Remembering the Street Names of One's Childhood Neighbourhood: A Study of Very Long-term Retention

Life-span retention of street names was studied in a sample of former students of a Dutch elementary school. Participants were requested to recall the street names of their childhood neighbourhood and indicate their position on a map. In addition, information was gathered concerning (a) the extensiveness of the original learning experience, (b) its elaborateness, and (c) the amount of interference from similar materials occurring between original learning experience and time of recall. Retention intervals varied from 0 to 71 years. Amount of exposure, elaborateness of learning, and retroactive interference all contributed to the memorability of names. In addition, the forgetting curve showed a permastore effect (Bahrick, 1984), suggesting that memory for non-schematic, incidentally learned material is subject to processes of forgetting similar to those that affect intentionally learned material, such as subject-matter acquired in school.     

Remembering the street names of one's childhood neighbourhood: a study of very long-term retention

Life-span retention of street names was studied in a sample of former students of a Dutch elementary school. Participants were requested to recall the street names of their childhood neighbourhood and indicate their position on a map. In addition, information was gathered concerning (a) the extensiveness of the original learning experience, (b) its elaborateness, and (c) the amount of interference from similar materials occurring between original learning experience and time of recall. Retention intervals varied from 0 to 71 years. Amount of exposure, elaborateness of learning, and retroactive interference all contributed to the memorability of names. In addition, the forgetting curve showed a permastore effect (Bahrick, 1984), suggesting that memory for non-schematic, incidentally learned material is subject to processes of forgetting similar to those that affect intentionally learned material, such as subject-matter acquired in school.     

Individual differences in students' retention of knowledge and conceptual structures learned in university and high school courses: the case of test anxiety

The purpose of this research was to assess individual differences in students' retention of knowledge several years after studying the material. Assessment of retention of materials as a function of students' test anxiety can allow one to evaluate whether high test-anxious students' original deficient academic performance and organization of the materials are due to a retrieval deficit or a deficit in learning and knowledge organization. In two studies, students with different test-anxiety levels completed tasks that enabled us to evaluate both students' levels of knowledge and their cognitive organization of the materials. The tasks were administered either at the end of the course, or at different retention intervals up to 7 years after the end of learning. Results indicated that whereas high test-anxious students tested at the end of the courses performed worse than other students on tests of knowledge and cognitive organization, high test-anxious students tested at various retention intervals after the courses performed as well as other students. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

内隐序列学习中的渐进意识：来自习得知识的发展与遗忘的证据

内隐学习过程中习得知识的发展变化是内隐学习的一个重要特征。本研究采用序列反应时范式通过操纵学习进程（实验一）和学习与测验间的时间间隔（实验二）来考察内隐序列学习进程中习得知识的发展与遗忘特征,结果发现,（1）内隐序列学习中习得的无意识知识多于意识知识;（2）随着学习的推进,意识知识逐渐增加,而无意识知识则呈减弱趋势,证实了内隐学习的长时功效;（3）习得的无意识知识具有抗遗忘性,而意识知识在间隔8小时之后才开始出现遗忘。     

Assessment of retention capacities in old rats

Young (3-6 month) and old (24-27 month) barrier reared Wistar rats were tested for their ability to retain an inhibitory (passive) avoidance, acquired immobility, and a conditioned taste aversion response as a function of time. Old rats exhibited accelerated forgetting of both the inhibitory avoidance and acquired immobility response in comparison to young rats. In contrast, old rats displayed good retention of the conditioned taste aversion response at all time intervals tested. It appears that the dynamic aspects of retention are altered in aged rats depending on the task, and in some instances may be expressed as accelerated forgetting.     

Psychological and demographic correlates of early academic skill development among American Indian and Alaska Native youth: a growth modeling study

Research regarding the development of early academic skills among American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) students has been very limited to date. Using a nationally representative sample of AIAN, Hispanic, African American, and White children at school entry, the authors used latent growth models to estimate the associations among poverty, low parental education, living in a rural location, as well as child attitudes toward learning and internalizing/externalizing behaviors, with mathematical and reading cognitive skill development across the 1st 4 years of school. Results indicate that AIAN children entered kindergarten with scores on both mathematical and reading cognitive tests that were comparable to their peers from other ethnic groups of color. Importantly, all children who entered kindergarten with lower cognitive skill scores also acquired skills more slowly over the next 4 years. Having a positive approach to learning at the start of kindergarten was associated with cognitive skill levels at school entry nearly 1 standard deviation above the population average. Results are discussed with reference to the shared early educational profiles observed between AIAN and other children of color. These findings provide a much-needed update regarding early academic development among AIAN children.     

