Accurate and automatic production of the basic number combinations is a major objective of elementary mathematics education. Typically, it is not an objective that is easily and quickly attained. Indeed, teachers regularly lament about how difficult it is to get their students to master the basic "number facts." This problem may be due,…

Two experiments investigated children's strategies for solving geometric matrices that were correctly or incorrectly completed and that varied in number of elements and number of transformations. Examining the relationship between working memory and item complexity, the first experiment tested 90 boys and girls of 7, 10, and 13 years of age for…

The poorer performance of older people in laboratory tests of episodic memory may result from failures or deficiencies in metamemory processes, e.g., failure to monitor task or individual item difficulty. To study age differences in prediction of memory performance, an associative matching task was used to compare young (N=20) and older (N=20)…

A study examined basic reading skills among men in prison, comparing poor and adequate readers with respect to comprehension, decoding, short-term memory, and speech perception. Subjects, 88 inmates of normal intelligence, normal hearing, and no significant speech abnormalities, at a minimum-security prison, were given reading comprehension tests…

The relationship between metamemorial accuracy and student test performance was assessed in a graduate educational psychology class. Metamemory is defined as information about the content of one's own memory. Adult students in two courses (N=67) were asked to select multiple choice answers in two midterms and a final examination and to rate their…

In an effort to understand why pictures are used to supplement learning material, a study explored (1) the role of humor in recall, and (2) whether the effects of humor are independent of the individual's ability level. Subjects--students from either the high SAT (approximate average of 1200 points) population (HS), or the low SAT (approximate…

The effectiveness of three strategy training methods was compared with 15 learning disabled (LD) children of two age groups (9 to 10 and 11 to 12 years old) and 15 nonLD children in the same age group. The methods (practice, in which the Ss were to find the best way to remember; specific strategy method, in which the Ss used a specific cumulative…

Black preschoolers were studied for the effects of memory enhancing training strategies, socioeconomic status, and the order of free and cued recall on story comprehension. The study also tested the utility of Kintsch's expository text analysis procedures in describing the structure of children's stories and children's oral recall of stories. In…

A study was conducted to investigate the effects of symbolic format of test material on short- and long-term recognition. Subjects, 104 undergraduate students, viewed slides of either a black-and-white photograph, a one-sentence verbal description of the photo, a black-and-white drawing based on the verbal description, or a black-and-white line…

This working paper, which reviews the experimental literature on learning skills to provide background information to the staff of the Skills Essential to Learning Television Project (a multi-level series of video and print resources for classroom use), covers four areas: study skills, instructional development and design, cognitive psychology,…

Using five metamemory question types and the Counting Span Test (CST), this research investigated the effects of metamemory task demands, and the relationship of the amount of information one can hold in working memory to metamemory question performance. One hundred twenty kindergarten, first, third, and fifth grade children served as subjects.…

Reviewed are approximately 10 research studies done in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe on oligophrenia (mental retardation) and effectiveness of teaching methods for oligophrenics. (GW)

In view of the importance of selectivity to the understanding of the interpersonal, small group, and public communication processes, this concept must be introduced into the communication classroom. This paper introduces an instructional model that simplifies the student's understanding of the four major steps involved in the selectivity process:…

This document presents a summary of proceedings at a conference on schooling and the acquisition of knowledge, and contains twelve formal papers, formal comments by discussants, and informal discussion by conference attendees. Topics covered in the twelve papers are: (1) types of knowledge and purposes of education; (2) schooling and the…

This series of four experiments on children's causal sequences was directed at: (1) extending Brown's research on temporal ordering to causal relationships portrayed in picture sequences; (2) investigating the developmental progression of skills involved in understanding and remembering sequences; and (3) examining the development of reversible…