While much time has been spent deliberating about the definition of play, little emphasis has been placed on what children themselves perceive as play. The aim of the present study was to examine social context as a cue for children's perceptions of play and learning. Ninety-two children aged between four and six years (mean four years nine…

Two experiments investigated whether young and old adults can temporarily remove information from a capacity-limited central component of working memory (WM) into another component, the activated part of long-term memory (LTM). Experiment 1 used a modified Sternberg recognition task (S. Sternberg, 1969); Experiment 2 used an arithmetic…

Virtual Reality (VR) is primarily a visual technology. Elements such as haptics (touch feedback) and sound can augment an experience, but the visual cues are the prime driver of what an audience will experience from a VR presentation. At its inception in 2001 the Centre for Advanced Visualization (CFAV) at Niagara College of Arts and Technology…

We report four experiments designed to determine whether visual information affects judgments of acoustically-specified nonspeech events as well as speech events (the "McGurk effect"). Previous findings have shown only weak McGurk effects for nonspeech stimuli, whereas strong effects are found for consonants. We used click sounds that…

This study examined the cognitive and neural development of attention switching using a simple forced-choice attention task and functional magnetic resonance imaging. Fourteen children and adults made discriminations among stimuli based on either shape or color. Performance on these trials was compared to performance during blocked trials…

To date, the empirical support for the use of social story interventions for children with Asperger syndrome (AS) is small. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of individualized social story interventions on the social behavior of three children with AS. Using a multiple-baseline-across-participants design, social stories were…

Learning research in visuals and media from education is reviewed, summarized, and extrapolated for the planetarium. Of particular interest is research into the use of cuing, with relevance to the planetarium display. It has been demonstrated that viewers can learn more if they are told about the important concepts and terms before the planetarium…

NCR (National Cash Register) Corporation is pursuing opportunities to make their point of sale (POS) terminals easy to use and easy to learn. To approach the goal of making the technology invisible to the user, NCR has developed an adaptive expert prototype system for a department store POS operation. The structure for the adaptive system, the…

Students in social studies classrooms frequently find themselves in situations where the information they need to provide in order to have a correct, complete response is not clear. For example, teachers frequently use cue words in questions and directions such as "identify,""describe,""analyze," and…

Two studies were conducted to determine whether language as well as appearance cues would influence children's performance on a sex constancy task. In the first study, preschoolers and second graders participated in a sex constancy task in which different labels were used to refer to a picture of a boy or girl. The results showed that older…

Two computer assisted instruction programs tested the effects of plain and enhanced screen designs with or without information about those designs and task-type on time and learning. Subjects were 140 fourth grade students in Lincoln, Nebraska who had extensive prior experience with computers. The enhanced versions used headings, directive cues,…

The dual purpose of this study was (1) to design instruction in problem representation and solution of algebraic word problems in order to improve the algebraic problem solving skills of learning disabled (LD) adolescents; and (2) to devise and evaluate the effectiveness of instructional procedures for teaching LD adolescents to represent and…

Using self-instructional strategy training procedures, three sixth-grade learning disabled students were taught a series of self-directed prompts designed to facilitate the generation, framing, and planning of written compositions. The eight-step instructional procedure included pretraining, review of baseline performance level, description of the…

The four components of quality instruction identified by Benjamin Bloom in "Human Characteristics and School Learning" (1976) form the basis of a remedial composition program designed for disadvantaged junior college students. The first component, cues for learning, is programed into the packets of student materials. These cues include identifying…