Showing papers on "Meaningful learning published in 1976"

Integration of information during problem solving due to a meaningful context of learning.

Abstract: Ninety-seven subjects memorized nine associations among six interlocking elements that were presented as links among nonsense letters, connections among spies with word code names (after Hayes, 1966), or airline flights among major US cities On tests of problem solving and true-false judgments, the letters group and the words group performed nearly identically; however, relative to these two groups, the cities group performed worse or about the same on short recall problems and much better on longer problems requiring chunking of learned information The conditions and effects of a meaningful learning context for problem solving were discussed

An Interpretation of Advanced Organizers.

Abstract: The term advanced organizer refers to a type of instructional material that has been hypothesized to be effective in introducing meaningful topics. Meaningful topics are those in which the new material that is to be learned is related in a nonarbitrary fashion to ideas that have already been mastered by the learner. Using this definition, most mathematics instruction has to do with potentially meaningful learning materials, since most mathematical concepts occur as part of a system of ideas and since it is typical that such concepts are inherently related to other ideas in the system that are already understood by the learner. According to Ausubel (1963), three of the main factors that influence the learning and retention of meaningful materials are (1) the availability of relevant anchoring ideas, (2) the stability (i.e., organization and clarity) of these ideas, and (3) the distinguishability of the new ideas from the anchoring ideas. By recalling relevant systems of previously learned concepts, advanced organizers can be used to provide ideational scaffolding for new ideas and to point out similarities and differences between the new material and previously learned concepts. To serve these functions, organizers are supposed to consist of introductory materials that are at a higher level of generality and inclusiveness than the more detailed and differentiated material that is to be learned.

Retroactive Interference in Meaningful Learning.

Abstract: Summary. It has been suggested that the phenomenon of retroactive interference, by which retention of verbal materials is decreased by the subsequent presentation of similar interpolated items, occurs only in unstructured items, and not in the meaningful and connected information more commonly encountered in educational learning circumstances. An experiment was undertaken to investigate the possibility of retroactive interference occurring in a structured and meaningful prose learning situation. The sample consisted of 18 university students allocated randomly to two groups. The experimental group studied an original prose passage, followed by two very similar interpolated passages. Their final cued recall scores were significantly lower than the scores of a control group, who learned the identical original prose passage, followed by the dissimilar passages.