Elaborative interrogation was compared to the construction of imaginary representations to determine its efficacy in fact learning. Four experiments, involving a total of 260 undergraduate students, indicated that elaborative interrogation is equally as powerful a learning procedure as is imaginary representation and that both are useful during…

The ability to monitor learning and memory of sentences was investigated in a group of 72 undergraduate students. Some sentences included within-sentence elaborations clarifying subject-verb-object relations and some did not. Results provide insights into subjects' recall and ability to monitor item difficulty and into effects of testing. (TJH)

Using student interviews, teacher ratings, and achievement test outcomes, a strategy model of student self-regulated learning was validated as a theoretical construct. Results with 44 male and 36 female 10th graders indicate both convergent and discriminative validity for a self-regulated learning construct. (TJH)

BASIC programing was taught to 95 undergraduates from a manual emphasizing the language's syntax or from a manual that included additional material on the underlying semantics. Both approaches produced equivalent learning of syntactic features of BASIC; however, semantically trained students developed fewer misconceptions and performed better on…

Learner and program control of content review were provided in science computer-assisted instruction for 98 eighth graders. Results indicate that students given limited control over instruction can adjust their study behaviors appropriately and achieve greater learning in the same amount of time as do students not given such control. (TJH)

Issues related to the retrieval context set by rereading advance organizers (AOs) before recall tests were examined in six experiments with 57 seventh graders and 323 undergraduates. Only rereading the AO significantly affected recall. AO theory and a general perspective on encoding and retrieval contexts are discussed. (TJH)

A reading test and a test assessing the processing of an instructional text were completed by 114 undergraduates. Subjects with higher scores on the reading test noticed more often a conflict between the instructional text and the example provided. They followed the instructional text instead of the example. (TJH)

A study involving 32 undergraduate students was conducted to identify mechanisms by which instructional objectives affect learning. Protocols for thinking out loud were examined for evidence of rehearsal activity. Results suggest that instructional objectives enhanced real-time rehearsal activity, recall, and reading time. (TJH)

Two studies involving 30 third graders and 26 adults, respectively, assessed whether success at learning to read is related to awareness of phonological structure of spoken language. Differences in phonological awareness appeared to account for much of the variance between good and poor readers at both age levels. (TJH)

Two studies involving 127 undergraduates provide a direct test of whether an activated schema can influence both the initial encoding and subsequent retrieval of information from prose. Results indicate that schema activation exerts an influence on retrieval processes but not on encoding processes. (TJH)

The outcome interpretations, attributions for the outcome, expectancies of future test outcomes, and perceptions concerning instrumental actions of four Finnish elementary school teachers and their 84 sixth-grade students were compared after a math exam. Disagreements between teachers and students on these points reflect biases on the part of…

The effect of teachers' emotional stance toward children on their accuracy in evaluating children's self-image was studied with 21 female fourth-grade Israeli teachers and their 78 female and 46 male students. Results indicate major inaccuracies in teachers' assessment as a function of teachers' closeness to students. (TJH)

The impact of three variables on students' ratings of instruction was assessed: (1) social contact between instructor and students; (2) instructor's facial expression; and (3) instructor's gender. Findings with 40 male and 40 female college students indicate that students expect female instructors to excel in both stereotypically masculine and…

The extent to which motivation/attribution variables explain self-confidence in learning mathematics (SCLM) and whether students make attributions for their successes/failures in mathematics were studied, using 489 seventh graders. Attributional style, effort as a mediator of ability, failure as an acceptable phase in learning mathematics, and…

Eighty middle-class, ethnically diverse kindergarten (n=40) and fourth-grade (n=40) students rated their current academic competence and predicted their future academic attainment. Results suggest that developmental change in children's judgments about their competence must be understood in terms of interaction between age and classroom…