Comment and summary: A mine of possible applications

Summary In summary, then, what have the contributors said? They have impressed upon us the need for analytic, dimensional study of audiovisual devices. This recommendation comes especially from Glaser and Postman. To this recommendation Kendler would want to add: the analytic study should be theoretically oriented. In this latter recommendation, Luchins would probably concur, though his theory will be different, influenced as it is by Gestalt tradition and by his great concern for process. Luchins’ concern is a well-placed one, and one of the signal contributions of Gestalt theory to the study of learning has always been its insistence on such concern. The kind of stimulusresponse theory espoused by Kendler is also concerned with process, and a working together of stimulus-response mediation theory and Gestalt theory, it seems to me, is quite possible. McDonald reminds us not to neglect the motivational properties of audiovisual devices. This, indeed, may be their specific function. Even when it cannot be demonstrated that they directly produce learning which is better, or more efficient, or more productive of understanding than learning by ordinary classroom procedures, they still may have an advantage in motivating interest and in providing something like stimulus predifferentiation