Investigates the impact of underlining and adjunct questioning in text recall for fifth grade students. Results suggest that for 10 year-old readers adjunct post questions and underlining may hinder performance. (RAO)

Two hypotheses about how organizational signals influence text recall were tested with 274 college students who read and recalled a text with or without signals. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that organizational signals induce readers to change their text-processing strategies. (Author/SLD)

The effects of instructions for using advance organizers upon the learning and retention of new information were examined. The special instructions explained an organizer's function and directed students to use the advance organizer. An advance organizer treatment, an advance organizer with special instruction treatment, and a no advance organizer…

Four different methods for attending to a lecture were studied: listening, listening with an outline, note-taking, and note-taking with an outline. Each method was designed to influence the learner's level of processing and, therefore, to effect the encoding and retrieval of information from a lecture. In addition, the effects of no review or…

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…

This paper presents a developmental study of the effects of item rehearsal on children's short term memory. Two experiments are discussed. The first, involving second and sixth grade children, concerned the relationship between item retrieval ability and rehearsal strategies in item recall. The design of the experiment involved varying the visual…

High school students read textual passages organized around a semantic, temporal, or random theme. Free recall, semantically, and temporally-cued tests measured recall. During free recall, the organized passages yielded greater recall. For the cued tests, more words were remembered when the passage organization matched the type of test cue.…

The usefulness of intact (topic outline format) and embedded (positioned within text) headings as processing aids to facilitate recall was examined, using a 2,500-word passage from introductory science textbooks. Prior studies were subject to criticisms which this study attempted to correct, specifically: (1) use of non-optimal dependent measures;…

One hundred-fifty subjects studied a passage with questions interspersed at different locations. Total level of acquisition was highest in treatments involving postquestions and no questions. The results were attributed to the influence of adjunct questions on learner expectations that affect the selective processing of information. (Author/JAC)

To investigate whether a previewing technique, transferred to the television medium, enhances children's comprehension of a televised story, two studies developed a one and one-half minute edited video, designed using a variation of Ausubel's advance organizers and constructed to provide children with a brief overview of the basic plot structure…

The comprehension and recall of instructional text is heavily dependent upon the contexts in which information input and retrieval occur. College students (N=44) recalled the contents of a hierarchically structured text immediately after study and again six weeks later. Total meaningful recall was better when the superordinate concepts, or cues,…

Two experiments examined the effects of embedded and intact (outline) headings on the processing of complex text material by college students. Results indicated that embedded headings reliably improved delayed test performance. It was further found that instructions in the use of headings as processing aids facilitated test performance. (Author/PN)

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…

Two assessment endeavors were undertaken to determine the relative impact of alphanumeric and graphic instructional mediators upon intentional and incidental learning outcomes in applied instructional contexts. The intent of these investigations was to determine the feasibility of embedding strategic organizational cues within instruction to…

The functions of blocking text with horizontal rules and providing headings of different types are discussed. Headings may be encoded or function as access structures, while blocking segments text and provides retrieval cues. These issues were tested in two experiments. College students read a 2000-word passage. In the first experiment, no…