Search

This paper discusses the results of a study of 27 college students with deafness that investigated whether cognitive processes are modality dependent in individuals with deafness. The experiment included two separate parts, one composed of shape trials and the other composed of word trials. An initial stimulus was shown on a computer screen for two seconds. A two second retention period was followed by presentation of the test stimulus. Participants responded by pressing either the "Shift" key, to designate that they felt that the test stimulus included all the same shapes or shape words as the initial stimulus, or the "Option" key to designate that there was at least one different shape or shape word in the test stimulus. For initial and test stimuli in which the positions of shapes or words were the same, participants responded to the shapes more quickly when they appeared in an array than when they appeared in a linear format; however, results suggest subjects retained the word information in a sequential, sentence-like format. Strong readers performed better than weak readers on word stimuli. The study indicates that dual coding theory predictions hold for individuals with deafness. (CR)

High ability, highly verbal fifth grade students (n=12) were studied, by employing think aloud protocols, to identify students' use of learning strategies, encoding processes, and navigational decisions in a hypermedia lesson on propaganda techniques. Subjects were asked to read and think aloud as they worked their way through the concept lesson and immediate posttest. These "think alouds" were transcribed and coded for analysis. Results revealed a wide variation in amount and type of learning strategies used by students with high, average, and low test scores. Navigational decisions and encoding processes also varied widely among the students. High test scorers (n=4) tended to use more varied learning strategies and were more consistent in their navigation decisions than the other two groups. The high group used a combination of strategies: comprehension monitoring, elaboration, and rehearsal. The low test scoring group (n=5) used some of the same strategies, but used them to a lesser degree and with more errors or faulty construction. The average group (n=3) tended to use a greater combination of strategies than the other two groups.(Contains 28 references.) (Author/SWC)

What leads to the blatant incongruity between reality and perception with which individuals and groups perceive moral events in the world? This paper focuses on a few of the elements involved in the interpretation of the events that may lead to different perspectives, suggesting a new construct--moral perception. Rest (1983) expanded the psychological notion of morality by proposing a model of moral behavior based on four psychological processes--moral sensitivity, moral judgment, moral motivation, and ego strength. The paper explores the nature of the first component, moral sensitivity, by reformulating it into two parts, moral perception and moral interpretation. The paper also presents findings of a study that examined whether or not there are encoding differences for moral, social, and nonsocial perception. The study tested the hypothesis that moral interaction and social interaction enhance encoding of events. A total of 556 volunteers from introductory psychology classes responded to slides that depicted people engaged in either nonsocial, social, or moral interactions. Based on responses, the sample was divided into a high- and a low-recall group. Low recallers best remembered the moral interactions, followed by the social interactions, and then by the nonsocial interactions. However, the high-recall group, who had better memories for everything, best remembered the nonsocial interactions, followed by the social, and then by the moral interactions. (Contains 12 references.) (LMI)

Processes involved in the acquisition of cognitive skills were studied through an investigation of the efficacy of initially encoding knowledge of a cognitive skill in either declarative or procedural form. Subjects were 80 university students. The cognitive skill, learning the steps to program a simulated video cassette recorder (VCR), was taught and tested through computer simulation. One group was given the task using declarative cues (stating each step in the sequence) and response demands, and another group was given procedural cues (touching each button in sequence) and response demands. Two other groups were given a combination of cue and response modes. The pattern of significant results suggested that the cognitive skill of programming a simulated VCR was developed most efficiently when subjects were prompted to respond to instruction using the procedures they would eventually be asked to use when performing the task. This supports the argument of D. E. Broadbent that cognitive skills are encoded in procedural form. (Contains 5 tables and 19 references.) (SLD)

The task of synthesizing descriptive data from the "root social sciences" to form a usable model for applied research is quite different from the task of employing, verbatim, the theoretical and methodological constructs of those same sciences. This study conceptualizes the instructional encoding conditions that potentially effect and/or affect the encounters of predisposed learners/decoders involved in perceiving, differentiating, recalling, manipulating, and/or using knowledge. A path model of encoding conditions that prefigure learning from instruction includes the following: learner processes, task requirements, resource attributes, teacher considerations, and intellectual, physical, emotional, and sociocultural modalities. The encoding conditions consist of an instructional environment that is composed of four variables: the teacher, the learner, the task and the resources. It is maintained that if learning (achievement, process) is the ultimate product of the instructional environment, then an effective (natural science) and affective (social science) instructional environment is the product of the interactions of the four variables. (AEF)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which teachers and students can leverage the power and potential of visuals to encode information and experiences as personalized meanings, and to help people create their own timeless images as ways to understand the world. The foundation is laid for conducting research to test the assertion that visual constructions can be used to help learners construct highly personalized meanings to information. The cognitive potentials of visual constructions are summarized and examples are offered that might be useful to students and teachers. Four visual construction types are defined: page organization, visualization methods, concept diagrams, and notetaking teaching processes. Teacher and student strategies are suggested, for appropriate grade ranges (K-5, middle school, and high school), to implement these visual constructions. Three broad research goals to consider in order to establish some basis for the cognitive potentials of visual construction are: (1) How do personalized meanings via visual constructions create understanding? (2) What are the effects of possible cognitive-motivational variable links when visual constructions are used by teachers and students? and (3) Which teacher and students strategies using visual constructions contribute to the development of self-directed learning characteristics? Four tables and two figures illustrate study concepts. (Contains 23 references.) (MAS)

