EXPERIMENTS WERE PERFORMED TO DETERMINED HOW MENTALLY RETARDED AND NORMAL SUBJECTS SYNTHESIZE STIMULI WITH RESPONSES. ALSO, RELATIONSHIPS AMONG THE STIMULUS SYNTHESIS PROCESS, INTELLIGENCE, AND RATE OF LEARNING WERE STUDIED. DISCRIMINATION TASKS WERE USED WHICH REQUIRED SUBJECTS, NORMAL (COLLEGE, HIGH SCHOOL, AND GRADE SCHOOL ENROLLEES) AND…

THIS STUDY COMPARED THE RELATIVE EFFECTIVENESS IN FACTUAL LEARNING OF (1) A CAPTIONED FILMSTRIP, (2) A CAPTIONED FILMSTRIP WITH NARRATION, (3) A SOUND FILMSTRIP, AND (4) A FILMOGRAPH. (THE FILMOGRAPH WAS MADE BY PHOTOGRAPHING STILL PICTURES ON MOTION PICTURE FILM.) THE STUDY TESTED THE HYPOTHESIS THAT THE FILMOGRAPHY COULD TEACH MORE EFFECTIVELY.…

Eighty undergraduate students participated in an investigation of the effects on acquisition of immediate versus 30-second delay of reinforcement under either known or unknown response contingency conditions. The students in the four experimental conditions were required to depress three buttons in proper senquence. Following a correct response,…

This report on research in progress explores criteria for lexical innovation in children. Children, like adults, make use of a principle of conventionality (each word has one or more conventional meanings) and one of contrast (the conventional meanings of every two words contrast). Like adults, children coin words to fill lexical gaps, and they do…

The meta-analysis method was used to summarize the findings of 23 studies of the word learning process that had used imagery as an independent variable as either an "imposed" or an "induced" condition. Imposed imagery investigations compared word recall on the basis of the imagery attribute of a word, while induced imagery…

This report concerns the effects of prequestion and postquestion formats in prose learning in computer-assisted instruction. Five experimental groups studied a set of eight passages under different prequestion-postquestion combinations. Twenty-five subjects, volunteers with high school degrees, were randomly assigned to each group. A final…

Memory storage and retrieval of learning disabled (LD) and normal children at two age levels (8-9 years and 11-12 years) were compared using a multitrial free recall paradigm. Stimuli were two lists of 20 high frequency nouns. Each child was tested individually on both lists on different days; one presentation was blocked, one random with…

GIVEN THE TASK OF LEARNING A SERIES OF RANDOMLY ORDERED MEANINGFUL ITEMS, MOST SUBJECTS (SS) IMPOSE SOME ORGANIZATION ON THE MATERIAL DURING THE PROCESS OF LEARNING. AN EXPERIMENTAL PARADIGM IS DESCRIBED WHICH PERMITS THE OBJECTIVE SCORING OF EACH S'S SUBJECTIVE ORGANIZATION OF THE MATERIAL ON EACH LEARNING TRIAL. THE CENTRAL FEATURE OF THE…

Computer assisted instruction is described and discussed. Such instruction can be individualized to meet the needs of a variety of students and to provide data on how a particular subject is learned. Many organizations and groups are investigating computer assisted instruction, but only the work done at Stanford, at the elementary level, is…

In the preparation of 12-inch disc teaching machine materials for elementary college courses, a preliminary analysis of subject matter and required skills precedes sequential framing. The programer must assess the beginning level of student competence and frame questions to supply new material until the proper response stands alone. Statements for…

This publication includes two studies. The first experiment involved the prediction of mixed schema learning in a reproduction task. Subjects (Ss) learned to distinguish among the schemata without knowledge of resuts. A best fitting equation describing performance as a function of number of reproduction trials accurately predicted learning with…

Using verbal material, this study explored the effect of the temporal interval of feedback as it interacted with two other variables: (1) method of presenting learning material (inductive or deductive), and (2) activity of the learner during the delay interval (activity relevant or irrelevant to the material). The major objective was to compare…

Children's serial motor skill acquisition was studied within a neo-Piagetian framework. High and low M-processors (a designation of a child's ability to produce problem solutions) performed on a curvilinear repositioning task. A primacy-recency effect was evidenced for both groups on the age-related task, while a recency effect occurred for only…

The acquisition of expressive sign language was studied in four autistic children (ages 10-15 years). Ss were taught expressive sign labels for common objects using a training procedure consisting of prompting, fading, and stimulus totation. The signing of three of the Ss was found to be controlled solely by the visual cues associated with the…

This paper describes an approach to teaching students to become more sensitive to voice, audience, and meaning in fiction. Examined are several passages of monologue, including a passage spoken by a character named Mr. Tyler in the opening of E.M. Forster's "The Story of a Panic." The rhetorical triangle made up of speaker, audience, and subject…