New ways to learn at work draw upon workers' previous experiences, link concepts and practices, and encourage reflection and the transfer of knowledge from one situation to another. Action, situated, and incidental learning are three current approaches. Action learning is a systematic process through which individuals learn by doing. It has been…

The reading development of six preschool children who learned to read at home without systematic instruction was studied in depth using the case study method. The main objective of the study was to ascertain (1) if there was an identifiable process by which these children learned to read and (2) the role of the parents in these children's early…

Four separate experiments were completed using the same stimulus materials but different groups of subjects to determine if orienting tasks created problems of control in incidental/intentional learning studies. Subjects were all Caucasians and heterogeneous in age (from 24 to 64 years), educational experiences, and career choices. Those in the…

Attempts to train learning strategies have not produced marked or lasting increases in academic IQ, probably because current training models fail to recognize the evolutionary nature of strategies acquisition. Empirical and theoretical evidence supports an incidental learning model, which engineers the instructional environment following study…

Using mathemagenic-based research as a guide, this study attempted to determine whether the location of a picture (pre- or post-reading passage) or the type of picture (overview or specific incident) could affect reading comprehension. Ninety-two college students were randomly assigned to one of the cells in a two-by-two factorial design and…

Research on selective attention in learning disabled (LD) children is reviewed, and a study comparing the selective attention performance of 60 7-and 12-year-old LD and normal children to visual and auditory stimuli is reported. Each S was tested for focal and incidental memory individually in either the auditory or visual mode of stimulus…

This study investigated developmental changes in children's recall of televised central and incidental content. Central content was plot-relevant; incidental content was peripheral to the plot. Both content types were classified at two levels of production features, high salience and low salience. High salience features were high action, loud…

Earlier studies found that recall scores of information central to the task increased with age while incidental information recall scores remained constant. This study repeated the earlier ones modifying procedures of instructions, testing, and schedule of recall. Also, it tested the effect of labeling pictorial stimuli. The sample of 253 children…

The effect of verbal labeling in a serial position short term memory task was investigated. Forty female college students were given 16 trials each. Eight trials involved only central items which had to be recalled. The other eight trials involved both central and incidental items. Half of the subjects verbalized the names of the central items as…

This was a study to see whether students learn specific material better in classes which emphasize recitation on fact questions or recitation which involves the students in higher cognitive reasoning and interpreting skills. A series of 10 one-hour ecology lessons were taught by specially trained teachers; the same curriculum materials were…

This study examined the effects of four characteristics of instructional objectives presented to the student prior to reading, upon intentional and incidental learning. The most salient result was produced by providing instructional objectives to the student prior to the text. The main findings were that (a) density increases (Proportion of…

The study evaluated the effectiveness of teaching three teachers of the severely handicapped to use four modified incidental teaching procedures: (1) giving students opportunities for choice; (2) blocking access to materials or events, (3) placing desired materials out of reach, and (4) offering students objects out of context. (Author/DB)

This packet contains three papers on self-directed and incidental learning from a symposium on human resource development (HRD). The first paper, "Self-Directed Learning for Supervisory Development" (Judy O'Neil, Maria Lamattina), reports on a study that looks at what research says needs to be in place to engage workers in self-directed learning…

Most people know much more than they can communicate because their personal knowledge is so thoroughly grounded in experience that it cannot be expressed in its fullness. This study examines how two superintendents used tacit knowledge to build shattered trust in their school boards. Trust is first examined as a multifaceted aspect of human…

The effect of the sensory discriminability of targets from nontargets on depth of nontarget processing was examined. Depth of nontarget processing was measured by semantic overlap between targets and nontargets, reaction time, and nontarget recall. Depth of processing decreased as sensory discriminability increased, supporting multiple-loci…