Preparing Rural Adolescents for Post‐High School Transitions

In this study, the authors evaluated the impact of 4 career development curricular strategies and emotional/instrumental support in preparing rural adolescents to make successful post‐high school transitions. Curriculum strategies and perceived support helped 8th‐, 10th‐, and 12th‐grade students attain critical aspects of career development, enhanced student satisfaction that their education was better preparing them to achieve future educational and career goals, and increased student intentions to enter post‐high school settings that required greater levels of education and training. Girls reported earning higher grades and participating in more work‐based learning activities and intended to enter post–high school training settings that required more education than did boys.     

Intellectual ability, learning style, personality, achievement motivation and academic success of psychology students in higher education

This study is directed towards an integration of intellectual ability, learning style, personality and achievement motivation as predictors of academic success in higher education. Correlational analyses partly confirmed and partly disconfirmed our expectations in a sample of 409 first-year psychology students. Consistent with the literature, intellectual ability and achievement motivation were associated positively with academic success. For the meaning directed, reproduction directed and application directed learning style, no positive association with academic success could be detected. The undirected learning style, however, appeared to be a consistent negative predictor. For the Big Five personality factors (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience), a consistent, positive association for conscientiousness with academic success was found. The very first examination at the university came out as the most important predictor for academic success, even after two and three years of study. The implications of the results are discussed in relation to the literature and the policy of the Dutch Ministry of Education.     

Declarative knowledge and professional vision in teacher education: Effect of courses in teaching and learning

Background. Teachers’ professional vision includes the ability to apply general pedagogical knowledge about components of effective teaching and learning to reason about significant features of classroom practice. It requires teachers to (a) describe, (b) explain, and (c) predict classroom situations. Although the acquisition of underling knowledge can be considered as a key element of university‐based teacher education programmes, to date, there has been little empirical research on teacher candidates’ development of professional vision. Aims. This study aims to improve understanding of how different university‐based courses in teaching and learning impact the development of professional vision. Sample. Participants were teacher candidates (N= 53) attending the same teacher education programme at a German university. They were enrolled in one of three different compulsory courses in teaching and learning, lasting one semester. Methods. In a pre‐test–post‐test design, participants’ declarative knowledge about teaching and learning was measured with a test, professional vision with the online tool Observer. Analysis of covariance and multivariate analysis of variance were conducted. Results. Teacher candidates in all three courses showed significant gains both in declarative knowledge and professional vision. Patterns of results differed depending on the course attended. A video‐based course with a focus on effective teaching resulted in highest gains in prediction of the consequences of observed events for student learning processes, which is the highest level of knowledge transfer. Conclusion. The development of professional vision is a strongly knowledge‐guided process. In line with their content and aims, university‐based courses can enhance teaching‐relevant knowledge for teacher candidates.     

Promoting Service Leadership Qualities and Well-Being among University Students: Evaluation Findings in Hong Kong

Service leadership education initiatives have been launched in Hong Kong to meet the emerging demand for service leaders and enhance university students’ well-being through nurturing not only competence but also good character and caring disposition. However, rigorous evaluation work based on validated assessment tools has not been adequately carried out to examine whether student well-being and service leadership qualities would increase after the learning process. Using a one-group pretest-posttest design, this study investigated the effectiveness of a credit-bearing subject entitled “Service Leadership” implemented in one university in Hong Kong. Based on the responses of 114 participants (49.1% boys, Age = 20.21 ± 2.96 years), it was found that students showed improvement in service leadership knowledge, attitude, and behavior after taking the subject. In addition, their life satisfaction and positive youth development attributes as indicators of well-being also significantly increased. Furthermore, the increase in well-being among students was closely associated with their attitudinal and behavioral changes but not knowledge acquisition. The present findings imply that a formal curriculum-based leadership course can be a promising way to promote student service leadership qualities and well-being.

     

Predicting one's own forgetting: the role of experience-based and theory-based processes

The authors examined the hypothesis that judgments of learning (JOL), if governed by processing fluency during encoding, should be insensitive to the anticipated retention interval. Indeed, neither item-by-item nor aggregate JOLs exhibited "forgetting" unless participants were asked to estimate recall rates for several different retention intervals, in which case their estimates mimicked closely actual recall rates. These results and others reported suggest that participants can access their knowledge about forgetting but only when theory-based predictions are made, and then only when the notion of forgetting is accentuated either by manipulating retention interval within individuals or by framing recall predictions in terms of forgetting rather than remembering. The authors interpret their findings in terms of the distinction between experience-based and theory-based JOLs.     

