In a study of recall in gamelike and lessonlike contexts, 4- and 5-year-old children were asked to remember or to play with a set of 16 pictures or toys in a naturalistic or laboratory setting. The children's behavior and language were measured during two-minute study phases, after which recall was assessed. (BC)

This article highlights instructional communication and distance education research with an emphasis on the social dynamics of the online learning experience and their impact on the learning experience. Literature related to the twin concepts of immediacy and group cohesiveness--central constructs related to building an effective classroom social…

This paper develops a conceptual model involving curricular, instructional/guidance, and assessment perspectives on the promotion of study skills and test-taking techniques among secondary school students. From the curricular standpoint, consideration is given to a recommended range of topical coverage and a diversified array of printed/mediated…

Analyzes the results of previous studies that examined the effects of teaching test-taking skills to elementary school children. Concludes that training in test-taking skills is differentially effective for various subgroups of children, longer training programs are more effective, and training is more effective in the upper elementary grades than…

This paper describes how a fourth grade class at a Canadian laboratory school used an approach to knowledge building that had students participating as intentional learners as they specialized in interest groups for their study of light. It examines how, later in the year, the goal of building collective knowledge became the focus for this group…

Effects of animated graphics presentations on incidental learning and the degree to which various computer practice activities contain intrinsically motivating characteristics were studied with 70 fourth graders learning about Newton's laws of motion. Incidental learning occurred without sacrifice of intentional learning. Students were highly…

Many faculty members generally assume that their students understand the purposes of college learning and that they are aware of the assumptions about liberal education embedded in the program configurations designed to advance it. In fact, it may very well be that, as Jerry Graff (2003) has suggested, our students are "clueless" about how to…

Although research over the past 20 years has examined the dynamics of student learning, most initial studies focused on how scholastic aptitude tests and teacher rating scales predicted academic success. This study attempts to determine the relationship between scholastic aptitude and three approaches to learning: (1) presage; (2) process; and (3)…

This experiment was designed to better understand the effects of individual differences, intent to learn, and stimulus familiarity on frequency judgment accuracy. Half of the participants in the study heard popular songs, and the other half listened to unfamiliar songs. Participants were subdivided into three more groups, introducing the "intent…

The theory of "reasoned action" is applied to the teaching-learning process. This theory asserts that people use the information available to them in a reasonable manner to arrive at their decisions and that a person's behavior follows logically and systematically from whatever information he has available. To illustrate application of the theory…

In two identical experiments, undergraduate students were randomly assigned to study course-appropriate prose learning materials under one of four experimental conditions (two levels of experience with objectives by two levels of possession of objectives). Achievement on objectives-relevant test items was significantly higher for possessors…

Three studies investigated goal expectancy as a variable in teaching-learning situations. The first study looked at the effect of the student's expectancy of the type of test to be given on their ability to recall word lists. There was a strong type-of-test expectancy effect in that those persons expecting to recall words in any sequence actually…

Among 207 Australian final-year nursing students, higher academic grades in the senior year were related to student intention to understand the material or to "achieve," and to the ability to generate alternative learning strategies with changing task demands. Relationships between scores on the Study Process Questionnaire and the…

Recent findings [Turcotte, Gagnon, & Poirier, 2005. The effect of old age on the learning of supra-span sequences. "Psychology and Aging," 20, 251-260.] indicate that incidental learning of visuo-spatial supra-span sequences through immediate serial recall declines with old age (Hebb's paradigm). In this study, we examined whether…

This study tested the hypthesis that the reading gains of compensatory education pupils in grades one and four exposed to intensive test wiseness instruction would not differ significantly from the reading gains in a randomly assigned control group. Schools offering ESEA Title I classes (N=48) were randomly assigned to the treatment and control…