Eighty college students with no computer programing experience were the subjects of a study to determine the effects of the use of advanced organizers and subject control of instruction on performance. Students either received a logical or a scrambled sequence of instructional frames on computer programing, were either allowed to alter the order…

The educational and motivational benefits of captioning have been established for people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing as well as for students who have a learning disability or who have limited English proficiency. The primary goal of this study was to determine whether technological enhancements to captioning would benefit children with…

This paper advocates for the improvement of presentational methods of teaching and expository learning, based on David Ausubel's theory of Meaningful Verbal Learning and its derivative, the Advance Organizer Model of Teaching. This approach to teaching enables teachers to convey large amounts of information as meaningfully and efficiently as…

This paper addresses the value and components of developing prereading skills to improve students' reading comprehension. Prereading activities are seen to prepare the student to both read and comprehend the story and involve cognitive engagement with ideas crucial to comprehension of the reading material. Teachers are urged to develop the…

A study investigated the individual and interactive effects of both context and familiarity on the reading comprehension of both native English and English as a second language (ESL) readers to see if these two components of background knowledge would interact, and if so, how. Context or lack of it was defined by the presence or absence of a title…

Preplays (critical material presented before a televised program) were inserted before three sections of a televised story to determine if they would improve children's attention and comprehension by providing overall plot structure for selecting and integrating important story events. The preplays varied on two orthogonal dimensions: presence or…

A study investigated the effects of a spatial adjunct aid--maps--upon probed comprehension and free recall with respect to a text in which map-related information (macropropositions) could be clearly distinguished from more abstract information (micropropositions). Forty-eight tenth grade students were randomly assigned to either a control group…

Three studies are described which compared the effects of headings in text in the form of questions with headings in the form of statements on the immediate factual recall of low-ability pupils in England. The first experiment used approximately 190 pupils, ages 11-12; the second used approximately 110 low-ability pupils, ages 14-15; and the third…

Recent studies refuting the effectiveness of advance organizers in preparing students to comprehend text material have not met the conditions necessary for advance organizers to succeed. According to the assimilation theory, which holds that people learn by chaining what is known to what is to be learned, the following conditions must be met for…

The effects of graphic preorganizers (structured overviews) and prereading vocabulary instruction upon literal (lower level) and inferential/evaluative (upper level) comprehension was studied, using six sections of college students enrolled in a developmental reading and study skills course. The class sections were randomly assigned to use either…

An investigation was conducted comparing six college students who used cognitive mapping to two control groups, each with five students, who used a self-selected study strategy and reading. Cognitive mapping is a study strategy that displays the meaning of text through a diagram depicting the interconnectedness of the ideas in the text. Results…

The central feature of language is symbolic meaning, and the act of reading is a part of the symbolic process that characterizes human life. Meaning occurs as a result of interpretation in a context, not as a result of response or reaction. Signs have a literal meaning in a specific context, while symbols have a figurative meaning in an implicit…

This study examined the ability of junior high school students to use advance information when making semantic category decisions. The subjects, eight good readers and eight poor readers, identified paired words as "same" or "different" in category, with some words more highly associated with the category than others--in the "fruit" category, for…

Using student ability, measured by grade point average and cognitive structure, as measured by the number of high school and college courses in science and mathematics, as predictor variables, the investigator attempted to determine the reliability of the use of advance organizers to enhance the retention of meaningful concepts. Students enrolled…

Two studies of the relationship between learner interest and advance organizers (AOs) with test performance were conducted: one with 33 and one with 66 undergraduates. Although the AO had no effect on test performance, student interest appeared affected by the presence of an AO. (SLD)