Two experiments, designed to examine the developmental changes in the modification of visual memory by verbal information, are described in this paper. In both experiments, first, third, and fifth grade children and college students were shown slides of short episodes followed by oral questions. Questions either described or did not describe…

To relate scientific evidence with subjective interpretations relevant to the construction and appreciation of visual images, this paper reviews the literature pertinent to the processes involving the perception of visual images, the distinct functions of the left and right hemispheres of the human brain in recording and interpreting visual data,…

TO DETERMINE WHETHER ONE PROGRAMED VISUAL PRESENTATION MODE FACILITATES LEARNING BY CLARIFYING ASSUMED AMBIGUITIES IN VERBAL PRESENTATIONS AND WHETHER LEARNING TIME AFFECTS ACHIEVEMENT, FIVE CRITERIA WERE SPECIFIED--DRAWING, IDENTIFICATION (TRANSFER), TERMINOLOGY, COMPREHENSION, AND A COMPOSITE OF THESE. ALTHOUGH KNOWLEDGE PRE-TEST SCORES WERE…

In an attempt to explore a systematic approach to language expansion and improved sentence structure, echoic and modeling procedures for language instruction were compared. Four hypotheses were formulated: (1) children who use modeling procedures will produce better structured sentences than children who use echoic prompting, (2) both echoic and…

Four-, five-, and six-year-old children were used as subjects in this investigation. There were 192 experimental and 96 control children used, divided equally between the three age groups. The experimental children received a 1-minute pretest exposure procedure in which 1/4 of the children observed 4 two-dimensional stimuli (irregular pentagons),…

Fixation time, smiling, vocalization, and fret/cry were recorded to obtain a complete picture of infants' responses to facial stimuli over the first year of life. Four stimuli were presented to 120 infants. Results of fixation data indicate that (1) there is a marked decrease in fixation toward facial stimuli within the first year, (2) at all ages…

This study investigates the relationship between children's ideas about how to be helpful to peers and peer acceptance. Third- and fifth-grade children responded to three sociometric measures and were later individually interviewed under four conditions on two occasions in response to different cartoon situations. Children were asked to suggest…

The study assessed the effect of two stylistic features of a prosocial television program, visual focusing and verbal labeling, on learning and behavior. Forty male and 40 female preschool children viewed one of five versions of a children's quiz show. Camera zooms and verbal labels alone and in combination emphasized sharing in four prosocial…

In order to investigate learning theories, media researchers need to explore three variables: (1) the psychological requirements of a given learning task, (2) individual differences in cognitive style, and (3) specific media characteristics. It is necessary to identify the psychological processes which underlie any specific learning task in order…

Any theory of information processing must address both what is processed and how that processing takes place. Most studies investigating variables which alter physical dimension utilization have ignored the large individual differences in selective attention or cue utilization. A paradigm was developed using an individual focus on information…

To investigate the development of the process whereby deaf Ss attend to the orthographic structure of written materials, the perception of words and letter sequences by 108 deaf and hearing Ss matched at three grade levels (grades 1, 2, and 4) of word reading was studied. Ss were shown three sets of structured/unstructured stimuli (such as "VUNS"…

Visual and auditory stimuli were presented to children to measure symbol processing abilities. Slides which required matching the similarities in two objects in a group of three were presented. At times the matching criteria varied between function, color, and form. Reaction time was quicker when matching by color than by function, which was…

A major objective of this study was to seek the relationship of principles derived from traditional paired-associates transfer experiments as applied to the reading task. In this experiment 10 subjects from upper-division education courses, all volunteers, received various types of preliminary training with letter stimuli; then all subjects…

A skilled cognitive theorist might help behaviorists resolve inconsistencies found from their experimentation with imaginal mnemonics in paired-associate and serial learning tasks. Iconic cognition which relegates verbal processes to short-term storage and output systems is inadequate to explain the verbal coding and elaboration processes…

This study sought to determine if there is a change in information processing and channel capacity as the human organism grows older, and if this relationship is altered with a change in stimulus complexity and dimensionality of the stimulus presented. With the human organism considered as a communication system, the use of absolute judgments to…