to the above approaches by extending the concept of psychological distance to stimulus properties. Finally, this paper will make some concluding remarks concerning the utility of schema learning research applied to perceptual learning, and culture-free measures of learning ability. The emphasis of this paper is upon current research identifying future trends which appear in the literature. The basic idea of the schema was first introduced by Bartlett (1932) in accounting for changes in memory over time as tending to be more approximate to the familiar. Bartlett viewed experience as being mediated in some form by the effects of organization derived from the experience which acts to organize further experiences. Woodworth (1938) refined and clarified this concept of schema when he noted that configurations of new experiences are remembered in terms of a schema with the addition of a correction factor. People tend to classify new stimulus objects in the environment into general classes and then specify the exception or correction of the object in relation to that classificatory schema. Attneave (1957) concluded from the work of Woodworth that this represented a view of schema as consisting, "at least in part of some representation of the central tendency or communality of the class of objects in question" (p. 454).

Schema Learning Theory: An Approach to Perceptual Learning

This article presents the results of a study in which the theory and methodology of schema theory were applied to the reading process in an English as a second language context. ESL students were given a schematic concept formation (SCF) task which involves graphic stimuli representing four classes, and the subjects were asked to indicate which stimuli belong to the same class. No significant differences in ranks between two major language groups were found for the SCF data. The SCF data were not truly scalable. The SCF and a criterion reading comprehension test had an estimated.5525 proportion of reliable variance in common, and the above average readers had significantly higher SCF ranks than the below average readers. The article concludes with a list of suggestions for future research with SCF tasks.

Schematic concept formation: concurrent validity for attained english as a second language reading comprehension?

Reading performance and performance in a schematic concept formation task involving stimuli resembling physical configurations of words were examined in a college sample of initially poor and initially good readers. The initial level of reading performance was more related to the individual’s subsequent performance in the concept formation task than to rate of progress in reading performance. The results appeared sufficient to support further investigation into the nature of processes common to performance in both tasks. Various methodoligical advantages of a schema theory approach to the reading process are discussed.

Carol A. Lane

Papers

A Schema Theory Approach to the Reading Process