Taken together, the Coherence Principle of Multimedia Learning Theory and the Integrated Systems Hypothesis propose that co-occurring and semantically congruent verbal and visual information should be integrated into one mental representation that enhances memory. The purpose of this paper was to examine how learning pseudowords with matching…

The ill-effect of noise on human performance has been studied by researchers in the fields of cognitive psychology and education for almost a decade. The learning theory Cognitive Information Processing was applied to a new empirical study that builds upon past relevant research on (a) working memory and individuals with learning disabilities, and…

Among his many accomplishments in educational psychology, Merlin C. Wittrock is perhaps best remembered for his enduring contributions to the science of learning. His vision of how learning works is best explicated in articles published in "Educational Psychologist" (Wittrock, 1974, 1978, 1989, 1991, 1992), beginning with his classic 1974 article,…

A study tested the assumption found in schema theory that scripted knowledge automatically provides specific content details about scripted activity, thereby biasing a reader's immediate interpretation of a text. The study measured how quickly and accurately 16 college students could verify script related words. Subjects listened to four scripted…

The performance of two groups of elementary school children on a modified cloze test under two different conditions demonstrated that lexical information was retained in memory, thus supporting the claim that lexical information persists in memory representations of meaning. Includes extensive tables of data. (FL)

This article presents theoretical reflections and empirical data on metacognitive aspects of memory and reading problems in children with reading comprehension disabilities. A distinction is made between metacognitive awareness and metacognitive control processes. Experimental results suggest that poor comprehenders present less adequate…

A study investigated whether metaphors help or hinder prose comprehension. The subjects, 71 college students, read eight short stories and rated their quality and the effectiveness of the writing. Approximately half of the subjects received stories that contained metaphors, while half received the same stories in which the metaphors had been…

Text-learning strategies may help students to: (1) focus attention on key concepts; (2) organize information for storage and retrieval; and (3) integrate new information with existing, related knowledge. Since these strategies can provide learning contexts that stimulate attentional and organizational processes, their use with older adult students…

F. C. Bartlett's concept of "attitude" is used in this paper as a point of departure for the creation of a model of the complementary functioning of discursive and experiential memorial representation. The paper first discusses several of the memorial functions of experiential representation, in particular the integrative function…

Most popular strategies, including illustrations, for improving prose processing consist of procedures that force attention either to the text's macrostructure or to the organization and interconnections of its propositions. These strategies are assumed to enhance students' comprehension of the text as encoded, as well as to afford students an…

The way in which knowledge of a given topic influences the acquisition of topic-related information was studied with the knowledge domain of baseball. A knowledge structure was postulated that included the goal structure as well as the states and actions of the game. (SW)

The way in which previously acquired knowledge affects the processing on new domain-related information was investigated. Text processing was studied in two groups differing in knowledge of the domain of baseball. A knowledge structure for the domain was constructed, and text propositions were classified. (SW)

Discusses three strategies that help students remember information from the author's point of view: webbing, pyramiding, and think sheets. Notes that each strategy highlights superordinate ideas and shows how ideas relate to each other. Offers instructional techniques for using the three strategies. (FL)

Twenty-four college seniors summarized a 167-word text. Five days later, they completed a sentence-recognition task and described components of successful text summarization. It appeared that students who summarized efficiently also stored information in memory efficiently. (Author/CJ)