In the pair of experiments reported here the authors investigated the relationship between meaningfulness of problem statements and subjects' use of these statements in problem-solving tasks. Subjects (96 university students) were required to memorize meaningful formulae such as "volume = area x height" or corresponding symbolic formulae such as…

Theories of reading development may be grouped into roughly two opposing categories, depending on where the source of reading control is assumed to be located. "Outside-in" theories, those characterized by the notion that reading is a hierarchical series of decisions dependent on structured discrimination of print material, clearly predominate.…

Theory and practice in education are interrelated and interdependent. The credibility of any set of postulates depends upon how well the position holds up in practice. There are three ways we can utilize theory in practice: (1) to reexamine our traditional approaches; (2) to give some direction to our future practices; and (3) to generate…

The first section of this paper deals with the question of whether Piaget is a developmental or a learning theorist; the second section relates Piaget's research findings and developmental theory to a sequence of curriculum units in mathematics. It is suggested that Piaget makes no distinction between learning and development of cognitive…

This paper describes a series of longitudinal experiments which dealt with the development of object awareness in infants, ages 6-18 months. The experiments were designed to document and evaluate Piaget's account of this development. The studies focused on two types of phenomena: (1) when infants first find an object hidden in one place, they will…

The effects of feedback on motivation were investigated with a 3 x 3 factorial design. Adult subjects (72 male college students) read prose sentences and completed cloze test items. Feedback on each item was either immediate, delayed, or omitted. A cloze retention test over the sentences was given either immediately, delayed, or was omitted. To…

The author's purpose in this paper is to explain and illustrate four principles for designing learning environments within which even young children can acquire complex symbolic skills with relative ease. After discussing the principles themselves and the theoretical system out of which they emerged, the author considers an illustrative…

In order to assess the effects of ambient contextual stimuli on retention, retro and proactive interference (RI and PI) seventeen experiments were conducted. In the retention experiments, the recall session was located in a context unlike the room used during original learning for one half of the subjects. In the inhibition experiments contextual…

The theoretical and practical aspects of communication are discussed in this volume from the vantage point of a number of related disciplines. Eleven authors from such areas as philosophy, anthropology, art, mass media, psychology and communications theory contributed their ideas. Beginning with basic concepts of the process of communications and…

This collection of reprinted speeches delivered at the 1967 Ohio Conference on Disadvantaged Children covers the following topics: learning as the discovery of personal meaning, occupational and vocational training, characteristics of successful Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Title I Programs, the inherent difficulties of cultural…

Response latency was studied as a measure of associative strength or degree of learning and possible basis for instructional decision making in computer-assisted instruction. Latency was investigated in a paired-associate task as a function of training procedure and information transmission requirements during acquisition and overlearning. The…

This study investigated the differences in learning and retention of students informed and not informed of behavioral objectives and the learning hierarchy of a unit of instruction. The subjects were 88 elementary education majors at Towson State College, Baltimore, Maryland, randomly assigned to four treatments. Self-instructional material for…

This study was concerned with the verification of a learning hierarchy for the mathematical task of adding fractions, when group learning procedures involving teacher-student interaction were used. Through a task analysis procedure a hierarchy of 13 subordinate skills was hypothesized, behavioral objectives were specified, and a curriculum…

Following a review of recent research in the University of Washington Department of Psychology project, Individual Differences in Cognition, analyses are reported linking performance in laboratory studies of cognition to performance on selected psychometric instruments. Intent of the study was to provide an empirical followup of Carrolls's (1974)…

This study compared student benefits (learning and rate of forgetting) derived from teachers being informed of the behavioral objectives and learning hierarchy of a seventh grade mathematical unit with the student benefits derived from teachers being informed of the instructional objectives of the unit in non-behavioral terms. Twenty-one seventh…