Personalized systems of instruction (PSI), also called individualized instruction or contingency-managed instruction, were developed in the mid-1960s at the college level by Fred Keller, a reinforcement learning theorist. The Keller plan consists of five features: self-pacing, unit mastery, student tutors, optional motivational lectures, and…

Task analysis as a tool in the design of instruction is the subject of this paper. Some of the major historical approaches (associationist/behaviorist, gestalt, and Piagetian) are described using examples from mathematics. The usefulness of these approaches to instructional design is evaluated on the basis of four criteria: instructional…

This module is divided into five sections, each of which emphasizes a different aspect of planning for using drill activities. These are "what we know about learning through drill,""drill: how and when to use it,""commercial materials for use in drill,""activities and games for use in drill," and "using new drill activities." There is a programed…

The linguistic situation in the Arabic-speaking world is briefly described, and variation and the factors that cause it are discussed. By reviewing the history of the literary language, it is shown that there exist no native speakers of the literary language, Modern Standard Arabic. The relaity is, rather, a classic case of diglossia. This reality…

Three hypotheses are examined in relation to English copula and negative utterances produced by three native Spanish speakers. The hypotheses are interference, interlanguage and L1=L2, which states that acquisition of a language by second language learners will parallel acquisiton of the same language by first language learners. The results of the…

Previous work by the authors permitted them to hypothesize the existence of certain universal cognitive strategies that play a significant role in child second language acquisition. Forming the basis of the "creative construction process" in L2 learning, these strategies have heretofore remained unspecified. This paper offers new…

This study investigated the relationship between visual attending and learning in a group of 16 Head Start children from low income families. Attending behavior (defined as "eyes oriented towards the teacher and/or teaching materials for a full 5-second interval") was measured for each child during a 10-minute story period on four…

This study investigated the relative effectiveness of verbal and visual modes of presentation on the learning of paired-associates by 64 3-year-old and 64 8-year-old children. Nine pictorial paired-associates and 9 verbal paired-associates were formed from pictures or names of familiar objects. At each age level, 8 male and 8 female subjects were…

Teaching pronunciation is more like gymnastics than linguistics because it involves converting a series of mental processes into motor activity. Many variables contribute to the facility with which a student will learn pronunciation, but age causes the greatest variation in standards of pronunciation learning between individuals. Though increased…

A study was designed to test the expectation that different individuals have different cognitive styles, which, if true, may be useful in investigating characteristics and psychological impacts of media utilization. Cognitive style refers to an individual's way of acquiring and processing information. Characteristics of the visual type and haptic…

A study was made to determine whether different methods of visual presentations would affect the retention rate of individuals with two distinct types of perception--visual and haptic. The visual type, according to a study by Viktor Lowenfeld in 1957, is marked by the following characteristics: (1) ability to see wholes, break them into visual…

Student control of learning is interpreted as student self-teaching, and a plan to give students teacher training is outlined. The first step of the plan is self-management in which the students are given a strategy for curriculum decision making and have the reponsibility for applying that strategy. Two interactive computer programs are included…

The monograph presents the findings of a decade long research project on the cognitive learning of children. Several other areas of general significance involved in the work are also treated. These include: (1) the importance of the work to the development of basic learning theory; (2) certain developments in methodology and in a philosophy of…

Eighty sixth-grade subjects, split into five independent groups, learned two PA lists of 12 noun pairs each. Two groups performed under traditional transfer conditions with lists conforming to a negative transfer paradigm, A-B, A-C, or to a reference paradigm A-B, C-D. Two other groups learned the same lists under a syntactic PA method where the…

This study was an attempt to apply certain concepts from social learning theory to the understanding of certain factors related to eighth-grade girls. Subjects were thought to vary in degree of identification with parents, teachers, and peers and to attribute different academic achievement values to these figures. Subjects (267) came from a…