Because of a high vacancy rate and widespread vandalism in its highrise dormitories, the University of Massachusetts commissioned an environmental consultant to assess the problem. A two-year study showed that occupancy increased and vandalism decreased in an experimental dormitory where students were allowed greater freedom to arrange their own…

This study had two major purposes: to examine the effects of dimensional salience upon the learning of conjunction and disjunction rules, and to investigate an alternative to the prevailing cognitive-change accounts of developmental differences in multidimensional problem solving. The relative salience of each of four stimulus dimensions (form,…

Fifty-two subjects participated in a study of attitudes toward typographic treatment in print advertising. Twenty variations of a basic ad layout, based on nine typographic variables (five for display type and four for body copy), were developed to reflect current trends in fashionable/conservative advertising typography. The subjects sorted the…

This study followed the development of visual preferences in a single infant from birth to 10 weeks of age. The stimuli used were 5 x 10 item arrays of squares of lines in which a 3 x 3 target matrix of the other figure type (line or square) was embedded. The direction of first fixation and the total time spent looking at each side were determined…

Research was conducted upon relationships between students' conceptual level (CL) and form of course organization (high/low structure) as it affects student attainment of course objectives. In addition, feelings toward the training organization were observed. Synectics training was conducted in which thirty-six undergraduate teacher trainees were…

Some aspects of design common to most studios are discussed. A number of different art and craft processes are described, with the requirements in terms of equipment, storage, and expected use. Discussion is included of examples of planning arrangements of individual studios grouped into three categories--(1) general, multi-purpose studios, (2)…

Advertisers and other mass media communicators are interested in the potential cognitive and affective effects of various graphic designs, specifically relating to the recall of information and the attitude toward information presented. This study deals with the respondent's recall of information contained within an advertisement as well as the…

As children grow older they show an increasing preference for classifying objects on the basis of shape rather than color. To clarify the nature of this "dimension preference," children of ages 3 1/2 to 6 1/2 years were given a method of triads test of dimension preferences, followed (after a week's delay) by a component selection task. The most…

A survey asking teachers to rate the suitability of their laboratory for instruction in independent study, small group instruction, and large group instruction modes was sent to random samples of Michigan Class B and C high schools identified from a preliminary study as having biology laboratories with either a split lecture-laboratory design, a…

This paper discusses three studies which examined the interaction of dimensional dominance with the attentional components of alertness and encoding. In Study I, twenty 6- and 7-year-olds observed thirty 3-second exposures of a color, then participated in a 40-trial choice reaction time task in which the familiarized color and a novel color served…

Reports two experiments which examined developmental changes in the patterns of preference for varying degrees of perspective while controlling for the station point used in viewing. Subjects were 28 preschool children (age four years), 23 elementary school students (age six years) and 30 college students from introductory psychology classes. (MP)

Coordination and integration of class information was examined using a multidimensional similarity judgment task in which four- and nine-year-old children rated the similarity of pairs of stimuli sharing either one or two attribute values. (Author/MP)

A visual search task was used to assess developmental changes in elementary school children's selective attention to specified portions of a visual display. (Author/SB)

Results of a study of the pictorial preferences of seven-, nine-, and eleven-year-old children of two cultures indicated that "soft contours were generally preferred in both cultures, as were natural images--with the exception that older American girls prefer geometric elements. (JM)

Discusses how operant conditioning has not brought instructional designers any closer to using feedback effectively in computer assisted instruction they design, defines and describes types of feedback, presents guidelines for effective feedback use, and suggests use of templates to bring instructional design to a sophisticated level of…