This paper examines the dual coding hypothesis, a model of the coding of visual and textual information, from the perspective of a mass media professional, such as a teacher, interested in accurately presenting both visual and textual material to a mass audience (i.e., students). It offers an extension to the theory, based upon the various skill…

Feeling, emotion, and passion are the "stuff" of everyday experience. This guidebook helps the reader understand emotions in a two-step approach. First, common assumptions about emotion are examined in order to arrive at a deeper understanding of current approaches to emotion, especially as these exist in the fields of psychology and…

This book, which contains 19 chapters, examines children's learning processes in light of reconceptualizations of Piagetian theory. Part one traces the theoretical question underpinning this examination and includes three chapters: "General and Specific Views of the Mind, its Structure, and its Development"; "A Neo-Piagetian…

This study examines executive function and its relationship to attention dysfunction and working memory. It attempts to document the manifestations of executive function problems in school-related extended processing tasks, such as verbal problem-solving in math and reading of extended passages. Subjects (in grades 1-12) included 49 children with…

A program of theoretical and empirical research focusing on the ability determinants of individual differences in skill acquisition is reviewed. An integrative framework for information-processing and cognitive ability determinants of skills is reviewed, along with principles for ability-skill relations. Experimental manipulations were used to…

As part of a study to determine whether visual and manual response systems are correlated, 26 children between 40 and 51 months of age took part in visual and manual reaction time (RT) tasks. Subjects, whose RTs had previously been tested at 3 months of age, were tested in 1 of 2 conditions. In the first condition, subjects viewed pictures only…

Two instructional variables, visual illustrations and visual mental imagery, were compared for their influences on learning and cognitive strategies. It was hypothesized, based on dual-code theory, that attempts to combine the two would facilitate learning. In a completely randomized factorial design, treatments consisted of 4 versions of a…

A literature review synthesized the qualitative research from science education that described students' cognitive processes in conceptual change and the related effects of context. Studies were located by manual and on-line searches of more than 15 data bases to retrieve the published, unpublished, and fugitive research. The actual case studies…

This paper is a synthesis of a number of documents relating to the educational issues confronting children with Asperger's syndrome, autism, or a Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (PDDNOS) in the autism spectrum. It is designed to provide teacher information and is equally useful for caretakers of children with the…

This paper examines the plight of the child with a learning disability who enters a classroom to hear only a foreign language, to misunderstand the accompanying nonverbal signals, and to see only alien symbols written on the board. This child with a learning disability will have difficulty in the classroom unless the teacher applies the basic…

The feasibility of the administration, scoring, and reporting of an on-line concept mapping system has been studied in collective research in which concept map construction systems were designed to allow students individually and collaboratively to construct concept maps on the computer to measure content understanding and collaboration. The study…

Experiential or work-based learning has been touted as imperative for the development of students and their preparation for the workplace. However, work-based learning does not always occur or occur to a significant extent merely because a student is in the workplace. What matters is the nature of the student's participation in workplace…

This paper discusses four areas in the psychology literature that have important implications for the instructional design of microcomputer-based simulations. The first one examined is cognitive structures, and the following suggestions for instructional design are offered: simulations should be appropriate for students' level of understanding;…

Previous research has cast doubt on children's ability to use specified evidence when making causal inferences, or, indeed, to differentiate between the specified evidence and their own preconceptions, or "prior theories." The present study continues previous work by distinguishing between children's reasoning in conditions where…

Various researchers have associated meaningful problem solving with methods guided directly by a conceptual knowledge base. By contast, a meaningless solving course, or sequence of operations, is essentially independent of the solver's conceptual understanding of the problem under consideration. This paper is the first to document a meaningless,…