A brief sketch of the last 20 years of research on instructional pictures is given with an emphasis on the effects of increasingt2) analytical approaches, changing conceptions, and changing research questions. Trends in recent picture research, last 10 years, are discussed in greater depth with emphasis on three groups of studies: pictures vs. pictures, pictures vs. words, and pictures plus words. Selected studies in each group are described along with recent theoretical explanations of the pictorial superiority effect and of other pictorial information processing effects. Some of the possible implications of these trends for educational research and practice are mentioned.
This article presents a conceptual schema of the instructional process which is intended to make a number of relevant findings from research more readily understood and applied by designers of instruction and instructional materials. It is based on several summary sources of research-based findings and principles from the perception, memory, and concept formation literature. The basic conception is that learning is the product of an ongoing interactive process between learner and environment, and that instruction is a temporary and purposeful intervention in that process, the aim of which is the optimization of the learner-environment interaction.The schema is organized around relevant characteristics of the learner, i.e., four basic learner requirements (stimulation, order, strategy, and meaning). These basic learner requirements are subdivided into twenty limitations, particularities and qualities of the human information processing systems. The resulting picture of the human learner provides the basis for describing what the other part of the interaction -the instructional environment -should be like in order to provide an optimum fit between learner and environment. The schema subsumes and interrelates many of the research-based principles found in the literature "and hence may make them more memorable and usable.The time lag between the generation of new knowledge and its widespread acceptance and application is a familiar phenomenon in many fields, but perhaps nowhere more apparent and more lamented than in education. This article attempts one kind of approach to ameliorating this problem, namely a conceptual schema of the instructional process which is broad enough to encompass many research studies but presented in a way practitioners may understand and use.First we will take a closer look at the problem and at other approaches to it. Numerous systems for information storage and retrieval (e.g., the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC)) as well as demonstration programs -(e.g., the IWAPP Festival at which numerous new instructional films * This article is based on a paper presented at 312 in psychology were previewed by psychology professors) -and other dissemination strategies have been developed to accelerate the spread of relevant new information to professionals in numerous disciplines. Further, new professionals, the specialists in the diffusion of information and the adoption of innovations, are being trained at several universities.As a result of these programs professionals now have ready access to much more information, but at least two serious problems remain. One is that practitioners in education tend to read reports from practitioners and researchers read reports from researchers. As a result, practitioners are too little aware of recent research findings and researchers are too little aware of current practitioner problems. Further, they do not share a common professional language. A second problem is that in both literatures there are too few summaries and reviews. Both groups ar...
Mentally retarded children have been widely characterized by an inability to attend to relevant aspects of a stimulus display. This information has seldom been considered when producing instructional media for the retarded. In this paper, a taxonomy of visual attention influencing devices is presented which may be used as a structure for research, development and evaluation of instructional media for the handicapped. Five research studies based on this taxonomy are also summarized. These investigations reveal that while most attention influencing devices show some positive effects, four devices—motion, verbal pointers, arrows, and spatial location—seem to be most effective. Although further research is needed to determine the effects of attention-influencing procedures across materials and settings, the results clearly indicate that these devices may be utilized to improve the quality of instructional materials for the retarded.
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