The author describes his research experience in identifying potentially unique learning characteristics of gifted students. Visual imagery, mnemonics, spatial organization, and higher level verbal learning strategies are explored. Among broad conclusions reached is the perception of gifted students as active learners who spontaneously transform…

Describes a paired-associate learning experiment in which American Sign Language signs of high and low translucency and high and low cheremic similarity were presented to sign-naive subjects. One hypothesis, that translucency would facilitate learning, was confirmed; a second, that cheremic similarity would retard sign learning, was not.…

Demonstrates through a case study and a participant observation study that siblings interact about television in such a way that the form and content of their talk creates a learning context. Concludes that, despite concerns about "zombie" viewers, children are not passive, unresponsive recipients of television. (PD)

Wide Range Achievement Test arithmetic scores related to Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised freedom from distractibility and perceptual organization scores as well as simultaneous processing. Educable mentally retarded childrens' reading problems may relate to failure to apply verbal intellectual abilities to academic tasks. (Author)

The way in which knowledge of a given topic influences the acquisition of topic-related information was studied with the knowledge domain of baseball. A knowledge structure was postulated that included the goal structure as well as the states and actions of the game. (SW)

The way in which previously acquired knowledge affects the processing on new domain-related information was investigated. Text processing was studied in two groups differing in knowledge of the domain of baseball. A knowledge structure for the domain was constructed, and text propositions were classified. (SW)

Experiments were conducted to determine the effects of sentence contexts on word recognition and reading. The questions of whether context is predominantly facilitating or inhibiting and how automatic the influence of contexts is on word retrieval were investigated. (SW)

Reports on experiments examining the semantic organization of concrete nouns and verbs and its development in childhood. Differences in semantic organization are said to be a clue to age-related changes in performance with verbs. (AM)

Twenty language-delayed children (age three to six) viewed a presentation incorporating object, action, attribute, and affective state words into a narrative script. In pre- and postviewing word comprehension measurements, subjects scored lower than children matched for chronological age and children matched for mean length of utterance.…

Analogical reasoning processes were studied in 16 language-impaired children and 16 controls, age 6-8. Children who heard only verbal presentations of problems took longer to acquire problem solutions than children who simultaneously viewed physical demonstrations of the problems. There were no differences in transfer task performance. (Author/JDD)

Evaluated contributions of age, presentation modality, task demand, and content structure to prose recall variation among adults. Tested 60 young and 60 older adults for recall of ideas in 641-word prose passage. Found recall for total number of idea units was significantly lower for older participants and for auditory presentation across both age…

The relative effectiveness of three procedures for increasing vocal response to prompt in 15 preschool children with Down Syndrome was compared. Light-dimming and visual screening, when combined with positive reinforcement, were both found to be significantly more effective than positive reinforcement alone. (Author/JDD)

Describes a college teaching experience in which active visual analysis (hands-on deconstruction of visual statements to their constituent elements and principles) had an unblocking effect on concomitant writing assignments. Suggests that students can improve both verbal and visual articulateness when modes of perceiving and thinking are used…

Eleven students of novice paddling ability were divided into two groups, one group receiving verbal, the other nonverbal, instructions on using the kayak stern rudder. The verbal group was significantly better at performing the correct sequence of movements. Results support existing research showing that observation alone does not enable the…

Children's use of the middle concept was assessed in two developmental studies. Experiment 1, with kindergarten through fifth-grade students, showed marked improvement in the mastery of the middle concept across elementary grades. In Experiment 2, discrimination pretraining with two nonoverlapping stimulus sets transferred to the novel test…