Spearman's notions of mental energy and mental span presage modern conceptions of attentional resources and working memory as fundamental to intelligence. Viewing attention as the conative directing of the intellect, as "the application of intellectual energy," Spearman's quantitative law of mental span deals with limits on the…

This paper describes dissertation research using cognitive psychology in the design of museum exhibit labels in an effort to increase learning and memory in museum visitors. Three studies focused on factors affecting whether or not using a question (instead of a statement) as a title on a museum exhibit label would increase the visitor's memory of…

Scientific sense-making is a process in which theory and evidence are brought into coordination. This work examines the conditions for the development of scientific sense-making in fifth and sixth grade classroom science lessons. Classroom activities that were structured as a series of presentations are compared with activities structured more as…

Scientific sense-making is a process in which theory and evidence are brought into coordination. This paper reports on research undertaken as part of a larger National Science Foundation funded study on the conditions that support scientific sense-making in schools. It describes how students with access to a range of epistemologies contribute in…

This paper discusses the importance of considering individual learning styles when teaching college students. Today's college students represent a broad spectrum in terms of age, experience, culture, ethnicity, and level of preparedness, and it is a challenge for instructors to meet the needs of all students. There are five strands that affect…

Traditional methods of teaching spelling emphasized that pupils might write each new spelling word correctly and repeatedly from a weekly list in the spelling textbook. Some weaknesses in this approach are that rote learning is being stressed without emphasizing application of what has been learned, and that there is nothing which relates the…

The literature on learning styles is full of unresolved issues, both theoretical and practical. Early research into learning styles includes that of H. A. Witkin, who developed the Embedded Figures Test in the late 1960s. This test determines the "field dependence" or "field independence" of individuals, marking their global…

The central premise of this paper is that there is a group of visual thinking skills which are becoming increasingly foundational and basic to the education of a contemporary citizenry. These skills are becoming more vital as the use of digital imagery increases. The skills are independent of the external technologies (i.e., hardware and software)…

A study examined the relationship between communication apprehension and the six learning styles of the Grasha-Riechmann Student Learning Styles Scale (GRSLSS). Data were gathered from 325 undergraduates enrolled in an introductory course in interpersonal communication who completed J. McCroskey's Personal Report of Communication Apprehension…

In; the past 3 years there has been a resurgence of interest in learning styles as applied to education generally and to professions education in particular. For all this activity there are difficulties preventing significant progress. Chief among these is the bewildering confusion of definitions surrounding learning style conceptualization, and…

Noting that analogy is widely considered to be an important mechanism of scientific thinking and a source of creative insight in theory development, this report considers the implicit constraints that determine analogical soundness. The report first examines the constraints that govern analogical reasoning as it is predicated currently. The report…

A cognitive processing model was adopted by the task force developing the National Association of Secondary School Principals' (NASSP) Learning Style Profile (LSP). The LSP contains 23 independent scales representing four higher order factors: cognitive skills; perceptual responses; study preferences; and instructional preferences. The subscales…

Understanding students' learning styles is one of the first steps to providing an effective education. Four elements must be present in schools for mastery of content to occur. These four elements operate in sequence and each supports those that follow. The elements are (1) diagnosis of student traits and skills, (2) development of specific…

Learning style theorists have advanced several distinct definitions of learning style and have proposed diagnostic procedures and instructional practices based on these definitions. Practitioners could benefit by being able to draw on the full range of these conceptions, but the conditions of dissemination discourage theorists from drawing…

Different types of learning styles among sophisticated second language learners are described. Excerpts are presented of interviews with four adults who were gifted in acquiring command of foreign languages. Each of the respondents used a different approach to second language learning but considered that approach to be the one naturally…