The relation between orientation task and resultant structure of the memory trace was studied using an incidental learning paradigm. Twenty subjects examined 50 pairs for meaningful associations (semantic task), and 20 for rhymes (nonsemantic task). (Editor)

Discusses articles contained in this special issue of the journal, raising issues concerning key terms, with particular emphasis on "incidental." Argues there is no clear way to show that a word has been learned incidentally, if the suggestion is that specific attention is not drawn to that word either by some external force or by the learner.…

Grieving, a learning experience in response to loss, may involve either (1) learning to grieve, an individualized process leading to resolution or (2) complicated mourning, a defensive response that avoids pain. Learning tasks include acceptance, acknowledgment of emotions, adjustment to change, and reestablishment. Sites for this learning include…

The story-telling multimedia, Living Book, is one of the most common edutainment genres, in which children hear and play with interactive and animated stories, in a highly-engaging multimedia environment. Living Books are designed so that every word of the story is projected as text on the computer monitor simultaneously with its narration. This…

Children with autism often have difficulty successfully applying newly acquired skills to novel situations. Naturalistic teaching procedures have been developed to help address this problem with generalization. These naturalistic procedures promote generalization through the use of natural consequences, diverse training, and the incorporation of…

This article explores several ways computer-based instruction can be designed to support constructive activities and promote deep-level comprehension during vicarious learning. Vicarious learning, discussed in the first section, refers to knowledge acquisition under conditions in which the learner is not the addressee and does not physically…

Although most children seem to love music, our understanding of the role it plays in facilitating speech and language learning is limited, as is research validating its efficacy in the clinical setting. The purpose of this study was to examine how singing affects children's quick incidental learning (QUIL) of novel vocabulary terms. Sixteen…

This analysis evaluates the receptive tests of targeted lexical knowledge in the written medium, which are typically used in empirical research into lexical acquisition from reading foreign/second language texts. Apart from the types of second language cues or prompts, and the language of the responses, the main issues revolve around: (a) the…

This article examines the effects of synonymy (i.e., learning words with and without high-frequency synonyms that were known to the learners) on word knowledge in a study of 84 Japanese students learning English. It employed 10 tests measuring 5 aspects of word knowledge (orthography, paradigmatic association, syntagmatic association, meaning and…

This study explored how Thai learners of English as a foreign language, engaged in English activities outside of classrooms to learn and practice the English language. Three research questions of this study include: (a) How do the participants perceive access and availability of out of class English activities in local environments?, (b) How do…

Examines the relationship between the number of learning goals and decreased performance on goal-relevant test items, and explores characteristics of goal-descriptive directions that influence the recall of incidental information from text. (BJG)

Daily News on the Air show produced by students. (JH)

Preschoolers' recall and clustering of organized lists of pictures were examined either under deliberate instructions to remember or in incidental learning situations. It was concluded that the activity of the children determines depth of processing and subsequent retention, not the intent to remember. (JMB)

Incidental learning of film content was investigated in two studies involving 61 retarded institutionalized children. (Author/SBH)

Memory automaticity for spatial location was evaluated with 14 mildly retarded adults and 14 nonretarded adults under two instructional conditions: intentional or incidental. Intention to encode spatial location had no effect on recall for either group and retarded and nonretarded subjects did not differ in recall of spatial location. (Author/DB)