Little is known about very young children's conception of alcoholic beverages and their uses. A study was conducted to determine whether preschool children's ability to correctly access a cognitive network about alcoholic beverages can be related to differences in family exposure to alcohol. Preschoolers (N=57) between the ages of 2.5 and 6 years…

Knowledge elicitation through programming was studied to determine students' intuitive ideas about motion. The subjects, 17-year-old sixth-form science students and 14-year-old third-form students, were asked to write expert systems programs about motion; and their interactions with their own knowledge were observed. The 17-year-old students had…

This paper examines research on the education of women and girls from the perspectives of sex differences, gender differences, and feminist studies, with particular reference to the implications of the findings for the design of computer-assisted instruction systems. The four modules of the Ingelligent Computer-Assisted Instruction (ICAI)…

This paper examines research studies that have concluded that elementary school children can learn more difficult and abstract social studies concepts than are taught in the traditional social studies curriculum. Research studies that focus on constraints on cognition, the use of embedded concepts, and understanding knowledge restructuring and…

This paper analyzes the misconceptions high school students have about force and suggests that the misunderstanding of Newton's third law is the key to these misconceptions. Clinical interview and diagnostic test data (N=104) indicates that many students have a naive view of force as an acquired or innate property of single objects rather than…

This study developed a hybrid of item response theory (IRT) models and latent class models, which combined the strengths of each type of model. The primary motivation for developing the new model is to describe characteristics of examinees' knowledge at the time of the examination. Hence, the application of the model lies mainly in so-called…

Military and personnel training research addressing individual differences in training environments appears in four general research areas. These include the study of (1) trainee cognitive strategies, learning styles, and sensory modalities; (2) noncognitive characteristics of trainees; (3) aptitude-performance interactions; and (4) the effects of…

This study reports two experiments which indicate that the processes of providing subjects with insightful representations of example programs and guiding subjects through an "ideal" problem solving strategy facilitate learning. A production system model (GRAPES) has been developed that simulates problem-solving and learning in the…

The impact of the technological revolution on education is examined in this monograph, which focuses primarily on computers. First, the history of the educational uses of a variety of media (film, radio, television, teaching machines, and videodisc systems) is traced and assessed. As instructional aids, it is said, the media economize teachers'…

Describes different methods used to represent learning schemata with an emphasis on the clues for effective instruction that can be found in both the process of representing and the representation produced. It is argued that all representations offer direct or indirect suggestions for organizing instruction and student learning. (RP)

Argues that the effect of media violence on individual differences in aggression is primarily the result of a cumulative learning process during childhood. Presents a developmental theory holding that a child's repeated viewing of media violence, in combination with other factors, can culminate in aggressive behavior patterns (including…

Explores content or contextual validity of social rule classifications produced by sample of 12-year-old child coders. Analyses of variances revealed that categorization schemes generated by child coders were contextually valid as determined by raters' mean ratings. (Author/RWB)

Discusses the difficulties that some students have in understanding the concept of chemical reactions. Proposes that instructors try to consider the various difficulties during a chemistry course when students form their concepts of element conservation. (TW)

Performance on five logical, spatial, and formal tasks was used to make inferences about the reasoning structures of 101 middle and high school students. Findings (obtained during interviews) include grade level differences in performance and sex differences in performance on one of the tasks. Implications for instruction are proposed. (Author/JN)

Assesses the influence of grade and reading competence on inner-city Black children's sequence memory and use of organization in recall. Suggests that primary teachers should shift from literal decoding practice to providing semantic organizers and emphasizing interrelationships between words. The development of such basic cognitive skills…