A program title and an advance organizer were used in presenting affective television materials to large college-level classes of beginning v advanced chemistry. Results showed that the advance organizer significantly increased student comprehension but had negative affective consequences. Students' perceptions of the material's value and…

Thirty adults ages 53-85 and 28 adults ages 19-38 were randomly assigned to three groups to read six passages. One group received advance organizers prior to reading, the second got orienting instructions plus advance organizers, and the controls received neither . Orienting instructions significantly helped both age groups and greatly reduced…

Results of 3 experiments indicated that graphic organizers, whether teacher directed, student directed with text references, or student directed with clues, produced significantly higher performance than self-study for students (grades 7 and 10) either with learning disabilities (N=12), in remedial classes (N=9), or in regular education (N=389).…

The article describes a four-step procedure for constructing two types of graphic organizers (hierarchical and compare/contrast) to help secondary academically handicapped students gain information from textbooks. Implementation methods include teacher-directed, student-directed with text references, and student-directed with clues. Testing…

The ability of 54 learning-disabled high-school students to monitor their comprehension was compared under three prereading conditions: self-questions only, structured overviews and self-questions, and a control condition. Subjects receiving both the overviews and self-questions were best able to detect errors during reading. (Author/DB)

The influence of organizational cues on story comprehension was investigated for seven and eight year olds (N=44 British primary school students). Subjects were matched in age and decoding skills, but differed in comprehension ability. Results shed light on cognitive control required to select and coordinate information in text. (TJH)

Two experiments examined the relative effects of concrete and abstract advance organizers on students' memory for subsequent prose. Results of the experiments are discussed in terms of the memorability, familiarity, and visualizability of concrete and abstract verbal materials. (JD)

Examines the effect that learners' prior knowledge has on long-term retention of information. Study (200 undergraduates) found no differences in long-term retention when prior knowledge was controlled, no interaction between prior knowledge and advance organizer strategies, no increased long-term retention with advance organizers, and no increased…

A unit on animals was taught to 64 preschool children (44 in an experimental group and 20 in a control group). Children in the experimental group were taught nine major concepts over four levels of abstraction (designated as superordinate, intermediate, subordinate, or particular levels). Each concept was presented by means of an advance organizer…

Information in these guides was distributed to participants in the Communicating for Agriculture Rural Knowledge Bowl in ten states: Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Georgia, Montana, and Tennessee. The materials are designed for secondary students and deal with rural economic development and the impact of…

A study investigated the effect on reading comprehension of using semantic impressions as a previewing activity to provide an overall impression of a story's structure. Subjects, 31 eighth grade remedial reading students from a suburban junior high school, were divided into two groups: a treatment group that received semantic impressions as a…

For a teleconference to be successful, presentations need to be both interesting and educational. The integration of media components such as slide, overhead transparencies, videotapes, or handouts in an audio teleconference expands a single-channel presentation into a multi-sensory channel presentation. The selection and utilization of such media…

This research characterizes how the mental lexicon functions during sentence processing. In sentence processing, access of meaning is seen to be dependent on interaction between syntactic and semantic information within the sentence. It had been previously thought that meaning had been located in an independent mental lexicon. Three experiments…

The past 20 years of research into the efficacy of advance organizers has resulted in little empirical support for their use. A primary reason for this lack of strong support is the absence of true objective descriptions and definitions of the organizers used and the concomitant poor control over their derivation and construction. This deficiency…

Two studies of meaningful learning in the utilization of educational film examined the effects of context, retrieval clues, and sequencing, using 39 students at a state university as subjects. Superordinate context statements in the form of verbal messages were inserted as advance organizers in experimental treatment versions of a film on pressure…