The current experiment compared the development of encoding preferences in learning disabled children and non-disabled children. Both learning disabled (LD) and non-learning disabled (non-LD) boys from grades 2 and 6 were given a false recognition task. To measure the relative dominance of attributes encoded by the two groups at the two ages,…

Knowledge of how children "read" television pictures can provide understanding of how powerful a tool television is for teaching and learning. It affects the images viewers have of themselves and of the world. Turning off television is not only turning off experiences but also turning off opportunities for learning as well as preventing youngsters…

Twelve learning disabled (9-12 years old) boys were identified according to special class placement, WISC-R (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised) and performance measures. A group demonstrating a verbal WISC-R deficit was sex- and age-matched with a normal group. Electroencephalograms (EEGs) were collected while these individuals…

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…

Third and fourth grade students were administered a learning strategy screening in an attempt to determine: (1) their ability to describe individual learning strategies used to remember presented words, (2) the classifiability of student learning strategy descriptions as primarily visual or verbal, (3) the feasibility of using multiple student…

The main purpose of this study was to determine whether partially imposed imagery can be faciliatative in children's oral prose learning at an age where fully induced imagery is not. The results of this experiment are somewhat consistent with this speculation. While kindergarten subjects benefited only with fully imposed imagery, second grade…

Based on the notion that visual decisions play an important role in what children recognize and interpret in books and that teachers have a special responsibility to help students become visually literate, this article draws parallels between visual and verbal concepts and suggests some activities for teaching "picture reading" skills in the…

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…

Thirty-three second graders participated in a study to discover the value of teaching concepts using picture attribute chunking (PAC). It was hypothesized that PAC would yield superior concept learning performances compared to a picture attribute list (PAL) treatment and a word-alone treatment. The children, selected on the basis of a pretest that…

Modern educational theory suggests that the learning of a visual science concept is best taught using a combination of pictorial and verbal instruction describing these characteristics and examples and best evaluated using words and visuals not used during instruction. Recent research suggests a four-step instructional-testing model usable by…

The hypothesis that reading difficulty of learning disabled (LD) children is attributable to deficiencies in verbal encoding was investigated with 60 LD and normal children (mean CA=9.1, mean IQ=103.5). Ss were compared on recall of a serial short-term memory task after pre-training of named and unnamed stimulus conditions. Data suggested that…

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…

The mother of an 11-year-old deaf child compares her daughter's experiences mainstreamed in a traditional school system (a Hebrew school) and in a Montessori school. The Montessori system is seen to be especially advantageous for the deaf child because of the following characteristics: opportunities for the child to be successful, a visual (rather…

Research indicates that using the manual alphabet in classes of non-deaf students is effective both for spelling and vocabulary instruction. Teachers appreciate the way signing physically involves the students, acts as a self-cueing system, is inexpensive, and helps with writing problems like "b" and "d" reversals. Other advantages are: (1) it is…

Visual processing of televised information was compared among 85 Japanese and 111 American boys and girls at the kindergarten and 4th-grade levels. The literatures on cognition and learning indicate that language and child rearing factors are more conducive to the development of iconic processing skills in Japanese children than in American…