In order to investigate the relative effectiveness of specific media attributes on student performance on criterion tests, a comparison was made of the effectiveness of two levels of stimulus explicitness in visuals in facilitating student achievement on criterion tests of knowledge, comprehension, and total understanding. Subjects were 171…

The purpose of this study was to identify the nature of the information which preschool-age children must attend to and maintain within problems in order to solve a series of two-choice simultaneous discrimination problems. Twenty-four preschool children participated in the experiment. The stimuli used in these problems consisted of planometric…

Visual demonstrations may be used as part of programs to deliver both content objectives and process objectives. Research has shown that learning of concepts is easier, more accurate, and more broadly applied when it is accompanied by visual examples. The visual examples supporting content learning should emphasize both discrimination and…

The purpose of the eight studies reported in this paper was two-fold: to identify some of the relationships that exist between the unique properties of diagrams and various aspects of cognitive processes and learning, and, subsequently, to derive principles from these relationships that would direct the design and use of diagrams in the classroom.…

Gestalt theory deals with the act of thinking and the construction of concepts in a situated manner, and, therefore, could be used to study how meaning is extracted from a visual display. Using the Gestalt framework of form cues and their usage patterns in the perception of, and learning from, visual media, researchers could study frame, line…

This study investigating the use of visual cueing strategies within a self-paced instructional unit employed and modified an instructional unit on the human heart developed by Francis M. Dwyer. This unit and its accompanying tests were designed to assess visual learning in terms of student achievement on drawing, identification, terminology, and…

An experiment was conducted to ascertain the effectiveness of various attention-directing techniques in improving visual learning. One 1st and one 4th grade class from each of four elementary schools in Cedar Falls, Iowa were each divided into four treatment groups. Four cueing methods--a large arrow, a small arrow, a pointer, plus a control…

In a study conducted to measure children's visual attention to a television program and relate it to comprehension of content, 64 children equally distributed by sex from kindergarten and fifth grade, were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions. These conditions crossed two levels of content cues with two levels of sound effects…

The effectiveness of elaborate visual cueing and reduced step size (i.e., increasing the number of visual cues) in facilitating student achievement on different instructional tasks was examined. The hypothesis proposed that instructional treatments utilizing reduced step size and elaborate visual cueing alone and in combination would be superior…

This study investigated the relationship of two anxiety measures (the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Trait Form and the S-R Inventory of Anxiousness-Exam Form) to performance on a visual concept-learning task with embedded criterial information. The effect on anxiety reduction of cueing criterial information was also examined, and two levels of…

This paper provides a rationale for the selection of illustrations and visual aids for the classroom. The theories that describe the processing of visuals are dual coding theory and cue summation theory. Concept attainment theory offers a basis for selecting which cues are relevant for any learning task which includes a component of identification…

In order to compare the instructional effectiveness of realistic and non-realistic color cueing on visualized instruction, an instructional unit on the human heart, using slides and an audiotape, was presented to 244 college students. Four treatment groups received the same oral presentation, with the addition of different types of visual…

Several current television series for preschool children convey stories, not through meaningful dialogue, but through visual information and intonational cues embedded within nonsensical dialogue. This study examined young children's ability to construct meaning from such materials. Participating were 135 preschoolers, 3 to 5 years old. Subjects…

This study investigated the relationship between visual attending and learning in a group of 16 Head Start children from low income families. Attending behavior (defined as "eyes oriented towards the teacher and/or teaching materials for a full 5-second interval") was measured for each child during a 10-minute story period on four…

Pacing in the teaching of English as a second language (ESL) is considered. It is suggested that the problem of pacing is almost entirely a matter of teachers covering material so rapidly that the student frequently does not have the opportunity to integrate it. Since the recognition of sounds, symbols, and sentences is not mastery of them, it is…