A model of similarity-based retrieval is presented that attempts to capture these seemingly contradictory psychological phenomena: (1) structural commonalities are weighed more heavily than surface commonalities in soundness or similarity judgments (when both members are present); (2) superficial similarity is more important in retrieval from long-term memory than is structural similarity; and yet (3) purely structural (analogical) remindings are sometimes experienced. The model, called MAC/FAC (for "many are called, but few are chosen") consists of a first stage (MAC) that uses a computationally cheap, nonstructured matcher to filter candidates from a pool of memory items. Structured representations are redundantly encoded as "content vectors," whose dot product yields an estimate of how well the corresponding structural representations will match. The second stage (FAC) uses the Structure-Mapping Engine to compute a true structural match between the probe and output from the first stage. MAC/FAC has been fully implemented and tested on dozens of examples, and is shown to be capable of modeling patterns of access in psychological data. The relationship to other models of memory is discussed. Seven figures and 19 tables. (Contains 128 references.) (Author/SLD)

Scripted cooperative learning and individual learning of descriptive information were compared in a 2-x-2 factorial design with 104 undergraduates. Influenced by models of individual learning and cognition, differences were assessed in (1) information acquisition and retrieval, (2) the quality and quantity of recalled information, and (3) the nature of the recalled information. Overall, dyads (pairs of cooperating students) outperformed individuals in individual recall performed immediately after studying and after a 2-day delay. Results indicate that: (1) dyads demonstrated improved learning at the encoding (acquisition) stage of processing, (2) the quality of recall was similar although pairs recalled more propositions, and (3) dyads remembered more micro propositions, but not more macro propositions. It is hypothesized that cooperation between dyads results in a joint focus on the details of information. Three tables, one figure are included. (Contains 23 references.) (Author/SLD)

Effects of working with the deep comprehension and decoding activities supported by the software created by Brophy and colleagues to enhance literacy skills in young, at-risk children were studied. Subjects were 53 at-risk kindergartners from a public inner-city school (24 in the control group and 29 in the experimental group). The experimental group used the Multimedia Environments that Organize and Support Text (MOST) environment. This environment involved the subjects' having half-hour sessions each day on the sequencer and multimedia bookmaker software for about 3 months using the "Miss Emma Anchor" video. At the end of 3 months subjects were given a standardized test (the Metropolitan Readiness Test) and MOST assessments. Children in the experimental group gained more on the auditory and language skills portions of the standardized tests and performed better on the MOST assessments, indicating that the MOST software promotes deep comprehension and aids in development of listening comprehension, story production, and decoding skills. Nine figures illustrate the study, and three appendixes give narrative, episodic, and overall components. (Contains 3 references.) (SLD)

Research on notetaking as a learning strategy and on the related techniques of outlining and concept mapping is reviewed. The effectiveness of these techniques in helping the learner encode new information and their usefulness in interactive multimedia instruction are explored. Research strongly supports an external-storage function of notetaking and suggests that notetaking supports encoding. Outlining has been shown to result in improved recall of facts, although significant training is required for successful use. Research also supports the usefulness of concept mapping. Integrating these strategies into interactive multimedia instruction can be done in several ways. Notebook approaches seem to be among the most effective. The complexity of notebooks can vary from simple copying through a hierarchy of sophistication from spatial mapping to the creation of a multimedia presentation by the student. Regardless of the complexity of the notebook incorporated, there is a need to teach how to use the learning strategy. Unless the strategies are used and understood, they will be considered burdensome and will probably not be used. (Contains 62 references.) (SLD)

