Children's learning as a function of variation in stimulus characteristics and motor involvement

Results of two artificial letter learning experiments are reported. In Experiment 1, 229 preschool children were randomly assigned to one of five conditions: Two-dimensional small print size (2DS), two-dimensional large print size (2DL), two-dimensional large where subject traced stimuli mounted on cards (3DL), or three-dimensional large stimuli where subject was directed to manipulate stimuli during the first study trial (3DLM). Errors in the 3DLM condition were significantly less than in 2DS, 2DLT, and 3DL. Also, errors in the 2DL condition were significantly less than in 2DS. A replication experiment with kindergarten children failed to show any differences among the treatments. Results are discussed in terms of stimulus dimensions and motor involvement in children's letter learning. Implications for instruction and future research are noted.     

The function of response mode in the coordination of perspectives

Visual perspective taking has attracted research interest as a result of Piagetian formulations regarding its ontogenesis. Some investigators have interpreted failure as a consequence of egocentrism while others have hypothesized task variables as the source of failure. The present study directly compared the effects of a picture selection response with a rotational one. Forty 3-year-olds and forty 4-year-olds were compared on the response modes. Half the children indicated perspective inferences by selecting from a set of photographs while the others rotated a replica. Children were tested on three nonegocentric perspectives. The data were analyzed with a 2(age) × 2(response mode) ANOVA. Significant effects were found for response mode and the age × response interaction. It was concluded that while both 3- and 4-year olds were able to demonstrate perspective-taking competence, the 3-year-olds performed better with the turning task; 4-year-olds were equally successful in either mode.     

Children's response characteristics in a structured self-paced learning task

Fourth and fifth-grade children identified as fast/inaccurate and slow/accurate responders on the basis of the Matching Familiar Figures test were administered a self-paced learning task. The task consisted of a 25 word categorizable list composed of five instances from each of five categories. Four treatment conditions, the usual random presentation and blocked presentation conditions plus random presentation with instructions and blocked presentation with instructions, were employed. Analysis of variance was used to analyze clustering, free recall, and cued recall performance. A significant main effect for type of treatment was found in clustering performance. A significant instruction by response style interaction in the analysis of free call performance indicated that while fast/inaccurate responders benefit from instructions, slow/accurate responders did not. When children identified as fast/inaccurate or slow/accurate were placed in self-paced learning situation, no significant difference was found in total viewing time of the stimulus materials.     

The effects of physical structure and semantic organization on the recall of prose

The effects of a prose passage's physical structure and semantic organization upon free recall performance was investigated. Passages, describing characteristics of fictitious countries, contained either five or nine paragraphs on attributes of the countries. Results showed that Mandler's in J. L. Cowan (Ed.), Studies in thought and language. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1970] organizational limits could apply to prose as well as word lists and could be used to explain previous discrepant results in semantic organization research. Results showed differences in the distribution of materials interacting with type of semantic organization to produce differences in recall. Different learning strategies imposed by the passage's semantic organization were also found.     

Student behaviors, teacher reinforcement, student ability, and learning

Ninety-eight children were observed for 6-min periods on each of 10 days during 50-min, small-group classes in either mathematics, science, geography, or language usage. Two student behaviors (on-task behavior and accuracy of responding to teacher-directed questions) and three types of teacher reinforcement (verbal reinforcement for on-task behavior and accurate responding and tangible reinforcers) were coded during each observation period. A post-test of achievement, directly related to the content of the lessons, was administered at the end of the 10 days of instruction. The causal effects of student behaviors, teacher reinforcement, and student ability (reading achievement and intelligence) on achievement were evaluated using path analysis. The strongest effects were from student ability measures, with accurate responding by students and teacher reinforcement of accurate responding exhibiting smaller, but significant effects. Findings are discussed to qualify the relationship between overt classroom behaviors and degree of learning and the mediating effects of student ability.     

Models of the structure of some rule-governed mathematical behaviors

This study investigated the extent to which various latent class models adequately described some elementary rule-governed mathematical behaviors. Two hundred and eighty-three children were given a fraction concepts test in which they identified fractional parts of sets of objects. Results supported the adoption of a set of three-class models including a mastery class, a nonmastery class, and a transitional class to describe the data.     

The influence of decision factors on what is reported in free recall of a brief narrative

In recent research on memory for prose, attention has focused on the influence of a reader's perspective or schema on what is encoded and subsequently recalled. Previous research has revealed that subjects were able to recall previously unrecalled information if they were directed to take a new perspective during a second recall trial. This has been termed the perspective shift effect. This paper describes two possible mechanisms to account for the perspective shift effect—a retrieval process and a decision process. Two experiments which investigated the roles of these processes in the perspective shift effect are described. Experiment 1 employed an incentive to influence the subjects' criterion for reporting recalled information. Experiment 2 obtained separate estimates for decision and memory processes by applying signal detection theory. The results of both experiments provide data that tend to rule out the decision process as an important factor in the perspective shift phenomena in recall.     

Immediate and delayed recall of incidentally learned material: A comparison of paradigms across three developmental levels

Memory of incidentally learned material was investigated across three developmental levels in immediate and delay conditions. Subjects (56 first graders, 56 sixth graders, and 56 college students) were assigned randomly within developmental level to one of four experimental conditions: Type I immediate, Type I delay, Type II immediate, or Type II delay. In the Type I paradigm, subjects looked at pictures but were given no explicit instruction to remember, and in the Type II paradigm, subjects were instructed to remember specific pictures when shown all stimuli. Paradigm interacted with recall condition and significant amounts of incidental learning proved durable for sixth graders and college students. Incidental learning increased with age in both paradigms, suggesting that previously reported divergent developmental trends may not be the result of the type of paradigm.     