College students' memory for vocabulary in their majors: evidence for a nonlinear relation between knowledge and memory.

The effect of domain knowledge on students' memory for vocabulary terms was investigated. Participants were 142 college students (94 education majors and 48 business majors). The measure of domain knowledge was the number of courses completed in the major. Students recalled three different lists (control, education, and business) of 20 words. Knowledge effects were estimated controlling for academic aptitude, academic achievement, and general memory ability. Domain-specific knowledge consistently predicted recall, above and beyond the effect of these control variables. Moreover, nonlinear models better represented the relation between knowledge and memory, with very similar functions predicting recall in both knowledge domains. Specifically, early in the majors more classes corresponded with increased memory performance, but a plateau period, when more classes did not result in higher recall, was evident for both majors. Longitudinal research is needed to explore at what point in learning novices' performance begins to resemble experts' performance.     

Retention by “fast” and “slow” learners

Four experiments were conducted to replicate and extend the findings by Shuell and Keppel (1970) as well as others, that when properly equated for original learning, “fast” and “slow” learners have parallel forgetting curves. In Experiments I and II, the Shuell-Keppel findings, originally demonstrated on American students learning lists of words, were replicated on samples of Nigerian students. In Experiments III and IV, Nigerian and American students, respectively, learned poems to a criterion of 75–90% correct and were tested for retention. In all studies, “fast” and “slow” learners were brought to a similar learning criterion, with the result that their forgetting curves were parallel.     

初中生数学自我效能问卷的编制

根据国内外关于数学自我效能研究的文献,结合我国初中生数学学习的内容特点与实际背景情况,编制数学自我效能问卷。研究以初一与初二学生为对象,采用开放式问卷对188名学生和53名数学教师进行调查,首先编制出44个项目的初测问卷;采用封闭式问卷对479名学生的初测结果进行验证性因素分析与项目分析,形成了包含日常生活中数学任务的效能、数学相关课程的效能与数学学业问题解决效能三个维度的26个项目的正式问卷;最后对350名学生施测正式问卷。分析研究结果表明,该数学自我效能问卷的因素结构清晰,具有合理的信度和效度。     

Remembering the news: Modeling retention data from a study with 14,000 participants

A retention study is presented in which participants answered questions about news events, with a retention interval that varied within participants between 1 day and 2 years. The study involved more than 14,000 participants and around 500,000 data points. The data were analyzed separately for participants who answered questions in Dutch or in English, providing an opportunity for replication. We fitted models of varying complexity to the data in order to test several hypotheses concerning retention. Evidence for an asymptote in retention was found in only one data set, and participants with greater media exposure displayed a higher degree of learning but no difference in forgetting. Thus, forgetting was independent of initial learning. Older adults were found to have forgetting curves similar to those of younger adults.     

Comprehension of Ambiguous Sentences in Non-Disabled and Disabled Adolescents

If students are to effectively comprehend a text, they must be able to resolve ambiguities. Recent studies of adolescents with learning disabilities suggest multiple reasons for failure to resolve ambiguous structures. Furthermore, previous research does not clearly indicate the age at which syntactic ambiguities can be resolved consistently. The present study investigated similarities and differences in the comprehension of ambiguous sentences in adolescents with and without learning disabilities. Four groups representing four ability levels were sampled in a public high schools. Two additional groups of students with learning disabilities were sampled at a private residential school. The public school group that attained academic honors was superior to all other groups in paraphrasing the meanings of ambiguous sentences. Two other college bound public school groups were superior to a non-college bound group in the public system. These findings suggest a continuum of ability to interpret amiguous structures across a range of 16 year old subjects. The learning disabled private school group with stronger verbal than non-verbal abilities was also significantly better than the non-college bound disabled public school gorup. This superiority of the learning disabled over the non-college bound group suggest a continuum of ability to interpret ambiguous structures in a population of students with various disabilites. The study found associations between knowledge of syntax and knowledge of lexical meaning and interpretation of ambigous materials. There also was a strong relationships between the ability to paraphrase the meanings of ambiguous sentences and overall ability in reading comprehension.     

