Our educational system is traditional and backward-looking, and it produces students who cannot deal with change. It consists of an irrelevant, structured "subject matter" system where subject matter knowledge is the end goal, a paradox in an age of change. Traditional classroom organization must be eliminated (including grades, desks, courses,…

This document describes the Conceptual Learning and Development (CLD) model of concept formation. According to the CLD analysis, a single concept is learned in the following successive levels of attainment: concrete, identity, classification, and formal. The four levels are considered applicable to concepts that are defined (or could be defined)…

Second graders were administered a two-choice discrimination task in which irrelevant dimensions were correlated .50, .75, or 1.00 with the 100 percent rewarded cue. Results indicate that learning was most impeded in the .75 condition and was most efficient in the 1.00 condition. These results support the Hypothesis Testing Theory of…

Ten randomly picked children of prekindergarten age participated in a study that focused on whether feature analysis can be used as an aid in the recognition of the alphabet. The five children in the control group were introduced to the letters as a whole, while the five children in the experimental group were introduced to the whole letters but…

A schema is best understood as a statistically defined concept. Schematic concept formation consists of abstracting the common elements or properties of a defined class in a schema. Thereafter, both discrimination and retention are facilitated, since only deviations from the schema need be processed for any particular class exemplar. In the…

As a result of findings of a previous study, this study, which sought to program preschool subjects to wait one minute for reinforcement, used pause-building procedures before delay conditions were started. The children, 3- to 5-year-olds, were designated either Baseline (control) subjects (n=3) or Programmed (experimental) subjects (n=5). Though…

Three experiments were conducted to determine the effectiveness of verbal and imaginal rehearsal strategies in children's discrimination learning. With verbal materials, imaging the referent of the correct item was more facilitative than vocalizing the correct item, as long as the former strategy was defined in a manner conducive to effective…

In the series of experiments supported by this grant, some fundamental characteristics of the concept of attention were explored. The first experiments were based upon the assumption that attention is limited and consequently that adult subjects may only be able to perceive a fairly restricted portion of the stimuli available to them at any moment…

The effect of level of stereotypy on learning a discrimination was examined using a factorial design with high and low levels of stereotypy and three levels of IQ with 30 institutionalized retarded persons. Results indicated the effects of stereotypy were different across the IQ levels. (Author/DB)

The present experiment examined the choice behavior of humans during the learning of a reversal (R) shift as an empirical test of attentional explanations of the overtraining reversal effect. (Author/RK)

Results showed that imagery and frequency factors have independent and additive effects in verbal discrimination learning. (Author)

A framework for using and changing concepts in the study of science is described. (JD)

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

Habituated 180 neonates to white lights of varying luminance and tested for recovery of habituation to green, yellow, or red lights varying in excitation purity. Found that newborns discriminated chromatic stimuli from white only when excitation purity exceeded levels much higher than those for adults. Results reinforce view that neonates' vision…