This experiment tested the hypothesis that organizing arithmetic fact practice by equivalent values facilitates children's understanding of math equivalence. Children (M age = 8 years 6 months, N = 104) were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 practice conditions: (a) equivalent values, in which problems were grouped by equivalent sums (e.g., 3 + 4 = 7, 2…

Organizational form significantly affected learning and retention in this name-attribute organizational study. Learning condition affected criterion performance, memory and error rates. An analysis of critical words (names, attributes, values) recalled indicated that hierarchical position influenced word memorability. (Author/MV)

The effects of verbal and pictorial organizing material on comprehension of paragraphs was investigated with second- and fifth-graders. Results suggest that knowledge of the interrelationships among elements is important, if not essential, for the comprehension of prose material. (Author/RC)

The hypothesis that reorganizing written material while taking notes would aid free recall was evaluated in two experiments with high school juniors. Results are discussed in terms of the encoding variability hypothesis which predicts that reorganizing material aids recall. (RC)

Previously, D. H. Robinson and G. Schraw (see record 1995-11458-001) found that advantages of graphic organizers (GOs) over outlines disappeared when testing was delayed. However, D. H. Robinson and K. A. Kiewra (see record 1996-12932-001), using a longer text and several displays, found that delayed testing was detrimental for outlines. In 2…

In two experiments, high school students read and listened to either a signaled or nonsignaled expository passage. Signals consisted of preview sentences, underlined headings, and logical connective phrases. Results indicated a pattern in which the signaled groups performed better on recall of conceptual information and on generating high quality…

College subjects were given either no prepassage, a thematic prepassage, or a topic sentence prepassage followed by an ambiguous passage in either superordinate or coordinate context. The thematic prepassage facilitated performance on a rigorously scored free-recall measure and a multiple-choice measure. Superordinate contextual organization…

The storage and retrieval of individual sentences occuring in small sets was substantially enhanced when the sentences were nominally linked by common concepts and when the learner was encouraged to process them semantically. Sentence recall was also positively increased when the learner perceived them to be in a meaningful order. (RC)

Two hypotheses about how organizational signals influence text recall were tested with 274 college students who read and recalled a text with or without signals. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that organizational signals induce readers to change their text-processing strategies. (Author/SLD)

Subjects read a textual passage encompassing hierarchically related topics. A structural outline presented in advance of reading the text facilitated reproductive recall of facts. The recall of specific facts was superior to that of general facts, implying an experimental demand to be precise in learning and recalling specific factual material.…

Study was conducted with the purpose of analyzing individual differences in the use of organizing strategies and considering their relationship to performance involving short-term memory. (Author/CB)

It is argued that the attribute-organized passage (as opposed to name-organized passage) yielded superior recall because it allowed for a hierarchically organized information retrieval scheme. (Authors/CB)

The superior retention of superordinate ideas over time was replicated in this study which demonstrated the construct validity of a recognition test based upon the structure of a prose passage. A link was made between existing data on memory for prose and past theory: Ausubel's subsumption theory and Craik and Lockhart's levels-of-processing…

Study goals may be less effective when the sequence of the list of goals does not match the sequence of goal-relevant information in a reading passage. In a study using undergraduates, learning of goal-relevant information was lower when the study goals and text sequences did not match. (Author/GDC)

Performance of high school students in reading comprehension tasks varied according to organization of the passage (structure and linkages); context (student characteristics); reading time; and length, content, and familiarity of the material. The tasks included immediate free recall and recognition of a fact, main idea, and inference. (Author/GDC)