The purpose of the eight studies reported in this paper was two-fold: to identify some of the relationships that exist between the unique properties of diagrams and various aspects of cognitive processes and learning, and, subsequently, to derive principles from these relationships that would direct the design and use of diagrams in the classroom.…

The relative importance of spatial-position as a memory aid in a block pattern reproduction task was investigated by analyzing the object-selection and object-placement strategies of 69 nursery school children. Subjects were given a task modeled on Piaget's assessment of Static Reproductive Images and Action that had been modified into a…

Gestalt theory deals with the act of thinking and the construction of concepts in a situated manner, and, therefore, could be used to study how meaning is extracted from a visual display. Using the Gestalt framework of form cues and their usage patterns in the perception of, and learning from, visual media, researchers could study frame, line…

This study investigating the use of visual cueing strategies within a self-paced instructional unit employed and modified an instructional unit on the human heart developed by Francis M. Dwyer. This unit and its accompanying tests were designed to assess visual learning in terms of student achievement on drawing, identification, terminology, and…

Three consecutive experiments examined the effect of offering college students performance-contingent points toward their final course grade under various combinations of knowledge of correct response and rules with examples of how to perform the task. Students who were offered points and received rules with examples scored lower on an immediate…

Performances of 12 hyperactive learning disabled (LD) boys and 12 non-hyperactive LD boys were compared with two groups of 12 normal control boys (6-11 years old) on a visual search task. Ss were asked to locate a target letter appearing within an array of randomly selected letters during cued and non-cued trials. Results indicated that in the…

This paper describes three studies designed to determine whether there are age-related differences in children's memory for implicit and explicit information in prose. In the first study, six experimental paragraphs were read individually to a total of 60 children in grades K-5. Each child was then asked four verbatim recall questions (specific…

The purpose of this research project was to evaluate the effects of prompts and cues in paired-associate learning. Experiment One was to investigate the effects of cues and prompting on the learning of Japanese vocabulary. Experiment Two duplicated the above using digit-nonsense syllable combinations as the paired associates. The next three…

On the basis of analytical and observational work during Phase 1 of this project, an experiment was developed to test the effects of systematic variations in the level of the independent variable "instructional cue" (I.C.). The first phase of the research consisted of the development of a precise operational definition of the variable. This was…

This experiment was designed to investigate the relative value of three sources of cue (graphic stimulus only, graphic stimulus plus a picture cue, and graphic stimulus plus a context cue) in combination with two list types (minimal and maximal contrast) as a means of facilitating the acquisition of initial reading vocabulary. The subjects, 137…

This study investigated the effect of varying the time at which verbal directions are presented to students involved in a learning situation. Four randomly selected Biology 251 sections (309 students) were pretested on knowledge of symbiosis and found to be equivalent. The intact classes were then assigned at random to four treatments. Each class…

This study examines the effects on long-term retention of variations in intensity and temporal parameters of arousal following a single learning trial in a paired-associate task. Intensity of arousal was manipulated by using two levels of noise, 75 db. and 90 db., and a condition without noise. Noise was delivered to the 56 female university…

The present study asked whether laboratory findings that isolation of an item facilitates its recall extended to formal educational settings. Four groups of students from a General Psychology class were differentiated in terms of the type of material which was isolated in assigned readings. Principles, examples of principles, or trivial statements…