Research has consistently demonstrated that learners are strikingly poor at metacognitively monitoring their learning and comprehension of texts. The aim of the present meta-analysis is to explore three important questions about metacomprehension: (a) To what extent can people accurately discriminate well-learned texts from less well learned ones?…

Failure to learn and generalize abstract relational rules has critical implications for education. In this study, we aimed to determine which training conditions facilitate relational transfer in a relatively simple (patterning) discrimination versus a relatively complex (biconditional) discrimination. The amount of training participants received…

Vibrotactile intensity-discrimination thresholds for sinusoidal stimuli applied to the thenar eminence of the hand declined as a function of practice. However, improvement was confined to the tactile information-processing channel in which learning had occurred. Specifically, improvements in performance with training within the Pacinian-corpuscle…

Seven main experiments and three pilot studies were conducted to develop and test theories of transfer of training in children. Initial tests failed to support an incentive model for learning and transfer, but a new model given strong emphasis to the role of context in learning was developed which accounted for a wide range of learning and…

Four severely retarded and four nonretarded adolescents learned compound discriminations in the haptic (touch) modality using D. Ray's conflict-compound procedure. Subjects evinced selective attention effects in posttraining tests conducted in the haptic modality. Visual transfer tests revealed the effects of conflict-compound discrimination…

Four studies compared static versus dynamic presentations of examples and nonexaples of the concepts "diagonal" and "conves," with nonhandicapped preschoolers, mildly handicapped primary students, and severely handicapped adults. Ss taught with a dynamic presentation learned the discrimination in significantly fewer trials, with performance either…

Attempted to maximize the efficacy of time-delay discrimination training of 16 preschoolers. No indications were found of effects of precision response pretraining on the outcome of time delay of static cues. Transfer and lack of transfer of stimulus control were associated with nonshifts and shifts of response loci, respectively. (RH)

Confirms the existence of a right-hemisphere advantage in the process of discriminating between face stimuli. The advantage was weaker in females than in males. No hemispheric transfer of learning was observed. Subjects were 18 infants of 42 weeks who were presented with an operant conditioning situation in which they discriminated between their…

Discrimination learning, memory, and transfer capacity were assessed in 56 institutionalized moderately to severely retarded adults to provide information on trainability. Generally, the higher functioning Ss, defined by IQ and adaptive behavior learned more rapidly than did the lower functioning Ss. (Author/SW)

How strategies affect learning of categories that lack necessary and sufficient attributes is explored. The authors propose that strategy variations induced by instructions affect only the amount of information represented about attributes, not processes operating on representations. An experiment required subjects to classify schematic faces into…

This study examined the matching and sequencing of quantities, numerals, and arbitrary forms by two individuals with mental retardation. Results showed that sequence training did not readily lead to new matching performances, unlike prior research with college students. Instead, training in matching to sample yielded emergent sequence production…

Retardates, primary students, and college students were given either a reversal or an intradimensional shift after either a criterion of five or twenty correct on a pre-transfer problem. An automated two-choice apparatus projected planometric color and form cues from the rear onto panels that the subject was instructed to press. Both the…

When 112 fifth- and sixth-graders were observed for their use of one of two possible rehearsal strategies in verbal discrimination learning tasks, the strategy in which the children generated a functional explanation of the word showed a positive influence on simple frequency discriminations. Data analyses also indicate that under this strategy…

This study examines the effects of readiness level and learning modality emphasis on the form discrimination performance of kindergarten children on training and transfer tasks. Forty-eight male and 48 female kindergarten children between the ages of 5.5 and 6.5 years participated in the study. The children were randomly selected from a group of…