Instructional technologists have traditionally used the scientific or rationalistic paradigm to study the instructional potential of pictures. Naturalistic and rationalistic inquiry differ in their views of reality and truth, the relationship between the investigator and the subject, the goals of inquiry, and the role of values in inquiry.…

This paper extended the investigation of the concept of negation into actual classroom environments by ascertaining the frequency with which pupils at three different elementary school academic levels are expected to process teacher-initiated oral statements (the pupils' aural school environment) which contain selected negation elements.…

An investigation of size accuracy and spatial accuracy of depth perception in a total of 227 African, Chinese and European children between 4 and 10 years of age. The pattern of results varied little between cultures. (Author/SDH)

Crossing high bridges offers the opportunity to ponder views from a distance: to see connections between places at the ground level or ideas that are familiar, and to capture an overview of places or ideas that are yet to be explored. The purpose of this essay is to explore the figural bridges that connect the arts with cognitive development and…

Ninety-five children in 28 nursery school classrooms were used to investigate the relationships between teacher facilitative or directive verbal behavior in nursery school classrooms and seven aspects of child language change (receptive vocabulary, vocabulary of use, mean length of response, complexity of sentences, inquiry statements, dramatic…

Composition instructors need to emphasize to their students that persuasion is not always announced--it can be forcefully present in so-called "objective" forms of discourse like textbooks and news. News photographs can be successfully used in the composition classroom as a unit of study in visual rhetoric to introduce students to the…

This study was conducted to determine if viewing a commercially prepared videotape containing written and aural subliminal messages was more effective at producing weight loss than a videotape containing the same content, but without the subliminals. Participants included undergraduate and graduate students from Iowa State University (N=51) who…

This discussion and critique of television programs used in two courses--D102 (vandalism) and M101 (mathematics)--at the British Open University suggests that the television presentation of real life-like raw material can facilitate the comprehension of abstract material inasmuch as it provides concrete illustrations, and provides an opportunity…

To determine what general aspects of photographs appeal to readers--as opposed to subject matter categories that might or might not be tied to events--95 college students reported their readership of three alternate front pages of the daily student newspaper. Specifically, the study examined whether readers were more likely to read stories…

In two separate experiments, children (2nd and 7th graders) and adults generated oral descriptions of the picture stories in the WISC-R picture arrangement task. Comprehension of the stories was assessed by subjects' use of logical connectives and by mention of subtle themes in interpreting the more difficult stories. In both experiments and on…