In recent years, there has been increasing interest in finding ways of promoting and evaluating structural knowledge (knowledge of how ideas, events, and principles are interrelated). Research has demonstrated that students' numerical judgments of the strength of relatedness among ideas drawn from a domain provide insights into how they have…

A delay in the acquisition of morphology by a two-year-old Estonian-speaking boy was investigated to determine the role the child's bilingualism (with English) played in the delay. In contrast to his older sister, whose exposure to English was delayed, the boy exhibited a "whole word" approach to morphology, characterized by the following: (1)…

This document, written in Vietnamese and containing a bilingual (English/Vietnamese) forward, examines the differences between the American and Vietnamese educational systems with respect to basic educational philosophy, content, learning style and organization. Also discussed are specific learning problems which affect the education of Vietnamese…

Attribution theory suggests that attributional styles may contribute to the motivational and performance deficits frequently observed in depressed and lonely populations. An Attributional Style Assessment Test (ASAT) was created and administered to college students, along with the Beck Depression Inventory and the UCLA Loneliness Scale.…

Research has shown student field-independent cognitive style (FI), as opposed to field-dependent cognitive style (FD), to be correlated moderately with success on selected second language tasks. A trait-treatment interaction approach was utilized in this study to examine the role of FD/I among 236 college students enrolled in six sections of an…

The objectives of this project were (1) to determine whether or not adapting instruction to student characteristics will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of training, (2) to identify the learner attributes that interact best with specific instructional treatments, and (3) to establish what must be done to create and implement a useful…

In this report, three theories of transitive inference are compared as they apply to the solution of linear syllogisms: a spatial theory, a linguistic theory, and a new mixed linguistic-spatial theory. Each theory is expressed in terms of an information-processing (flow chart) model and a mathematical model that quantifies the…

An overview of cognitve styles and research in the field of field dependence/field independence within the context of the special needs of Hispanic students is presented. Various studies by Witkin et al. on the dimension of field dependence/field independence required the subject to perceive an item independently of the field or context that…

Reading achievement tests have been used to identify deficiencies in inner city, poor readers; however, they often do not provide information about encoding strategies which lead some children to academic success. Immediate memory and visual analytic differences which contribute to the success of skilled readers are isolated in this study using 20…

The effects of verbal analogies and quantitative and verbal aptitudes on comprehension and memory of a technical text were studied. In a cued recall test, the presence of an analogy decreased the performance of high quantitative aptitude university students and tended to increase the performance of low quantitative aptitude students. In a…

Differences between classroom and experiential learning are outlined and two methods for incorporating experiential education programs into existing sociology curricula are suggested. The author stresses that a successful integration of experiential learning into the sociology curriculum may require fundamental shifts in the definition of the…

Psychological literature on field independence shows that the field independent individual possesses enhanced cognitive restructuring abilities, while the field dependent individual possesses interpersonal and social skills. It was hypothesized that field independence would be related to the acquisition of linguistic competence, and that field…

This report summarizes a number of exploratory and pilot studies undertaken to investigate the relationship of individual differences among college mathematics students to discovery and expository instruction, and to Personalized Systems of Instruction (PSI). Research in education has often attempted to demonstrate the superiority of one type of…

A review of studies of four vocabulary teaching methods--context learning, imagery, cognitive style, and natural word learning--resulted in several generalizations about their effectiveness. The generalizations are limited by problems such as the difficulty of defining when a word is "known" and the lack of a way to test permanence of word…

It is hypothesized in this study that given an understanding of the educational value levels of students, instructors could modify their teaching methods to accommodate various levels reflected in their classes. Six value systems for both teachers and students are identified: (1) tradition oriented; (2) individualistic; (3) structured; (4)…