Presents an overview and an example of use of the Information-Visualization System, an approach to visual selection enabling educators to match desired learning outcomes with the best visuals to carry the message. Decision tables and resource book containing visual options, information types, and suggested methods of enhancing visuals are…

Sixteen skilled and 16 learning disabled (LD) readers (ages 11-12) viewed nonsense pictures either without names, with names that emphasized the semantic aspects of the picture, or with names unassociated with the pictorial representation. Results suggested that semantic coding deficits in LD readers were localized to retrieval processes.…

This article investigates categorical perception as a phenomenon which can be understood in terms of adaptation level theory. Data from four experiments, two visual and two tactual-kinesthetic, supports the idea that categorical perception is a pervasive characteristic of perceptual organization. (JAZ)

A simulation model of episodic memory, MINERVA Z, is applied to the learning of concepts, as represented by the schema-abstraction task. The model successfully predicts basic findings from the scheme-abstraction literature, including some that have been cited as evidence against exemplary theories of concepts. (Author/LMO)

A model of information processing has been developed that combines concepts from the study of attention and the study of problem solving. The model has been realized as a computer program and used to simulate a variety of phenomena from the attention and performance literature. (Author/LMO)

Assesses performance of 9-, 13-, and 20-year-olds on 3,840 trials of a mental rotation task in which subjects judged if pairs of stimuli presented in different orientations were identical or mirror images. Results are discussed in terms of possible mechanisms underlying the impact of practice. (Author/NH)

Two variants of the habituation paradigm were used to investigate fine orientation discrimination and shape constancy in 34 young infants. Results demonstrate that conditions determine whether young infants show sensitivity to relatively fine variations in pattern orientation or give evidence of shape constancy with the same patterns. (HOD)

Three experiments demonstrate that children four to ten years old, when presented with a series recall task with pictures of common objects having short or long names, showed consistently better recall of pictures with short names. (HOD)

Reports on three experiments that assessed the attentional responses of 4-month-old infants to frequency-modulated sweeps corresponding to the frequency range of adult-to-infant and adult-to-adult intonational patterns. (HOD)

Synthesizes existing knowledge regarding the communication effects of animation and empirically assesses some of these effects. Results of this confirm that animation can be a viable method of advertising. (SRT)

Sixty-four learning disabled sixth, seventh, and eighth graders were assigned to 24 small instructional groups that were in turn assigned at random to mnemonic and control conditions, and instructional groups were given daily lessons. Results indicated that mnemonic groups outperformed control groups on the immediate and delayed tests. (Author/LMO)

Describes an instruction approach for teaching external clues that context clue instruction occurs over many years at all grade levels and asserts that this can used for learning vocabulary. Defines external context clues as syntactic and semantic elements within and among sentences. (SRT)

Three adolescents with moderate to severe mental retardation were taught to use picture prompts to guide their performance on two vocational sequencing tasks. All students completed the training task with at least 96% accuracy with the picture prompts, and generalized their performance with equal accuracy to the untrained task. (Author/CL)

Contrasts the dramatic potential of two media--the novel and the television production--and illustrates why great novels should not be made into television shows. (AEA)

Students in grades two, four, six, and college sorted abstract visual patterns that varied both in amount of contour and in type of visual organization (unstructured, simple symmetries, multiple symmetries, and rotational). Results suggested that children attend to both amount of contour and visual organization, but that attention to visual…