Early psycholinguistic investigations were based on linguistic theory (primarily Chomsky's transformational theory) as a model of competence. Recent studies have suggested that naive language users neither make the same linguistic judgments as the theorizing linguists nor productively follow the linguistic rules, and that nonlinguistic knowledge…

Since the 1950's there has been a tremendous shift in the way language and language behavior is viewed. The shift is characterized as a general movement away from surface observation and analysis to attempts at the description and analysis of underlying linguistic forms. The interest in underlying linguistic forms has, in a rather natural way, led…

The need for an empirically defensible means of sequencing instruction appears to have been the primary motivator for research into learning hierarchies. Also, valid learning hierarchies could act as congealing forces in individualizing instructional systems by providing psychological roadmaps for diagnosing students' preinstructional skills and…

The monograph under review is a study of the acquisition of certain complex linguistic structures by children over the age of five. After a short introduction, Chomsky describes in chapter 2 the linguistic properties of four types of constructions: (1) John is eager to see; John is easy to see; (2) John promised Bill to shovel the driveway; John…

The purpose of this study was to investigate children's acquisition of the non-comparative forms of spatial adjectives and to specifically test the following experimental questions: (1) Are positive-pole terms, or those such as "big," which indicate extent along a dimension, acquired earlier than negative-pole terms? (2) Does…

The purposes of this conference panel were to suggest ways of bringing basic and applied research on reading comprehension into an interaction that would enhance both theory and practice, and to develop an approach to the design and study of instructional practice that would maximize the relevance of instructional research for both the public and…

The purpose of the document is to assess facilitating and interfering effects of various strategies in samples of children from elementary and high school grade levels. Participating in the paired-associate study were 160 children, 40 each from first, third, sixth, and eleventh grades. Subjects were required to learn a 36-item aurally presented…

To evaluate the impact of a specific program on the learning of educable mentally handicapped (EMH) children, to assess the inter and intra-cognitive differences of the EMH, and to measure the relationship of children's learning to home circumstances, students from four Iowa Primary EMH classrooms were tested over a period of one academic year.…

The Responsive Environments Project is an interdisciplinary approach to the creation of conceptual structures which are sufficiently clarifying to be of genuine help in (1) guiding the construction of formal systems relevant to the behavioral sciences, (2) designing new educational equipment, (3) formulating heuristic principles to guide empirical…

Psychological researchers should deal with the concrete stimulus-response principles of learning on which behavior is based, and study behaviors that are representative of real life behaviors. The present research strategy has come from two faulty ideas: first, a concern with underlying, inferred mental processes, rather than with actual tasks or…

This book is devoted to a number of original articles on the application of the Montessori method for the education of the disadvantaged. The development of the method, its specific advantages for disadvantaged youngsters, special features of Montessori education, and integration into certain viewpoints about child development, learning, and…

In the context that a general systems approach to the development and maintenance of optimal learning conditions is a point of view rather than a doctrine, two empirical examples are given. To illustrate the desirability of the systems-like approach in studying the nature of learning, the organisms chosen were representative of two widely separate…

A task analysis of the conceptual skills prerequisite to learning to read by a phonics-based method is made in an attempt to distinguish these skills from reading's component skills. The model for task analysis presented by Gagne, in which a cumulative learning of prerequisite conceptual skills is assumed, is used. The analysis deals primarily…

Modern psychological theory implies that behavior and neural function are correlated. Models of the operation of the nervous system can be used to predict and explain behavioral events. The purposes of this paper are to briefly outline a model at the biopsychological level that leads to predictions about the retention of verbal material, to show…

This study is based upon an interpretation of Ausubel's subsumption learning theory. The primary characteristic of this theory is that it views a learner's specific content knowledge as a crucial factor in learning. Two types of assessment instruments were used with first-grade students to determine concept attainment based on specific models…