This research characterizes how the mental lexicon functions during sentence processing. In sentence processing, access of meaning is seen to be dependent on interaction between syntactic and semantic information within the sentence. It had been previously thought that meaning had been located in an independent mental lexicon. Three experiments…

The past 20 years of research into the efficacy of advance organizers has resulted in little empirical support for their use. A primary reason for this lack of strong support is the absence of true objective descriptions and definitions of the organizers used and the concomitant poor control over their derivation and construction. This deficiency…

Ninety-three college students studied prose material about communications. An experiment employing both isolated summaries and a study strategy was conducted to examine how mathemagenic behaviors would facilitate students' comprehension and recall of the prose material they studied. Some students were given material containing interspersed…

After expanding on the definition of advance organizers as proposed by David Ausubel, this paper offers possible reasons for the lack of strong empirical support for the use of the strategy. It then cites examples of the successful use of advance organizers with learners from nursery school through college and in a variety of disciplines. The…

The purpose of this study was to isolate factors responsible for the discrepant results reported in the advanced organizer literature, and to identify processes children employ when attempting to recall connected verbal materials. The subjects were 64 middle-class children randomly selected from a local school system. An equal number of male and…

Four instructional principles for alleviating cognitive overload in online learning are suggested: 1) Guide learners to prepare and maintain an effective workstation for accessing online materials, 2) Employ advance organizers for effective online navigation, 3) Arrange instructional materials for easy online manipulation, and 4) Organize…

This study investigated whether stating the instructional objectives at the beginning of instruction would help students structure their own learning. Data came from 24 lessons taught by 13 secondary school teachers to 684 urban and rural adolescent students. Teachers taught different subject lessons in different classes. Students were exposed to…

Advance organizers are used to teach specific contexts with different levels of complexity. Regardless of the educational level or context, the advance organizer (graphic organizer) is a tool that helps the learner connect the known to the unknown and remember the knowledge gained. To help in understanding this process, a case study was developed…

A total of 150 undergraduate students randomly assigned to five experimental groups studied ten paragraphs with questions interspersed at different locations in the text. Performance on incidental items was significantly lower (p < .05) in the question before (QB) than in the question after (QA), question before and after (QBA), and the…

The effects of an advance organizer, a preview of text structure, and two different arrangements of reading material on prose learning and on delayed retention were investigated. The textual material was preceded by an advance organizer, a preview of structure, or a neutral control passage. The narrative text, which concerned the economic…

The degree to which good and poor high school readers comprehend prose was studied in relation to their ability to (1) use passage organization to facilitate comprehension; (2) use task instructions to facilitate comprehension; and (3) answer verbatim and paraphrase items used to measure comprehension. Eleventh grade students were given the…

This paper presents a detailed description of two information-processing tools, scripted cooperation and the use of knowledge mapping, and their potential application to deaf education. Scripted cooperation is a method for structuring the cooperative learning activities of student pairs. The roles and activities of the participants are scripted.…

A study investigated the effectiveness of using a small-group discussion as the main vehicle for the construction of an initial representation of a problem that activates previously acquired knowledge. College students (N=39) were randomly assigned to either an experimental condition or a control condition and asked to brainstorm about a presented…

Professors need to stimulate both sides of students' brain to allow for efficient increase of information absorption. As an alternative to linear outlines, mind maps can provide for more effective comprehension as related ideas are conceptualized from the center out to supporting details, as well as from top to bottom or left to right. The mind…

While most people know how conversations, narratives, and other types of discourse are created in their native language, it is difficult for students to know how they are created in a second language. To deal with texts in a new language, the learner needs extensive exposure to a variety of language in realistic situations. The immediate recall…