen to the sentence and digit string and then either immediately…

When one learns complex material, the important thing appears to be the ability to understand the material. Once understanding occurs, learning and remembering follow automatically. The conventional psychological literature says little about the processes involved in the learning of complex material--material that takes weeks, months, and even…

Discusses the superiority of information processing (IP) theory to stimulus-response theory, specifically in terms of language comprehension, language production, and the role of memory. (KM)