A study investigated the kinds of questions children ask as they encounter written language. Data were gathered over a 7-month period for two boys, one approximately 4, the other approximately 2 years of age. Two types of observation sessions were used: formal story reading times that were audiorecorded, and informal situations where the…

Children's attention to and comprehension of television programs were studied by comparing the effects of viewing continuous stories (i.e., those with meaningful plots brought to resolution) and magazine-format programs containing unrelated bits of entertainment. Effects of program pacing were also studied. Multiple programs, differing in content,…

To explain how writing is both cognitive and behavioral, this paper compares and contrasts behavioral and cognitive orientations within an instructional design. The first section addresses the weaknesses and strengths of a behavioral versus a cognitive orientation and relates them to Janet Emig's 1971 study, "The Composing Processes of Twelfth…

This document presents a first approximation for a model for student performance in solving linear equations. First, characteristics of a model of student performance for solving linear equations is discussed. It is noted that there is a need for some theoretical structure to support and organize the bits and pieces of information provided by…

Fundamental to any critical reading process is the ability of the child to recognize and identify assumptions concerning the world in which he or she lives and brings to the printed page. The unconscious and implicit understandings that a reader and an author hold can fill the slots of developing schemata and become embedded and subsumed in…

Students must develop self-monitoring abilities if they are to successfully transfer knowledge and strategies they are taught to their own reading. But first, teachers must know just what this knowledge and these strategies are and how they can be presented to students. Akin to model building, reading comprehension involves a variety of behaviors…

Relationships between media format, sensory channel, and cognitive information processing are not straightforward. Media format does not determine information processing and storage except when a deliberate attempt is made to model cognitive processes by manipulating the medium. Sensory channel only affects processing and learning for relatively…

In this paper, research on teachers' judgments, instructional planning, and decision making during classroom interaction is reviewed. Research studies chosen for this paper were selected on the basis of two fundamental assumptions: (1) Teachers behave reasonably in making judgments and decisions; and (2) Their behaviors are guided by their…

This report relates current attentional research and theory to the development of skilled performance, with emphasis on how performance changes with practice. Dual process attention theory is reviewed, and the distinction between automatic and controlled processing is examined. The changing interactions between automatic and controlled processing…

An exploratory study making use of ethnographic and grounded theory methods was carried out with two Hispanic and two Black American working-class families. Exploration focused on how cognitive processes taking place in the natural setting of the family can best be understood. In order to uncover the intellectual interactions that take place in…

Everyday life provides individuals with countless opportunities for observing and interacting with objects in motion. Although everyone presumably has some sort of knowledge about motion, it is by no means clear what form(s) this knowledge may take. The research described in this paper determined what sorts of knowledge are in fact acquired…

To determine how children cope with some of the demands imposed on them by arithmetic word problems, 200 sixth-graders were asked to solve prolems modeled after those used by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. A quantitative demand was imposed on the children by adding extraneous information to the problems, and a verbal demand was…

A New Zealand study revealed that many secondary school reading tasks are both complex and potentially confusing for pupils. Researchers joined two classes at the junior high and high school levels, and followed the students to their major content area classes--English, math, science, and social studies--for two terms. Conversations with the 60…

To provide a test of the notion that criterial task knowledge facilitates learning and, consequently, performance in studying, a study examined the effects of an explicit prereading task directive and an explicit postreading criterion on the studying behaviors of 40 college undergraduates. After presentation of a prereading task directive prepared…

As individuals read, they construct meaning at various levels, including literal, interpretive, and critical. One part of this comprehension act is creative reading, which may be promoted by self-questioning so that students become personally involved in the material they read. To guide students' self-questioning strategies, teachers can both pose…