Design strategies directly related to the development of instructional materials for rule learning were investigated. Findings indicated: 1) the degree of divergence between instances showed that contrasting, not matching, features resulted in better performance; and 2) two contextually similar rules learned simultaneously, not successfully,…

Undergraduates in an economics course reported prior grade averages and their final exam predictions. Students rated the influence that ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck had on performance and completed an achievement motivation scale. Regression analyses provided support for the attribution model of achievement expectations. Sex…

In the generative model of learning with understanding, reading comprehension occurs when readers actively construct meaning for text. On two experiments with 488 sixth graders, learning time was held constant across all treatments. The combination of inserted paragraph headings and instructions to generate sentences about paragraphs approximately…

Three hypotheses on children's social attributions were tested using children from elementary grades as subjects. The results indicated that children attributed their positive outcomes more to ability, effort, and luck than they did their negative outcomes. This effect did not depend on the person to whom they made attributions. (Author/LMO)

This article demonstrates that the usual first-order factor model is inappropriate for analyzing the factor structure of creativity and intelligence tests. An alternative model that allows for the estimation of unique covariance between the fluency and originality scores is proposed. (Author/JAZ)

The primary purpose of this study was to determine if the mentally retarded child is capable of the long-term retention of mediational links that he has formulated previously on a paired-associate task. (Author)

The focus of the present experiments was to examine the effect of adapting the context of a presentation to a student's background. The results showed familiarity of context to be an influential factor in learning quantitative material. (Author/PN)

Meyer's reanalysis (TM 504 192) of Cooper and Baron's study (EJ 174 719) appears to be incomplete and contains inferential errors. Each of Meyer's points regarding personal responsibility and expectation measures, as well as the data he presented, are discussed. (RD)

The complexity hypothesis suggests that the hierarchical arrangement of learning tasks is related to the complexity of the task. Using a definition of complexity based on an analysis of the rules governing performance on a task, the present study lent support to the hypothesis. (Author/GDC)

Hypothesizes that learners who studied statistics examples with conceptually oriented equations would transfer more successfully to novel problems compared with learners who studied examples using computationally oriented equations. This hypothesis was supported across 2 experiments. The authors also examined the implications of providing learners…

Four samples of university freshmen (N=859) rated the influence of 10 possible factors on exam performance. A subset sample (n=209) assessed 10 factors along 3 of the 4 dimensions identified in the first study. Results indicate that the dimensions of locus, stability, control, and globality constitute major causal attributions. (TJH)

Two experiments investigated the effect of choice on cognitive and affective engagement during reading. Both experiments compared college students who either selected what they read or were assigned the same story without being allowed to choose. Discusses results and the need for a more explicit theory of choice. (Author/GCP)

Presents research on and discusses the redundancy effect, consistent with a dual-channel theory of multimedia learning in which adding on-screen text can overload the visual information-processing channel, causing learners to split their visual attention between two sources. In research, lower transfer performance also occurred when interesting…

The relationship was studied between Kohlberg's stages of moral development and the process of decision making utilized by 214 subjects, aged 14 to 63 years, during the resolution of hypothetical moral dilemmas. It was not possible to distinguish moral development stages on the basis of decision making criteria. (Author/BH)