This dissertation addressed the schema concept as it is used in cognitive psychology. Fifteen experimental studies which focused on the effects of schema activation with adult learners were summarized and analyzed. These studies showed that schema activation conducted prior to learning, whether accomplished through context cues, thematic titles, or more active methods such as knowledge mobilization, appears to enhance both learning and recall. / This dissertation study was designed to investigate the effects of two methods of schema activation, knowledge mobilization and thematic statements, on memory for two different types of stimulus materials. Two consecutive experiments were conducted; one employed stimulus materials consisting of ambiguous sentences, while the second utilized connected prose. Both immediate and delayed recognition testing were used to assess short-term and long-term memory for both the content and technical accuracy of the stimulus materials. / While it was anticipated that, in both experiments, the combination of knowledge mobilization and a thematic statement would produce the highest level of performance, the results did not support this expectation. The results of the first experiment, in which an ambiguous passage was used, revealed no significant differences on immediate or delayed recognition test scores among the four groups. / The results of the second experiment, which used connected prose as the stimulus material, revealed that subjects in the groups with both mobilization and theme, theme statement alone, and controls all performed significantly better on the overall test than subjects using mobilization only. Subjects using the thematic statement alone and the controls performed significantly better than subjects using mobilization only on the delayed content items, which demanded long-term memory for meaning. The results of the two experiments provided only weak support for the favorable effects of these schema activation methods upon a recognition task. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-04, Section: A, page: 0913. / Major Professor: Harold J. Fletcher. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1994.

A study was conducted on individual differences in informational coping styles and coronary-prone behavior patterns regarding their mediating roles in the experience of subjective and physiological arousal prior to and during stressful cognitive task performance. Two-hundred and forty-six college-aged subjects were categorized according to coping style, information-monitors and information-blunters, and according to coronary-prone behavior pattern, Type A and Type B. Ninety-six of these participants were given either brief or detailed information about a difficult anagram task, during which noise was administered to one half of the subjects. Repeated measures of state anxiety, body sensations, and heart rate were collected at pre-information (baseline), post-information, and post-task phases. A post-experimental questionnaire concerning self-report of arousal created by the information and noise manipulations, and by the anagram task; and concerning attribution of quality of cognitive task performance was completed by each subject at the end of the experiment A significant positive correlation was found between Type A behavior pattern and information-seeking coping strategy. There were significant main effects of phases for all dependent variables: state anxiety, negative body sensations, and heart rate. Most notably, a significant information x coping style interaction showed that information-monitors experienced less anxiety when given detailed information, their preferred amount, than when exposed to brief information. The converse was true for the information-blunters, substantiating the conclusion that they prefer a brief amount of information concerning an aversive event. This interaction supports the primary hypothesis of the study and documents the effects of these individual differences in information preference with a cognitive task / acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

The purpose of this research was to develop and test computerized methods of detecting cheating on multiple-choice examinations. Two computer programs which compare the response vector of every examinee in a class to that of every other examinee were utilized to calculate two indices, both of which are based on identical incorrect responses of two or more examinees. The Wrong-in-common (WIC) index is the proportion of two times the number of identical incorrects to the Total Wrong for Both (TWB). The Run index (RUN) is the proportion of two times the length of the longest 'run' two examinees share to TWB. A run is defined as the number of items answered incorrectly and identically by both examinees within a succession of items which are marked or unmarked identically. The computer programs are written in Microsoft BASIC and run on the IBM-PC and compatible microcomputers as stand-alone executable files Achievement test item responses were obtained from a large public school system. From these data, 10 'honest' groups were created, and distributions of the RUN and WIC indices were plotted for four intervals of TWB. Average .1% probability levels were computed from the distributions for each of two subtests. These analyses indicated that cutoff points, index levels above which a pair might be considered suspicious, must vary contingent on TWB. Results suggested that it may be possible to detect certain types of 'test irregularities', and that irregularities occurred in 5 to 8% of the 170 fifth-grade classrooms studied. Directions for future research are discussed / acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu