In this article, the contributions of cognitive psychology to research and development of medical education are assessed. The cognitive psychology of learning consists of activation of prior knowledge while processing new information and elaboration on the resulting new knowledge to facilitate storing in long-term memory. This process is limited…

This study was designed to address two issues: "At what age do children spontaneously use a cumulative rehearsal strategy?" and "What effect does the use of the strategy have on their performance?" The subjects, 28 children at each of five grade levels (nursery, kindergarten, first, third, and fifth), were tested in a serial-position recall task.…

The two experiments reported in this study demonstrated that, in contrast to Steinmetz and Battig's (1969) data, preschool children do not display Priority of Recall in Newly Learned Items (PRNI) in either conventional Free Recall Learning (FRL) or in FRL where serial position bias is controlled. This finding, coupled with Battig and Slaybaugh's…

The data from verbal learning studies have been partially instrumental in the development of the theory of extraversion-introversion (E-I) relative to levels of cortical arousal. In most of the studies relating E-I to verbal learning, the approach was to determine if there was an overall superiority for one of the personality groups. Differences…

Three strategies frequently employed in individualized instruction were tested in a three-way repeated measures design that involved eight computer exercises over a period of 6 weeks. Exercises compared individual with paired study, pretests with no pretests, and serial with parallel mastery. Posttests revealed an advantage for individual study…

The multivariate effect of task sequence, memory support, and state anxiety was investigated using a nonverbal concept acquisition task. Ninety-five Indian college students were randomly assigned to four treatment conditions resulting from the task sequences of 1) easy-to-hard and 2) hard-to-easy and from memory support versus nonmemory support.…

To study the effects of planned seriation experiences on the acquisition and retention of seriation abilities of four-year-old children, fifty children from four preschool centers were assigned to control and experimental groups and tested before and after exposure to the experiences. Data analysis indicated that the experimental group had higher…

Some of the procedures for developing and validating learning sequences or learning hierarchies are explored. For each of these procedures, references are provided that can be used for additional study or clarification of the procedures. (Author)

One of the most typical ways in which people learn is by inferring general rules from examples. In recent years, significant progress has been made toward understanding how learning from examples can occur, determining when it does occur, and identifying conditions that promote it. This paper reviews these results and then suggests a program of…

The objectives of this study centered on ability of first-grade students in seriate learning, the strategies used, the effects of the seriation variable on task performance, and the effects of the number of objects used. Students from four randomly selected schools were asked to order a set of 4, 6, 8, or 10 objects on length or weight. The…

The efficacy of small group instructional programs in classificatory, seriation, and combined class/series skills was evaluated for a sample of 60 urban, middle-class, 4- to 5-year-old children in a transfer of training design. Significant curriculum-specific transfer effects were found for the seriation instructional condition, whereas little…

Reported is a study of the teaching and transfer of seriation strategies using non-visual variables with first-grade children. Sixty first-grade children were administered Piaget's stick seriation task and classified as stage I (non-seriators) and stage III (seriators). From this group 24 were chosen and assigned to strategy treatment groups.…