The Reading, Engaging, and Learning project (REAL) investigated whether a classroom intervention that enhanced young children's experience with informational books would increase reading achievement and engagement. Participants attended schools serving low income neighborhoods with 86% African American enrollment. The longitudinal study spanned…

Evidence-based practices (EBPs) are the basis on which teachers and other service providers are required to design educational programs for learners with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). As part of their work with the National Professional Development Center (NPDC) on ASD, researchers developed a process for reviewing the research literature and…

We investigated whether and how prior knowledge activation improves learning outcomes for high school (less experienced learners) and university students (experienced learners) in a hypertext environment. Map coherence was defined as the extent to which relationships between the concepts in the map were made explicit. Therefore, we classified the…

In two experiments, the ability of children younger than 20 months to engage in delayed ordered recall was investigated. In the first experiment, 13- and 16-month-old children were presented with 2-step event sequences and tested for recall, first, immediately following the event and second, after a one-week delay. Sequences were novel-causal,…

This discussion of the implications of schema theory and signaling theory for the design of both paper- and computer-based text describes the macro and micro levels of text structure and their interaction, provides a definition of signaling, and identifies four types of signals: (1) pointer words informing the reader of the author's perspective on…

A study examined the reaction of college freshmen to 30 essay test prompts to determine if rhetorical factors in the prompt would affect a student's choice of that prompt. The subjects, 40 college freshman enrolled in an introductory English course, rated eight rhetorical qualities of the essay prompts: (1) whether the essay would be easy to…

BECAUSE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF COLOR IN PICTORIAL INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS WAS INDETERMINATE, 5 EXPERIMENTS WERE DESIGNED TO INVESTIGATE EFFECTS OF COLOR CUE RELEVANCE (DEFINED AS A CORRELATION OVER TRIALS BETWEEN PRESENTATION OF A GIVEN STIMULUS CUE AND REINFORCEMENT OF A PARTICULAR RESPONSE) ON PAIRED-ASSOCIATE LEARNING. OTHER INDEPENDENT VARIABLES…

The effectiveness of two extra-stimulus prompting procedures was compared in teaching receptive labels to a 3 year old autistic boy. One prompting procedure was used exclusively by the treatment center the child attended and was similar to extra-stimulus prompts used in previous studies. The procedure involved alternating unprompted trials of a…

The study compared the effectiveness of a traditional training procedure (least-to-most restrictive prompt sequence) and a prescriptive training procedure (utilizing ongoing behavioral assessment data to identify discriminative stimuli) with four severely/multiply handicapped students (ages 11-19). Results indicated both procedures were effective…

In an A-B design with replication, the efficacy of a behavioral training program for teaching two mildly retarded six-year-old children intermittent self-catheterization skills was demonstrated. Component skills were task-analyzed and trained via a graduated prompting procedure. (Author/DB)

Suggestions are given for self-operated prompting strategies to help severely handicapped students perform independently in the community, vocational, or classroom setting. Guidelines are given for developing pictorial prompts and auditory (tape recorded) prompts.(DB)

Three severely handicapped adolescents were trained, using a picture prompt package, to complete three complex vocational or daily living tasks. All students required many training sessions to learn the first training task, but generalized their use of the pictures across settings without additional training. They needed substantially reduced…

Students can learn from writing, regardless of subject area, by keeping a learning log or journal. Several types of questions and topics are suggested for the teacher to guide students in making their entries. (DCS)