Research in chemistry education has revealed that students going through their undergraduate and graduate studies in organic chemistry have a fragmented conceptual knowledge of the subject. Rote memorization, rule-based reasoning, and heuristic strategies seem to strongly influence students' performances. There appears to be a gap between what we…

Three experiments tested the generality of the conclusion that associative unlearning is minimal in the A-B, A-D paradigm. In Experiment 1, single-trial study of A-D, following single-trial study of A-B, did not produce retroactive inhibition in the recognition of A-B. In Experiment 2, A-B was acquired by associative matching. The interpolated…

The primary purpose for conducting the present experiment was to assess the effects of an associative-attribute--for example, stimulus meaningfulness (m) on the learning rates of different age group children. An attempt was also made to assess the effects of age and m on a measure of subjective organization. This research consisted of two studies:…

In a recent issue of "Science Education" (v.63: 395-406), Stewart criticized methods for assessment and representation of cognitive structure in minds of learners and attempts to link these structure to content structure in subject matter being learned. Presents counterarguments to Stewart's position. (Author/JN)

The central question of this report concerned the role of formal similarity in free recall of lists of trigrams and lists of three-letter word triads. Similarity was manipulated among trigrams by duplicating words. An initial study showed that lists of 16 letters were learned more rapidly than a list of 16 three-letter words. Therefore, in the…

The focus of this experiment was on the effects of associative strength on retention of connected discourse, in terms of both single words and strings of words. Also of interest was the short- and long-term retention of two types of information, verbatim and substance. Verbatim information covered words and word sequences identical to those in the…

Much recent cognitive and artificial intelligence research has focused on the development of "schema theory." This theory supposes the existence of knowledge and memory structures that encode prototypical descriptions of familiar concepts. Schema theory has developed in a scientific environment that stresses interdisciplinary approaches…

To assess the importance of visual attributes relative to acoustic and semantic attributes in children's encoding, a 64-item recognition test was administered to first- and sixth-grade children. Recognition items were linedrawings of simple objects accompanied by aural labels. By manipulating the picture, label, and referent in various…

A simply constructed, psychometrically sound testing procedure which enables the instructor to assess higher cognitive process with respect to the material in questions, and which is amenable to machine scoring, is described. It involves the application of the word association technique long used in psychoanalysis to the classroom setting. The…

The effect of cognitive style and learning conditions on the rote verbal learning performance of Mexican American subjects classified as field independent or field dependent was investigated. Field dependent referred to a strong perceptual influence caused by the context or background while field independent referred to an ability to overcome the…