Concrete and abstract visualizations in history learning tasks

Background History learning requires that students understand historical phenomena, abstract concepts and the relations between them. Students have problems grasping, using and relating complex historical developments and structures. Aims A study was conducted to determine the effects of tasks with abstract and/or concrete visualizations on the learning of historical developments and structures. The hypothesis was that students receiving visualizations would learn and retain more historical knowledge and concepts than those not receiving visualizations. Sample First‐year pupils in vocational middle school (N = 104) worked in randomly assigned pairs. Methods After reading a text, the pairs were given a learning task in one of four conditions: Textual, Concrete visualized, Abstract visualized, and Combined. Results Post‐test and retention test results showed no significant differences. There were some significant differences on the evaluation questionnaire. Conclusions Combining text and different types of visualizations in learning tasks does not necessarily enhance history learning. Possible explanations given are the ecological setting, the semiotics of the domain of history – that are not defined clearly – and the difficulty of unequivocally visualizing historical concepts.     

The Culture Specificity of Epistemological Beliefs about Learning

The present study analyzed the nature of epistemological beliefs about learning (learning beliefs) in Korea and the United States. Learning beliefs are implicit assumptions held by learners about the source and certainty of knowledge and the ways to obtain knowledge. For the comparative analysis of both the model and the nature of learning beliefs across two countries that differ in emphasis on individualism and collectivism, two attempts were made. First, Jehng, Johnson, and Anderson's (1993) study was replicated with university students from the US (N=496) and Korea (N=487). Second, the relationship between US students' learning beliefs and the two aspects of their self-construal (independent and interdependent) was analyzed by using a scale developed by Singelis (1994) which measures cultural orientation of individualism and collectivism at the individual level. Factor analyses of the US sample confirmed the conceptual model proposed by Jehng et al. The factor structure of the Korean sample, however, showed significant variation reflecting the collectivistic values of Korea. MANCOVA indicated that the two developmental factors, age and the amount of formal education, were related with American students' beliefs, but they were not with those of Korean students. MANCOVA revealed that US students' beliefs are significantly related with the independent self-construal, but not with the interdependent self-construal. The differences between the two samples in terms of the impact of formal education and self-construal on learning beliefs will be further discussed by focusing on the cultural differences between the two countries.     

The Double Cohort retention and academic success comparison: are students in the new Ontario secondary school program disadvantaged?

In September 2003, Ontario universities accepted a double cohort of new students resulting from the Ontario government’s decision to eliminate Grade 13. The admission to university of two categories of students distinguished by their age and high school program raised a number of questions, not only in terms of admission infrastructure but mostly in what concerns the sum of student retention, academic success, and graduation. Factors associated with success and with the maintenance of university studies are numerous: stress, socioeconomic status, parents’ education, intellectual capacities, motivation, social abilities, and social support (Olds & Papalia, 2000). Therefore, the objectives of this study were: (1) to test the hypothesis of a double cohort effect on student academic success during the first year of university, (2) to verify the hypothesis that high school academic history, socioeconomic variables related to stress and perceived stress predict academic success and retention at the end of first year university. In September 2003, 300 first year students answered questionnaires inquiring about their high school program and high school GPA, their socioeconomic characteristics, and their perceived stress. These measures were then used to predict drop out, final GPA, number of credits attempted, passed and failed in June 2004. Results showed that school persistence and first year university academic achievement are mostly predicted by gender, high school GPA, type of financial resources, and number of hours worked at a paid job. Although not significant, we have found a higher proportion of Grade 12 students who dropped out during first year at university, suggesting a possible long-term effect of high school program on academic achievement.     

Practical work in physiotherapy students’ professional development

Learning practical work through cooperation between school and working life is part of physiotherapy higher education. Students learn practical work through the integration of theoretical, practical, tacit and situational knowledge in a socialization process. Workplace practices and habits direct students’ learning. This study answers the question: What kind of conceptions of learning practical work do physiotherapy students have? Longitudinal data written by 21 volunteer students (mean age 25 years) was collected over three and a half years. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Learning practical work proceeds in five phases: (1) the basis of practical work, human movement and action and therapeutic tools is learned at school; (2) the meaning of the profession and practical work takes shape in an interaction with clients and observing how professionals work in real workplaces; (3) the wholeness of the practical work takes shape by gradually participating in the work processes; (4) critical reflection of the work processes – thinking, construction, evaluation and reasoning – develops; and (5) the conception of practical work widens. This study brings new information about learning practical work for developing healthcare education and its curricula. The role of workplaces is huge in learning tacit knowledge of the profession.