Discusses previous pictorial research and its limited potential, and describes function-based research approach, which attempts to make findings relevant by identifying potential picture functions in terms of contributions to instructional processes and procedures broadly applicable to various objectives and strategies. Relevance of this approach…

Reviews research that shows positive contribution of pictures to young children's recall of prose material and describes two experiments conducted with college graduate students to see if positive effects can be extended to older learners. Results after immediate and delayed testing show recall is improved for older learners as well. (Author/LRW)

Describes methodology and results of a study examining the role of layout and graphic design in the legibility of instructional text displayed on cathode ray tubes. This report includes a multidimensional scaling analysis, an analysis of the stimuli and independent variables, and labeling and dimensions using adjective and interview data. (MBR)

The purpose of this study was to determine whether different types of practice strategies are equally effective in facilitating encoding strategies and in subsequent information acquisition and retrieval by students identified as possessing high, medium, and low prior knowledge levels in a content area. Within the context of the…

A study of undergraduate students investigated whether different rehearsal strategies are more effective in facilitating achievement, whether certain rehearsal strategies require learners to spend more time interacting with instructional content, and whether verbal or visual testing requires students to spend more time processing and responding to…

Describes the third in a series of studies investigating effects of psychological variable of encoding specificity on cognitive learning, test design, and visualization during instruction and testing. Encoding specificity, its application to classroom learning and testing, and its significance to educational technology are explained. The first two…