Sequence effects in programed learning of a verbal concept.

Abstract

The 3 sequence variables were systematically manipulated in a constructed-response program dealing with the concept, "Gross National Product." These were: order of the 2 subconcepts "consumption spending" and "investment"; position in the program where subconcepts were introduced; and directionality, i.e., whether statement of the rule or principle either began or concluded the overall program and its various units. These sequence variables did not influence the number of errors made during learning. Performance was faster when principles were stated 1st and when subconcepts were learned together rather than separately. Ss made significantly poorer scores on a multiple-choice criterion test under conditions where learning of the 2 subconcepts was most remote from integration of these to form the major concept.

Didactics: Peculiarities of Programmed Teaching of a Cartwheel to Boys Aged 14

“…Programmed instruction was developed in the 1970s (Maehr, 1964;Newton & Hickey, 1965;Woodruff, Faltz, & Wagner, 1966). The aspects of programmed and traditional teaching were studied (Hughes, 1975).…”

Writing from sources: A structure-mapping model.

“…This pattern of results reveals that subjects were indeed using the first passage they read as a base passage, not simply the passage with a topical organization. 3 Such a primacy effect (information presented early will have greater impact than information presented later) has been documented in many areas of psychological research, for example, impression formation (Anderson & Norman, 1964;Asch, 1946;Hovland, 1957), ability attribution (Jones, Rock, Shaver, Goethals, & Ward, 1968), probability judgment (Peterson & DuCharme, 1967) and verbal learning (Dooling & Mullet, 1973;Newton & Hickey, 1965).…”

“…Research on the recency effect (the high level of recall of items seen most recently; e.g., R. L. Greene, 1986) suggests that the passage read last should be adopted as the base passage. Research on the primacy effect (the high level of recall of information seen initially; e.g., Dooling & Mullet, 1973;Newton & Hickey, 1965) suggests that the passage read first should serve as the base passage. Schema theory (e.g., Neisser, 1976) would also suggest that the base would be the first passage.…”