Various learning difficulties are encountered by nontraditional students. Many are the result of problems in encoding (learning) of data, as well as retrieval of that information when needed. A review of literature showed that nontraditional students can learn, although it may take extra effort on their part to regain their skills in cognitive processing, learning, and memorization. Additional time for processing information, however, may result in greater short-term and long-term gains, and prior vocabulary knowledge may be helpful to nontraditional students. Universities can help to meet the needs of nontraditional students by establishing support groups and holding seminars for them. The literature also contains studies showing that older adults have significantly slower retrieval of information rates. The literature also shows that the use of mnemonic strategies can help older adults to improve their memory skills, as can paraphrasing. The RARE ("Review, Answer, Read, Express") and the SQ3R ("Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review") methods may be helpful for older as well as younger learners. Based on the literature reviewed, the conclusion was reached that both decay and disuse hinder the encoding and the retrieval of information, but that persistence and hard work can help nontraditional students succeed. Universities could help such students by establishing courses to help them polish study skills and overcome deficits in subject areas, such as mathematics or language skills. (Contains 10 references.) (KC)

This study examined the relation of reading ability, age, and familiarity to iconic and short-term memory processing and how the familiarity of the stimuli affects recall. A total of 10 children in grades 2 through 6 and 10 adults were shown novel abstract forms, words, and non-words varying in order of approximation to English, for 50 msec., 500 msec., and 1,000 msec. Subjects were asked to recall either a row of items or as many of the items as possible. The number of recall errors reported by adults and children of varying reading abilities were compared. The results revealed that reading ability and age had significant effect on memory processing when words and non-words were displayed. With non-words, differences were greater for letter sequences that closely resembled English. No differences in recall were found between reading abilities and age groups when abstract forms were displayed. The results suggest that items in memory are primarily being coded phonologically rather than visually. (MDM)

This paper examines whether an experimental treatment that encourages generativity and meaningful encoding can facilitate spontaneous analogical thinking, measuring the spontaneous generation of a relevant analog in solving a problem rather than the amount of factual material learned. Sixty-eight undergraduate students participated by reading the Attack-Dispersion Story (M. L. Gick and K. J. Holyoak, 1980) and writing a summary of each paragraph or the whole story or an analogy for each paragraph or the story. As predicted, cognitively processing the story in parts (paragraphs) rather than as a whole or merely rereading it facilitated solution of the test problem. The pattern of scores was in the expected direction (analogizing and summarizing greater than reading), but a main effect for mode of processing was not determinable from the data. It seems likely that subjects were not adequately skilled in analogizing and summarizing. Implications for instruction are discussed. Instructional strategies that engage the learner in generating summaries and analogies of subcomponents rather than just main ideas tend to facilitate far transfer problem solving. An appendix contains the story and test directions. (Contains 22 references.) (SLD)

This paper summarizes our present knowledge and understanding of the processes and outcomes of learning. The basic idea about learning is that the outcomes of learning (e.g., propositional knowledge, procedural skills, and mental models) reflect differences in learning processes (e.g., encoding skills, attention allocation, and hypothesis generation). Additionally, learning outcomes reflect differences in conative processes, knowledge structures, and metacognitive skills, mediated by the learning processes. Against the background of a brief historical introduction, this article presents a research-based overview of the major categories of educationally relevant learning outcomes and of the underlying acquisition processes. In this perspective, different learning environments are discussed such as learning by direct instruction, drill and practice, and discovery. Finally, implications for the design of computerized instructional environments are indicated. (Contains 9 figures and 83 references.) (Author)

Calls for the unification of mathematics education research have been made from many pedagogic perspectives, particularly with respect to the need for raising dynamic models that bridge the learning-teaching gap and that portray the ways that the meanings of specific mathematical procedures and concepts are constructed within individual classrooms. Such a model is presented in an attempt to examine a unifying theoretical representation of the intellectual processing that occurs between the identification of a task within a classroom milieu and the commencement of actions planned as a resolution of that task by the teacher and students. There exist three important assumptions made with respect to this model: (1) instruction as it occurs in the classroom is a social-cultural/anthropological process involving "negotiated tasks" that are attributed "community meaning" that is acquired through workings external to individual or idiosyncratic constructions of meaning and are derived from shared teacher-student and student-student discourse; (2) the teacher and the students come to that discourse with internally constructed "situated tasks" that are the result of dynamic interactions among individual attending, individual frameworks of knowledge, and individual systems of perception; and (3) aspects and interactions of both cognition and affect are significant to the establishment of situated tasks. (47 references) (JJK)

This study examined word meanings in the single word period of language learning. Ten children were seen for 5 hours each month from the time they started learning language until their median length of utterance was 2.5 words. All the children's utterances, and the extralinguistic contexts of the utterances, such as objects and movements, were recorded. Two issues involving words used in relation to movement were addressed: (1) whether words encoded events or were merely associates of events in the manner described in the literature as "complexive"; and (2) the kinds of events words encoded when they did encode events. Words used by four or more children were analyzed. These words included four verbs, four spatial prepositions, one possessive adjective, and one noun. All but one of the words used in the absence of movement indicated a request implying movement. Thus, the words were not being used complexively. It was not clear what aspects of movement were being encoded. The evidence that the words were used for others' selves as well as the child's self suggests that the words were not used to encode intentional behavior of a person. (BC)

