This is the final report of work accomplished on project SOCRATES (System for Organizing Content to Review and Teach Educational Subjects). The project contributed to the development and operation of a computer-based facility for psychological research on variables associated with pre-programed self-instruction (PSI) and self-programed…

The approach to problem solving which is presented has two components--closeness and reformulation. The closeness measure is a cognitively-based heuristic function. It incorporates the notion of what cognition notices as the structural difference between two situations. The problem-solver attempts to close the structural gap, and once this is done…

Three design strategies directly related to the development of instructional materials for rule learning were investigated. In the first of two experiments using both male and female tenth grade students, the degree of divergence between instances showed that contrasting irrelevant features resulted in better performance than matching irrelevant…

The question considered in this study is whether retroactive interference is influenced by a subject's prior knowledge of the material being studied. Two parallel passages of fictitious biographical information and an accompanying twenty-item short answer criterion test were developed. The fifteen subjects in the experimental group were told that…

Educational technology involves the application of psychology and equipment to the solution of educational problems. Teaching is facilitated when the interrelationships of variables such as time allowed for learning perseverence, quality of instructional materials, affective behavior and goals, and aptitude are considered. In order for educational…

This report attempts to determine to what extent the thesis that observation is theory-dependent holds in the area of verbal learning theory. This area was chosen because: (1) a philosophical criticism of verbal learning theory will contribute to the difficult task of investigating the border area between philosophy and psychology; and (2) no one…

The major goals of this postdoctoral study were preparation in psycholinguistics, and training and experience in the field of reading, as well as a review and updating of competence in learning and child development. The first semester was spent at the Educational Testing Service, Princeton, N.Y., working on a project designed to test the…

Three papers are presented, and each is followed by two reactions. The first paper presents methods of dealing with questions about the conduct of scientific theorizing. The theory-models approach is explained as a mode for conducting part of the theory construction tasks required in the complete act of scientific inquiry. In the second paper a…

A study was undertaken to test the assumption that students will interact with illustrations in textbooks, workbooks, and programed units; and that this interaction will facilitate learning. Eight test groups were compared with a group that had only verbal symbols to learn from. These groups had, in addition to the verbal descriptions, the black…

A self-renewing college is sensitive to the changing needs of each learner, its goals meet the learning expectations of students, its teachers translate these expectations into measurable teaching objectives, and it constantly revitalizes education. Present faults of general education include fragmented curricula, teacher orientation to national…

This paper attempts to organize, systematize, elaborate, and elucidate a number of basic principles for behavioral change that have experimental foundation. The two major areas discussed concern procedures and principles for strengthening and weakening behavior. Matters of inducing behavior are considered. Principles for strengthening behavior are…

An attempt was made to reduce or eliminate rule effects in attribute identification (AI) tasks through AI pretraining. Thirty-six 12th-grade volunteers received 0, 4, or 8 AI problems prior to transfer to a final AI task. Results showed that even at the highest level of pretraining, rule effects were present at transfer. These findings were…

The relationship between learning ability and intelligence has continually been a focus of theory and research. It is argued in this paper that the inconclusive results of studies relating individual differences variables such as intellectual abilities to learning are due to a too pragmatic, theoretical orientation. Theoretical models explicating…

The purpose of this study was to gather evidence relative to the proposition that matching (recognition) performance for A-B pairs following an unlearning paradigm cannot be used to infer associative loss. The alternative was to assume that matching performance is based on frequency information which is independent of associative information. The…

Three different strategies of choosing items for presentation in a simple list learning situation are compared. The instructional task was to teach the correct response to a number of stimulus items, using a paired-associate teaching procedure. Only one item could be presented on a given trial and the total number of trials was limited. The…