Proposes a developmental model involving four response levels concerning how students arrange pictures to represent data in a pictograph, how they interpret these pictographs, and how they make predictions based on these pictographs. The model is exemplified by responses from three related interview-based studies. Discusses educational…

Graphic representations help learners comprehend, summarize, and synthesize complex ideas in ways that often surpass verbal statements. This article provides visual illustrations and presents a five-step process for training students to use graphic outlining techniques. Includes 17 references. (MLH)

An experimental group of 20 gifted adolescents received 3 weeks of computer-assisted design (CAD) instruction. Comparison of their scores on Revised Minnesota Paper Form Board test with those of 20 gifted controls showed CAD did not improve spatial visualization ability. Possible causes were differential computer experience, lack of random…

Examines types of graphical representation as to their suitability for knowledge acquisition in primary grades. Uses the concept of mental models to clarify the relationship between external presentation and internal representation of knowledge. Finds that students who learned with highly elaborated and highly structured pictures displayed the…

Demonstrates how research-based knowledge of students' incompatible solutions to various representations of the same problem could be used to raise their awareness of inconsistencies in their reasoning. Reports that students' decisions as to whether two given infinite sets have the same number of elements depend on the specific representation of…

Reports the results of an informal study of very young children's reactions to some visual displays of data. (Author/ASK)

Describes three activities of imaging, including constructing an image, representation-presenting the image, and transforming the image. Discusses a link between imaging and number sense, teaching students to image, and assessing imaging. Contains 25 references. (ASK)

Discussion of information-retrieval test collections focuses on a study of TREC documents that used scaling and visualization of documents using a maximum-likelihood estimation method to examine the relevance of documents retrieved. Discusses clustering, similarity measures, isomorphism, and semantic relevance. (LRW)

Presents a visualization tool for information retrieval that can display two different similarity measures, angle and distance, in the same space. Discusses the visual display of information-retrieval evaluation models and develops a new retrieval means based on the visual retrieval tool, the controlling bar. (Author/LRW)

Discusses information visualization techniques and introduces a visual term discrimination value analysis method using a document density space within a distance-angle-based visual information retrieval environment. Explains that applications of these methods facilitate more effective assignment of term weights to index terms within documents and…

This study with 16 adolescents with mental retardation compared free-recall rates under two encoding conditions: (1) fade-in, initially presenting pictures out of focus then slowly fading them into focus; and (2) fade-out, slowly blurring originally clear pictures. Results indicated that free-recall rates were greater for the fade-in items for…

An instrument measuring visual memory span in long-term memory was tested on 239 adults using pictures of common objects. Correlations were found between the number of images recalled and age, level of education, level of income, intelligence, sex, and social activity. (Contains 21 references.) (Author/JOW)

Discusses issues related to delivering spatially oriented data to the general public, since communication through computer graphics should be accessible to the masses as well as to specialists. The second half of the paper describes the Purdue University Virtual Visit, a resource being used for visualization and communication at Purdue University…

Compares guided visualization (involving guided imagery) with self-constructed imagery (involving developing one's own visualization script). Finds no differences between guided visualization and self-constructed visualization in terms of reducing communication apprehension or negative thinking, but finds both procedures superior to no treatment…

Spatial tests involving the comparison of diagrams of interlaced ropes or knots at varying orientations were given to (n=21) subjects, mostly English college undergraduates, to determine an ordering in terms of complexity of tasks involving the mental manipulation of the knots. Certain knot shapes were processed faster than others and greater…