Schools are a central interface between evolution and culture. They are the contexts in which children learn the evolutionarily novel abilities and knowledge needed to function as adults in modern societies. Evolutionary educational psychology is the study of how an evolved bias in children's learning and motivational systems influences their…

The authors investigated the comparative effect of the learning cycle and expository instruction on 8th-grade students' achievement in genetics. They adopted the nonequivalent control group design as a type of quasiexperimental design. The experimental group (N = 104) received learning cycle instruction, and the control group (N = 109) received…

Learning is better than knowing, generalization is more illuminating than abstract generality or universality because we perceive and thus become conscious of change or development only. Signs and representations establish the dialectic of fixation on the one hand and transformation on the other, which is so essential to learning and cognition.…

This paper investigates how monitoring the time spent on a question in a test of basic mathematics skills can provide insights into learning processes, the quality of test takers' knowledge, and cognitive demands and performance of test items that otherwise would remain undiscovered if the usual test outcome of accuracy only format…

This paper describes dissertation research using cognitive psychology in the design of museum exhibit labels in an effort to increase learning and memory in museum visitors. Three studies focused on factors affecting whether or not using a question (instead of a statement) as a title on a museum exhibit label would increase the visitor's memory of…

The literature of antonymy, though disjointed and inconclusive, has found that opposition is important to development, learning, psychological health, and creativity. To investigate the role of dialectics in cognitive processes and human learning, four empirical studies were undertaken. In study one, to investigate the dialectic process in…

An adaptive network model is proposed to represent the structure and processing of knowledge. Accessibility of subjects' stored information was measured. Relationships exist among (a) frequency of verifying a test relation, (b) other relations involving concepts used to evaluate test relation, (c) frequency of verifying those relations. (CHK)

A major error in cognitive science has been to suppose that the meaning of a representation in the mind is known prior to its production. Representations are inherently perceptual--constructed by a perceptual process and given meaning by subsequent perception of them. The person perceiving the representation determines what it means. This premise…

An examination of how new knowledge is acquired reveals that knowledge is organized in global conceptual constructs called schemata, and that the process of knowledge acquisition can be conceptualized as the articulation and restructuring of these schemata. Assuming that a schema is a generative structure with implications beyond what is…

In experiments on individual differences in learning, knowledge prerequisites and learning strategies have been shown to be important factors. The author questions whether learning optimization should rely on direct measures from outside the learner or should elucidate and strengthen the individual's capacity for learning decisions. He proposes to…

Results are reported which show that the facilitating effect of recall on recognition is quite substantial. (AM)

Research supported in part by a grant from the University Research Board, University of Illinois, and in part by Grant OEG-1-070028-5239 from the U.S. Office of Education, Bureau of Research.

Some of the issues associated with the lack of a precisely stated theory of memory organization are considered. The first section provides an overview of the concept of organization. Emphasis is on problems associated with the definition of organization, especially the distinction between organization as a process and as the product of a process.…

THE OBJECTIVES OF THIS STUDY WERE--(1) TO DEFINE AND ISOLATE THE BASIC PROCESSES INVOLVED IN PAIR-ASSOCIATE LEARNING, (2) TO SPECIFY THE IMPORTANT VARIABLES RELATED TO THESE PROCESSES AND THE CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH EACH BECOMES IMPORTANT, (3) AND TO DEFINE AND ASSESS THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ASSOCIATION FORMATION PROCESS IN PAIRED-ASSOCIATE LEARNING…

ABOUT 70 FEMALE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS PARTICIPATED IN THIS INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL PRESSURE ON CONCEPT IDENTIFICATION TASKS AND ITS TRANSFER EFFECT FROM ONE TASK TO ANOTHER. THE SUBJECTS WERE RANDOMLY ASSIGNED TO FIVE EXPERIMENTAL GROUPS -- (1) A CONTROL GROUP WITHOUT FEEDBACK, (2) A VERIDICAL GROUP WITH CORRECT FEEDBACK ON THE TWO…