To examine the effects of locus of control (the extent to which an individual feels he has control over his own behavior) and cognitive style variables on learning deficits among mentally handicapped children, 80 mentally retarded boys (IQ 50 to 83, age 160 to 196 months) were administered a battery of tests. Analyses of student performance…

(1) What is learned in a particular subject matter? (2) Who learns it? (3) How does competence develop? (4) And how is learning assessed and optimized? These are the questions asked and answered in this essay. (1) The relationships between units of learning establish the subject matter structures that are learned; e.g., concepts, rules,…

An investigation was made to determine whether pupils learn more when sight and sound are not presented simultaneously, and whether audio or visual redundancy cause a cueing effect which produces a superior sight-sound or sound-sight sequence. Commercially produced filmstrip lessons were converted into two experimental and two control sequences…

A program developed at Yeshiva University to emphasize self-directing, self-correcting techniques for teaching basic reading skills to socially disadvantaged junior high school students is discussed. Seven laws of learning which underlie the guidelines for the program are presented. The following four guidelines to effective methodology are…

The major aims of this conference on guided learning were: (1) to examine research and educational practice relevant to development of a theory of guided learning; (2) to develop a theory and stimulate educational practice and research. Transcripts of the presentations of five speakers and of the ensuing discussion to creative development, a…

To compare the effectiveness of the traditional and the experimental approaches to Head Start classrooms, 68 children and six teachers in San Francisco participated in an educational experiment. The traditional approach emphasizes the children's internal motivation resulting from spontaneous free play and warm, accepting teachers, while the…

The relationship between selective attention and learning is investigated in this paper. It is proposed that two forms of attention exist: (1) inspectional attention, which is a simple matching pocess where perceived stimuli are compared with an internal model of the stimulus for which the individual is searching, and (2) comprehensional…

The concepts in a hierarchically structured list consisting of 24 number-word pairs were aligned systematically with position and numbers, or with the number stimuli only. Some lists involved an alignment appropriate to only the lowest conceptual level. Other lists were completely unstructured when viewed in terms of either position or number. The…

Reported is a study of the relationships between concrete and formal operational science subject matter and the intellectual level of the learner. During the last month of instruction in the academic year, 51 biology students, 54 chemistry students, and 33 physics students were interviewed with four Piagetian tasks: Conservation of Weight,…

This study examines the correspondence between a representation of subject-matter structure and a representation of the cognitive structure in students as a result of instruction. Eighty-seven eighth-grade students were assigned randomly to experimental and control treatments. The experimental students (N = 43) studied from a programmed text on…

Subjects in this study of the learning environment in a rural school and an urban school were students of 96 classrooms, 47 of which were in rural areas and the remaining 50 in urban areas. Half the students were administered the Learning Environment Inventory and the other half took the Test of Primary Mental Abilities. Results indicate that…

The effects of covert operant reinforcement upon remedial reading learning tasks were investigated. Forty junior high school students were taught to imagine either neutral scenes (control) or positive scenes (treatment) upon cue while reading. It was hypothesized that positive covert reinforcement would enhance performance on several measures of…

Supporters of the open approach to education are committed to the beliefs that children learn in their own unique styles, at varying rates, and best when they are actively involved in the education process. In addition, supporters of this concept are convinced that children can be trusted to set goals, evaluate performance and progress, make…

The purpose of the study was to investigate the hypothesis that requiring a student to verbalize a newly discovered mathematical concept interferes with his ability to use that concept. Five semi-programmed lessons (dealing with function machines, exponents, marker games, geometry, and One Pile Nim) were prepared and taught to a random selection…

The role of negative instances in the acquisition of the mathematical concepts of distributivity and homomorphism was examined. Two treatment levels for distributivity (positive instances and positive and negative instances) and the same treatment levels for homomorphism were crossed to form a 2 x 2 factorial design with 23 subjects per cell.…