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?…

Apparently contradictory findings regarding the locus of information processing differences between retarded and nonretarded persons were discussed. (Author)

The problem of teaching relational discriminations to people with mental retardation is examined. The limitations of several commonly used teaching procedures are discussed and alternative approaches to simple-discrimination learning are described. Results of two preliminary single-subject studies demonstrating the feasibility of these approaches…

In Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior, three categories of environmental control over instances of verbal behavior appear to be relevant to the study of infant vocal development: the mand, the tact, and the echoic categories. Procedures used in the remediation of language deficiencies and procedures found in work in the area of language…

If the classroom English teacher is to be given any assistance in determining the most appropriate literary experiences for developing students' literature appreciation, it is imperative that research create a clearer understanding of the factors involved in developing discrimination in literature. (RL)

Contemporary research findings in the fields of perceptual psychology and neurology of the human brain that are directly related to the study of visual communication are reviewed and briefly discussed in this paper. Specifically, the paper identifies those major research findings in visual perception that are relevant to the study of visual…

Recent literature on the acquisition of "more" and "less" is reviewed with special emphasis on some key issues. The overriding goal of studies in this area has been the discovery of the developmental sequence that the child follows in acquiring "more" and "less," and, more generally, all comparative structures. The earliest empirical studies on…

This discussion of how conditions of the recipient can affect effectiveness of feedback presents an overview of the topic (feedback functions and feedback about what, when, by whom, and types), and discusses factors affecting formative feedback, i.e., recipients' discrimination repertoires and self-monitoring behavior development in…

This paper introduces successive and coordinate intellectual thinking skills, using concepts as a best case example. The attributes and optimal presentation requirements of successive and coordinate concepts are reviewed, and types of errors commonly associated with successive and coordinate skills are delineated. The effects of both of these…

Examines the influences of behaviorist psychology on performance and instruction technologies. The basic assumptions of behaviorism are outlined, reinforcing contingencies are reviewed, conditioning is described, and such specific topics as stimulus control, behavior chaining, and successive approximation are discussed. (Author/JL)

Research findings are reviewed concerning infants' abilities to discriminate parents from other social stimuli during the first 6 months of life. The term "discrimination" is used to signify the ability of infants to respond differentially to two or more social stimuli. Studies reviewed are categorized in terms of the visual, auditory,…

The presuppositions that favor firsthand experience over secondhand information, as pertaining to learning and education, are questioned. It is noted that, when education and firsthand experience are described as if equivalent, a presumption is made that a commonsense theory of knowledge and mind is valid. Research on the social psychology of…

To estimate the relative effects of three types and three combinations of feedback on children's discrimination learning, a meta-analysis was performed on the findings of 89 studies. In general, reward compared to punishment or to reward plus punishment is the least efficient method of feedback for teaching children discrimination materials.…

In this article infant operant conditioning studies are grouped according to distinct procedures: free operant; discrete trial with one discriminative stimulus; discrete trial with two or more discriminative stimuli; controlled operant with two or more discriminative stimuli; and unrestricted operant with two or more discriminative stimuli.…

Children with mental retardation are particularly prone to failure on relational tasks such as oddity and match-to-sample, suggesting a differential sensitivity to relational information. This paper reports on several studies in which characteristics of stimulus arrays were enhanced. Results demonstrated the theoretical and practical significance…