The purpose of this book is to make people who are involved in motivation in one form or another to think twice before trying to tackle a problem in a direct, head-on fashion. Motivating human behavior is a complex task that involves finding the proper channels of motivation and thinking through the reactions of the person who is to be persuaded.…

The purpose of this study was to improve the reliability of the Sigel Cognitive Style Test. Post hoc analysis of ninety test protocols had indicated that the original thirty-five card test could be shortened to improve the test's reliability. This analysis also showed that males were responding to certain cards differently from females.…

Very little has been reported in the literature as to how a child actually learns, but what is known can be put to more effective use in teaching the child to read. The brain has at least five input systems: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. The first of these senses is employed more than the others in reading; however, it is believed that…

Seven studies were conducted to investigate the interactions between imagery-ability and experimental treatments that parallel instructional procedures. The general orientation of the studies was to extend the concepts of imaginal and verbal coding systems to include individual differences in symbolic habits. Thus all the studies took into account…

A study of twins was conducted to determine the presence of an hereditary component in short term memory and in three aspects of verbal divergent thinking--flexibility, fluency, and originality. Results showed the existence of a significant genetic component in the trait of short term memory, while none was found in verbal divergent thinking. (AG)

Ninety-eight undergraduate education majors received a battery of ability tests, measuring general reasoning, associative memory, and trait anxiety and were randomly assigned to three groups--no feedback, feedback, and learner control--for a computer-assisted instruction course on Xenograde systems (an imaginary science). Four state anxiety…

Two Masters' theses, by Andrea Weiss and Melinda Welles, pursuing related questions were synthesized into a final report, "Field Independence-Dependence, Reflection-Impulsivity, and Problem-Solving Styles of Preschool Children," of which this interim report is a summary. The major purposes of both investigations were to determine: (1)…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the Material Objects Unit of the Science Curriculum Improvement Study (SCIS) on the cognitive operations and academic achievement of elementary school children. The Material Objects Unit was designed to give experiences and explorations in the mental operations of classification,…

The central problem that American education poses for society is that the enterprise is appreciably underproductive when judged against standards and requirements of the postindustrial era. This generic problem will not be appreciably ameliorated until the instructional system design (ISD) process is better understood and explicated and then made…

The author discusses a study designed to examine a communications problem from a cognitive processing viewpoint, to determine if a change in the amount of cognitive processing time available to a listener could affect his response to a given message. To specify the internal sources of input brought to a message receiving situation, the author used…

In this investigation of potential sources of individual differences in free-recall learning and retention by children, learning ability is defined in terms of performance on a free-recall test with the upper and lower thirds of the distribution typically being defined as fast and slow learners. Variables concerned with short-term memory,…

Seventy-two university students were exposed to one of four repetition treatments for one of three different amounts of information presented in a chunked format. Implicit chunk repetition, i.e., the presentation of words not present in the original word list but logically belonging to a previously seen chunk, facilitated acquisition and retention…

This research studies the effects of censoring a communication, overriding the censor, and the attractiveness of the censor on the potential audience's attitude and desire to hear the communication. The subjects, 144 undergraduate psychology students, were told that a speech which they were to have heard had been censored by a positively,…

Chapters contained in this volume, each with a list of references appended, are: "Scientific Psychology in Transition" by Gregory A. Kimble; "Higher Mental Processes as the Bases for the Laws of Conditioning" by Eli Saltz; "Reification and Reality in Conditioning Paradigms: Implications of Results When Modes of Reinforcement are Changed" by David…

Prior attitude intensity involvement and salience, along with prior source competence, sociability, composure, extroversion, and character can be used as predictors of recall, of perception of the source's attitude, and of perception of the attitude revealed in the message. The relationship of prior attitudes and credibility to comprehension and…