A study investigated the encoding and decoding effects in English as a Second Language (ESL) and native English speaking (L1) students in Vancouver, British Columbia (Canada), by isolating the difficulties due to encoding and decoding in these students. The study examined specifically whether there are significant decoding effects based on comparisons between unaided recalls in reading and retelling, and whether there are significant encoding effects based on comparisons between compositions produced through independent writing and oral composing (i.e. dictation). The four "mode" tasks (reading, retelling, writing and oral composing) were administered to 30 each Cantonese, Vietnamese, Punjabi (L2) and native English speakers (L1) ages 9-13. Language competency rather than age was the critical attribute used in selecting the L2 students, who were chosen from ESL classrooms. While results indicated that reading was more difficult than retelling, and independent writing was more difficult than oral composing, only the decoding effects were found to be statistically significant when considering the dependent language variables of WORDS, T-UNITS, and CLAUSES. In addition, no significant differences among the language groups were found. The findings have a potential diagnostic application in first-and second-language instruction. (One table of data and one figure are included; 13 references are attached.) (PRA)

Although there is general acceptance that information presented in formal learning situations must be encoded linguistically by the learner, there is little research on the differential aspects of various types of linguistic encoding strategies. A study sought to determine the differential effects of three linguistic encoding strategies on subjects' processing of information presented in lecture format. Subjects, 43 ninth and tenth graders in 3 classes, were assigned to one of 4 conditions: no linguistic processing (control); verbal linguistic processing; written linguistic processing; and structured linguistic processing. Subjects listened to a lecture and then took essay and objective tests. Results indicated that no one strategy was clearly superior to another. Additionally, evidence was found to support the assertion that strategy instruction might hinder information processing for more able students. (Two tables of data are included and 30 references are attached.) (Author/SR)

This research paper examines hidden cultural patterns establishing the expression of historical thought in Native Alaskan narratives which describe first contact with Russians. Historical consciousness in oral contact stories is always mythic in form, as well as in content. Native American oral cultures understood new events by "troping," or placing them into cosmologies and "domains of experience" built from native culture. The point is illustrated using a Tlingit story of first contact with Russian explorers. Ship sails are identified as the returning "Raven," who created the world. Unfamiliar sugar and rice are "sand" and "maggots." In the narrative, the mythical merges with the historical to become legendary Tlingit history. Oral historical discourse, then, is best understood by identifying mythological icons and determining their influence upon actions and discourse during perceptually charged historical events. Narratives from the Ahtna people are used to suggest that troping may occur at the deepest levels of precritical thought. The stories, involving hostilities between the Ahtna and the Russians, are similar to other Ahtna stories involving different hostilities which, in turn, contain their own elements of history and mythology. Myth may be laid upon an event like window blinds, allowing only the historical outline and mythic pattern. It is concluded that first-contact experiences present gaps between the familiar and unfamiliar, between the seen world and spiritual world. During confrontation with the unfamiliar, deep mythical thought serves to call up familiar structures for understanding. (TES)

The performance data of individuals with Alzheimer's on language comprehension and expression tests are presented and discussed in the context of possible contributions from impaired working memory functions. It is argued that diminished scores result primarily from attenuated span capacity, difficulty focusing attention, encoding, and activation of long-term knowledge. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

Tests an adaptation to case-based learning that facilitates abstracting problem-solving schemas from examples and using them to solve further problems: analogical encoding, or learning by drawing a comparison across examples. In 3 studies, the authors examined schema abstraction and transfer among novices learning negotiation strategies. (Contains 76 references, 4 tables, and 1 appendix.) (GCP)

Examines teaching rime analogy or letter recoding reading strategies to prereaders. Results reveal that experience with rime analogy increased letter recoding ability, but teaching in letter recoding did not enhance rime analogy. Children learned to read with a rime analogy or letter recoding reading strategy, and many developed new reading strategies independently. (Contains 46 references and 11 tables.) (GCP)

Suggests that the study of memory needs to be situated within broader conceptual and research contexts. Examines how four contexts accommodate memory phenomena: (1) knowledge; (2) comprehension; (3) context/function; and (4) strategy. Suggests that memories are best examined as knowledge structures resulting from efforts to understand, and that memorizing is a socially situated activity undertaken in the service of individual or social goals. (Author/KB)

Examines attentional demands and recall among undergraduates for stories that differ in rated interest. Results reveal that more interesting stories required fewer attentional resources for comprehension than did less interesting stories. Overall recall did not differ across story interest, but story interest did interact with type of encoding in terms of recall levels. (Contains 40 references, 6 tables, and an appendix.) (Author/GCP)