Affection as a separate dimension of meaningfulness

The meaningfulness of affectively significant (liked) materials has been shown to be separate from traditional explanations of meaningfulness, such as familiarity and rehearsal, in the verbal learning laboratory. The present investigation studied affective meaningfulness in the learning of course materials. Before the course began, students rated summaries of the study units of their course for affection. As predicted, subjects obtained higher examination grades on liked topics than on disliked topics, independently of perhaps the most prominent “rehearsal” explanation, amount of study on the various units. Also as expected, poor students showed a greater reliance on affective meaningfulness in their learning than did good students. Greater awareness of the role of affection in learning is recommended. Present findings suggest that considering this dimension of meaningfulness to be merely a by-product of familiarity or rehearsal may be the most detrimental to the students with the most learning difficulty.     

Eye movement analysis of information processing under different testing conditions

The study reported herein was designed to use eye movement data, collected during solution of complex figural analogies, to test the premise that enhanced feedback mechanisms and opportunities for dual coding of figural stimulus information result in the allocation of an increased percentage of information-processing resources to rule application activities. Subjects were given items from the Advanced Progressive Matrices under elaborated feedback, subject verbalization, or standard procedures. Results indicate that elaborative testing conditions, involving elaborated feedback or subject verbalization, enhance the rule-governed nature of information processing during inductive reasoning by augmenting feedback and dual coding.     

Reconceptualizing perceptual development: The identification of some dimensions of spatial competence in young children

In this examination of young children's acquisition of geometric skills, spatial performances were conceptualized as specific combinations of actions applied within stimulus contexts. Since both actions and context can vary, a number of different combinations can be specified. In this study, the relationships among eight such combinations were examined and predicted patterns compared with observed ones. Fifty-four 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children were presented with 24 geometric displays depicting a variety of geometric relations. Subjects were required to either match or recall the displays in both a reconstruction and a recognition task format thereby responding across different types of action demands. The geometric displays depicted information organized either around a single axis (horizontal or vertical) or around both axes, the variation in context. The results of a mixed design ANOVA revealed a good fit with the hypothesized predictions. The findings are discussed in terms of the development of spatial skills, information theory, and of skill generalization.     

Effects of metacognitive and elaborative activity on cooperative learning and transfer

The effects of instructing pairs of students to engage in metacognitive activities (error correcting and key idea detection), elaborative activities (use of imagery, analogies, etc.), or neither during cooperative learning were examined for both initial cooperative learning and transfer to an individual learning task. The results suggest that metacognitive activity facilitates cooperative learning and elaborative activity facilitates transfer to individual learning. These findings have strong implications for the tailoring of cooperative learning strategies to instructional goals.     

What time-series designs may have to offer educational researchers

The promise of time-series designs for educational research and evaluation is reviewed. Ten time-series designs are presented and discussed in the context of threats to internal and external validity. The advantages and disadvantages of various visual and statistical data-analysis techniques are presented. It is argued that time-series research paradigms are useful when researchers (a) wish to involve a single subject in experimental research (individuals as units of analysis) or conduct program-evaluation studies (aggregates as units of analysis), (b) are interested in nearly continuous measurement, (c) cannot meet conventional design and statistical assumptions, or (d) wish to specify individual differences through N = 1 research strategies. It is also suggested that more research endeavors be devoted to combining unique characteristics of time-series research with conventional multi-unit paradigms.     

On inserting questions before or after segments of text

It has been concluded in all major reviews of adjunct question research that a group given questions after related text segments (postquestions) yields greater recall than a group given questions before related text segments (prequestions) or one not given any questions at all. However, closer examination of the earlier research and an analysis of recent research reveals that for certain types of verbatim questions and for certain high level questions, postquestions produce recall equivalent to or less than prequestions. Moreover, in many studies wherein postquestions exceed prequestions, the postquestion group equals the reading-only control group in recall of nonquestioned (incidental) material. Hence, despite frequent pronouncements to the contrary, no firm recommendation can be made regarding the optimal placement of adjunct questions in text material.     

Vicarious language instruction with bilingual children through self-modeling

The present experiment was conducted to determine the effectiveness of a self-modeling procedure and a self-modeling procedure combined with social reinforcement on the language acquisition of bilingual children. In the self-modeling condition the children were prompted to mimic portions of sentences on audiotape. These fragments were edited into complete sentences and served as models during instruction. Children in the self-modeling group displayed significantly more adjective usage and adopted more of the modeled content than children whose self-modeled responses were socially reinforced and children assigned to the two control conditions.     

Study time and test performance as a function of test expectations

Study time and test performance change as a function of subjects expecting either open questions or a multiple-choice test on the contents of a history text. After studying a first history text, the subjects immediately received a test consisting of either open questions or multiple-choice items. They were led to expect the same type of test on a second text. Study time on Text 2 was self-paced, and the type of test was either the expected or unexpected one (either open questions or a multiple-choice test). The main hypothesis was confirmed that subjects consider open questions a more demanding test than a multiple-choice test. Accordingly, subjects expecting open questions on Text 2 used more study time and performed better on both types of test than did subjects expecting a multiple-choice test. Internal analyses revealed that the differences on study time and test achievement between the two expectation conditions occurred only when the subjects were thoroughly acquainted with the processing requirements of the learning material and its expected test.