This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 12 titles deal with the following topics: (1) the perceived effectiveness of written communication from central office administrators to building level administrators in a metropolitan school district, (2) upward communication in…

B. J. F. Meyer's approach to prose analysis is utilized in this paper to examine differences in learning and memory of text by readers across the adult lifespan. The analysis system is described briefly and compared to other approaches. Several studies are then summarized that employ this hierarchical analysis system to study learner…

Many scientists are currently studying the manner in which individuals process social information. The reconstruction of attitudinal and subsequent behavioral information was studied to determine whether information about a person's schema can influence the interpretation of that person's subsequent behavior or whether the behavior itself is more…

The process of acquiring knowledge from texts is considered from two perspectives: the learning of the individual facts in the text, and the integration of the facts into a coherent representation reflecting relations among the facts. The former process is presumed to depend on the linguistics content of the text, while the latter process depends…

The effects of content schemata, embodying the reader's existing knowledge about a topic, on reading comprehension were examined in two experiments in which high school and college students were instructed to take a distinctive point of view while reading and recalling a story. Perspectives assigned before reading, shortly after reading, and long…

Designed to assist educators in making a more knowledgeable selection of reading methods and techniques, this paper integrates the findings of eye processing research with classroom reading practices. Following a review of eye movement and visual processing research, the paper presents a discussion of research on the process by which a reader…

Memory of incidentally learned material was investigated across three developmental levels in immediate and 24-hour delay conditions. First grade, sixth grade, and college students were assigned randomly within developmental level to one of four experimental conditions: Type I immediate, Type I delay, Type II immediate, or Type II delay. In the…

This paper is an explication of the concept of a network of consultants to help people obtain answers to day-to-day questions for which answers are known. Each member of such a network is viewed to have three capabilities: 1)answering questions directly from his own memory, 2)answering questions with the aid of library resources, and 3)referring…

The elusive phenomenon of individual learning differences was probed via the concepts of transfer and practice at different stages of the learning process. Order of presentation of two films covering different subjects provided the transfer task. Practice was introduced by five repetitions of the films, interspersed among six repetitions of an…

This paper reports two experiments investigating the effect of schooling and urbanization on short term recall and recognition memory. Subjects were 384 male children and young adults living in Morocco representing urban and rural and schooled and nonschooled backgrounds. Additional subject groups--including Koranic school students, Moroccan rug…

It is difficult to account for the real and easily measured differences in verbal competence. Differential psychologists investigate basic traits from which observed behavior is thought to be generated, but if thinking is viewed as a problem in information handling, research will more profitably focus on the relationship between behavior in…

Described are three experiments which probed children's sensitivity to structure or organization in visual patterns. Each experiment employed a different paradigm (complexity judgment, discrimination learning, recognition learning, and memory) in order to tap different aspects of children's use of structural information. Subjects were children in…

This study examined the ability of junior high school students to use advance information when making semantic category decisions. The subjects, eight good readers and eight poor readers, identified paired words as "same" or "different" in category, with some words more highly associated with the category than others--in the "fruit" category, for…

Subjects were 96 college students who were assigned to eight experimental groups. Five groups took notes during or after listening to segments of a 16-minute tape-recorded lecture. Note-takers reviewed their notes during a 10-minute review session provided all subjects immediately prior to a 20-minute free recall test given 48 hours after lecture…

This study investigated the effects of color cues as well as the absence of such cues on the recognition of visual images using as subjects 28 college students in a basic communications course. The stimulus materials were slides in three categories: (1) original color (realistic), (2) black and white, and (3) non-realistic color format. Subjects…