Visual cueing strategies: Pictorial,textual and combinational effects

This study examined visual cueing methods via reading aptitudes based on a sample of 256 fourth-grade subjects. The methods, based on displays of 12 pictures and accompanying passages, included: (a) noncues; (b) pictorial cues (i.e., arrows and labels]; (c) textual cues (i.e., underlined type and colored type); and (d) a combination of pictorial and textual cues. Subjects were of average reading ability (ARA) and low reading ability (LRA). One major finding indicated that ARA and LRA subjects achieved significantly higher scores on the combinational cues than on the noncues. The results also revealed that ARA subjects outscored LRA subjects on all four methods. In regard to the pictorial cues, the ARA and LRA groups scored higher on the label cues than on the arrow cues, and the ARA group surpassed the LRA group on the label and arrow cues.     

Unintended effects of accountability policies and the quality of assessment and evaluation formats

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability -     

Strip mines in the garden: Old stories,new formats,and the challenge of change

She is exploring the impact of multimedia developments on the literate behaviors of children and adolescents.     

Measurement of achievement attribution: A review of instigation methods,question contents,and measurement formats

Various methods of achievement attribution measurement are compared with regard to the construction of the achievement event and the measurement of the attributions elicited. The method of instigation and the content of the instruments depend greatly on whether situational or dispositional (individual differences) factors are emphasized. It is suggested that natural events, particularly those with pronounced effects, generate actual affective reactions and direct consequences and are particularly useful for studies of situational factors in attributions. On the other hand, hypothetical multiple-event measures are generally employed for studies of individual differences in attributions. The present review shows that questions on specific causes are more popular than those on attribution dimensions. Researchers should be cautious, however, because the dimensional meaning of these causes may vary across different cultures, age groups, or achievement settings. Different question formats and scoring methods also are compared. It is concluded that different methods have their own strengths and weaknesses and that researchers should select the one that best serves their purpose.     

Young children,war, and picture books

Desert Storm prompts many parents, teachers, and friends of young children to ask, again and again, two questions. First, what do young children need, and second, are there any books to help my child? Reassurance, support, and opportunities to discuss what they think about the war are at least three things that young children need (Annuziata, Balter, Beebe, & Nemiroff, 1991).     

Relationship between eye movement,learning, and picture complexity

Is the number of eye fixations a reliable external indicator of internal cognitive processes when subjects are unaware that their eye movements are being monitored electronically? In this study involving college students, there was a relationship between posttest scores and the number of eye fixations, and intelligence level of the subject was correlated with eye fixations.     

Effect of pictures on recall of written prose: How durable are picture effects?

There is now substantial evidence that pictures can be used to facilitate the recall of information presented in prose passages. There is also evidence that the presence of pictures in prose passages does not hinder the recall of information that is not pictured. Are the picture effects durable over longer periods (55 days) of time? Do pictures included in prose passages help or hinder subjects' recall of information that is not pictured? Results of this study provide evidence that picture effects are durable. In addition, the inclusion of pictures in prose passages did not interfere with the recall of information presenter' only in the prose passage.     

The effects of simultaneous communication on production and perception of speech

This article reviews experiments completed over the past decade at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and the State University of New York at Geneseo concerning speech produced during simultaneous communication (SC) and synthesizes the empirical evidence concerning the acoustical and perceptual characteristics of speech in SC. Comparisons are drawn between SC and other modes of rate-altered speech that have been used successfully to enhance communication effectiveness. Of particular importance are conclusions regarding the appropriateness of speech produced during SC for communication between hearing and hearing-impaired speakers and listeners and the appropriateness of SC use by parents and teachers for speech development of children with hearing impairment. This program of systematic basic research adds value to the discussion about the use of SC by focusing on the specific implications of empirical results regarding speech production and perception.     

ICT, Education, and Visual Impairment

This paper provides an overview of developments in the use of information and communications technology (ICT) in the education of children with a visual impairment. The context is set by summarising the population of children with a visual impairment in this country, and presenting World Health Organisations classification of disability as a criteria by which the relevance of ICT can be measured. Case-studies of the use of different types of educational and access technology are presented and it is argued that information and communications technology has a valuable role in providing opportunities for children with a visual impairment to participate more fully in education.     

Visual Culture Art Education: Why,What and How

Recognising that many art educators are increasingly using the term visual culture, rather than art, to describe their central concern, the author examines why this development is taking place, what visual culture might mean in the context of art education, and how pedagogy might be developed for visual culture. The paper draws on attempts by both art educators to redefine their field and others outside art education who are attempting to define visual culture as an emerging trans‐disciplinary field in its own right.     

Unforgivable Blackness: Visual Rhetoric,Reader Response,and Critical Racial Literacy

Perceptions of black representations in literature and other visual mediums as positive or negative continuously cause consternation and debate (Fleetwood, 2011). Because African American children are literacy participants and consumers, they are not immune from experiencing this tension. This essay considers the effects and affective threads of racism and racialization connected to visuality (Foster, 1988), and how educators might support and nurture children’s roles as aesthetic critics and critical readers of books featuring racial imagery and representations. The young African American readers in this study resist a picturebook using colorist logic and macro-level social indexing of phenotypic traits. The author argues that negative social messages about blackness within the larger ethos of society, as well as the absence of diverse representations in children’s literature, contribute to such interpretations. She suggests explicitly teaching African American children about counter-visuality and the ways in which “art works” to shape and transform understandings about complex experiences like racism.     

Visual Literacy and Visual Politics: Photojournalism and the 2004 Presidential Debates

While newspapers use conventional images to accompany reporting on presidential debates, the rhetorical aspect of these images is illustrated through an examination of the 2004 debates. In this essay, the author first establishes oppositional positioning and mirroring as visual literacy conventions that augment those previously identified by Paul Messaris in his examination of advertising images. Second, a critical analysis of the photographs depicting the first 2004 debate, in particular, demonstrates how photo editors deployed visual conventions that either intensified clash or neutralized candidate performance fragments to produce a false symmetry despite a discordant reality. In subsequent debates, however, many editors employed alternate visual conventions that provided an improved visual balance between fairness and accuracy.     

Cognitive Load and Assembly Tasks: effect of instructional formats on learning assembly procedures

The study investigated the effect on learning of four different instructional formats used to teach assembly procedures. Cognitive load and spatial information processing theories were used to generate the instructional material. The first group received a physical model to study, the second an isometric drawing, the third an isometric drawing plus a model and the fourth an orthographic drawing. Forty secondary school students were presented with the four different instructional formats and subsequently tested on an assembly task. The findings indicated that there may be evidence to argue that the model format which only required encoding of an already constructed three dimensional representation, caused less extraneous cognitive load compared to the isometric and the orthographic formats. No significant difference was found between the model and the isometric‐plus‐model formats on all measures because 80% of the students in the isometric‐plus‐model format chose to use the model format only. The model format also did not differ significantly from other groups in total time taken to complete the assembly, in number of correctly assembled pieces and in time spent on studying the tasks. However, the model group had significantly more correctly completed models and required fewer extra looks than the other groups.     

Representation in memory and acquisition of knowledge from text and picture: Theoretical,methodological, and practical outcomes

Over the last 10 years, text comprehension research has undergone profound theoretical and methodological upheaval. Today, psychologists study language and texts because they present the trace markers of structures and cognitive operations. A text is no longer seen as a vehicle for conveying constructed meaning. Rather, text has been redefined as merely a structured sequence of stimuli, which activates both domain-related knowledge triggered by text information and linguistic knowledge. We present the theoretical views and experimental findings of the TEXTIMA group, characterized by the importance of the connectionist concepts.