Psychological research shows that learning can be powerfully enhanced through testing, but this finding has so far been confined to memory tasks requiring verbal responses. We explored whether testing can enhance learning of visuospatial information in maps. Fifty subjects each studied 2 maps, one through conventional study, and the other through…

Nine experiments show that in the context of Stroop dilution the extent to which flanking distractors are processed depends on the nature of the material at fixation. A Stroop effect is eliminated if a word or a nonword is colored and appears at fixation and the color word appears as a flanker. A Stroop effect is observed when the color carrier at…

Two experiments are an attempt to provide a description of three commonly observed phenomena of recognition behavior for alphabet characters in terms of the mathematics of correlation. (Author/KM)

This article deals with studies that manipulated physical parameters of pictures- the amount of realistic detail, color versus black and white, and moving versus still pictures. (Author)

People frequently analyze the actions of other people for the purpose of action coordination. To understand whether such self-relative action perception differs from other-relative action perception, the authors had observers either compare their own walking speed with that of a point-light walker or compare the walking speeds of 2 point-light…

Young infants have repeatedly been shown to be slower than older infants to shift fixation from a midline stimulus to a peripheral stimulus. This is generally thought to reflect maturation of the neural substrates that mediate the disengagement of attention, but this developmental difference may also be attributable to young infants' slower…

Keyboard musicians sight-read passages of music in which the amount of information about the presence of phrase units was systematically varied. Results suggest a clear analogy between the cognition of music and language, in that knowledge of abstract structure is of importance in the organization of immediate visual processing of text. (Editor/RK)

This report uses mental model theory to create a taxonomy of picture functions in order to relate these functions to learning theories. A rough outline of picture functions is presented, consisting of a retrieval function, a focus function, a construction function, and a supplantation function. It is suggested that this taxonomy could be helpful…

The first experiment determined that verbal interference (shadowing) was detrimental to the subjects' memory of words and high similarity pictures; the second, designed to minimize the possibility that students would sort through the pictures, indicated that verbal interference did not decrease memory of high similarity pictures. (Author/JEG)

This investigation into the effects of configural properties (properties determined by the interrelationships existing between component parts) used a selective attention task to determine whether intersection is a primary encoding feature or is constructed after slopes and heights are perceived. The method for encoding feature identification,…

Describes the results of a survey of highly successful junior high and middle school students, which asked open-ended questions about their perceptions of spelling. Indicates that visualizing is the most common strategy for learning new words, followed by dictionary use and repeating words over and over. (SKC)

Questions processes involved in physical matching task when stimuli are presented for duration short enough to prevent physical scanning. Research supported by U.S. Public Health Service. (DS)

Because human memory and thought involve extremely complex processes, it is possible to employ unusual modalities and specific visual strategies for remembering and problem-solving to assist patients with memory defects. This three-part paper discusses some of the research in the field of human memory and describes practical applications of these…

The role of meaning in the learning of verbally presented paired associates (PAs) is described by means of an experiment with a replication. A printed PA list containing six different types of items was presented to Sixth Graders. Four of the item types consisted of sentence-embedded PAs on the study trials, followed by test trial cues varying in…