Ernest T. Goetz

Frameworks for Comprehending Discourse

Thirty physical education students and 30 music education students read a passage that could be given either a prison break or a wrestling interpretation, and another passage that could be understood in terms of an evening of card playing or a rehearsal session of a woodwind ensemble. Scores on disambiguating multiple choice tests and theme-revealing disambiguations and intrusions in free recall showed striking relationships to the subject’s background. These results indicate that high-level schemata provide the interpretative framework for comprehending discourse. The fact that most subjects gave each passage one distinct interpretation or another and reported being unaware of other perspectives while reading suggest that schemata can cause a person to see a message in a certain way, without even considering alternative interpretations.

Instantiation of general terms

Abstract Three experiments investigated the hypothesis that, when interpreted in context, general terms are typically encoded on the basis of an instantiation. The results indicated that a particular term naming the expected instantiation of a general term was a better cue for the recall of a sentence than the general term itself, even though the general term had appeared in the sentence and the particular term had not. This could not have happened if people encode and store the core meanings of general terms. It was theorized that people instantiate in order to select, from among the indefinitely many meanings a term can have, a sense which permits a coherent overall interpretation of the message.

Effectiveness of virtual reality-based instruction on students' learning outcomes in K-12 and higher education: A meta-analysis

The purpose of this meta-analysis is to examine overall effect as well as the impact of selected instructional design principles in the context of virtual reality technology-based instruction (i.e. games, simulation, virtual worlds) in K-12 or higher education settings. A total of 13 studies (N?=?3081) in the category of games, 29 studies (N?=?2553) in the category of games, and 27 studies (N?=?2798) in the category of virtual worlds were meta-analyzed. The key inclusion criteria were that the study came from K-12 or higher education settings, used experimental or quasi-experimental research designs, and used a learning outcome measure to evaluate the effects of the virtual reality-based instruction.Results suggest games (FEM?=?0.77; REM?=?0.51), simulations (FEM?=?0.38; REM?=?0.41), and virtual worlds (FEM?=?0.36; REM?=?0.41) were effective in improving learning outcome gains. The homogeneity analysis of the effect sizes was statistically significant, indicating that the studies were different from each other. Therefore, we conducted moderator analysis using 13 variables used to code the studies. Key findings included that: games show higher learning gains than simulations and virtual worlds. For simulation studies, elaborate explanation type feedback is more suitable for declarative tasks whereas knowledge of correct response is more appropriate for procedural tasks. Students performance is enhanced when they conduct the game play individually than in a group. In addition, we found an inverse relationship between number of treatment sessions learning gains for games.With regards to the virtual world, we found that if students were repeatedly measured it deteriorates their learning outcome gains. We discuss results to highlight the importance of considering instructional design principles when designing virtual reality-based instruction. A comprehensive review of virtual reality-based instruction research.Analysis of the moderation effects of design features in a virtual environment.Using an advance statistical technique of meta-analysis to study the effects.Virtual reality environment is effective for teaching in K-12 and higher education.Results can be used by instructional designers to design the virtual environments.

An investigation of lookbacks during studying

Looking back at relevant sections of previously read text is proposed as a useful fixup strategy when comprehension fails while studying text. Subjects read 24 pages of text and answered inserted questions which assessed their comprehension of the text frequently. About half of the subjects were branched back to reread prerequisite information when it was later needed but not fully understood by the subjects. Subjects receiving lookbacks showed better comprehension of later information dependent upon the prerequisite information. In the light of these results the training of natural lookbacks during study holds promise as a means of improving students’ study behaviors.

The representation of sentences in memory

Associative theory characterizes the memorial representation of a sentence as a collection of independently linked concepts. In contrast, Gestalt theory says that the representation underlying each proposition expressed in a sentence is an integral unit. An analysis shows that the results of previous research either have been equivocal or have supported the Gestalt position. Three new studies are reported that show that, when scored for gist, the propositions underlying simple three-word sentences are recalled completely or not at all. A final experiment indicates that one-proposition sentences containing four content words are more likely to be recalled as a whole than three-proposition sentences of the same length, and that fragmentary recall of the three-proposition sentences usually preserves the unity of constituent propositions. These results strongly support the Gestalt position over any associative model that has been proposed.

A Causal Model of Sentence Recall: Effects of Familiarity, Concreteness, Comprehensibility, and Interestingness

This study presents and tests a theoretically derived causal model of the recall of sentences. One group of undergraduate students rated 40 sentences about historical characters for content familiarity, concreteness, comprehensibility, and interestingness. A second group read the sentences and provided written recalls immediately after reading and again after five days. Using predictions derived from schema theory and from dual coding theory, a causal model was derived that identified familiarity and concreteness as causes of comprehensibility; familiarity, concreteness, and comprehensibility as causes of interestingness; and all the identified variables as causes of both immediate and delayed recall. Path analysis procedures indicated that concreteness strongly affected comprehensibility and recall, and that both concreteness and familiarity affected interestingness. The results suggest support for a dual coding theory account of sentence comprehension and recall.

IMAGINATION IN STORY READING: THE ROLE OF IMAGERY, VERBAL RECALL, STORY ANALYSIS, AND PROCESSING LEVELS

The spontaneous use of imagery and its relationship to free verbal recall were investigated. Community college students read a 2,100-word story under one of three sets of instructions and then recalled the story and reported their images immediately and 48 hours later. A new methodology for classifying imagery reports was developed. Results indicated that separate categories of imagery reports and verbal recalls were not highly correlated. Principal components analysis yielded factors predominated by imagery variables. Further, whereas total verbal recall declined over the retention interval (i.e., forgetting), imagery did not. Experimental instructions to readers designed to manipulate processing depth in an externally valid fashion did not result in significant differences in imagery reporting and recall, suggesting that a strict levels of processing view may be untenable for ecologically valid reading situations. Other results indicated that a significant relationship existed between imaging a story segment and the story grammar macro-structure of that segment, and that imagery of the climactic event was the most common. This study contributes to a series of studies using various texts and methodologies that suggest that imagery is a distinctive aspect of reading, viable for study in its own right.

Concreteness and imagery effects in the written composition of definitions.

Concreteness and imagery effects have been found to be among the most powerful in explaining performance on a variety of language tasks. Concreteness and imagery effects involve the capacity of concrete language to evoke sensory images in the mind (e.g., juicy watermelon), whereas abstract language has relatively less capacity to do so (e.g., agriculturalproduce). The effects of concreteness and imagery on reading and text recall have been well-established (e.g., Goetz, Sadoski, Fatemi, & Bush, 1994; Paivio, 1971, 1986; Paivio, Walsh, & Bons, 1994; Sadoski, Goetz, & Avila, 1995; Sadoski, Goetz, & Fritz, 1993a, 1993b). Concrete words, phrases, sentences, and texts have been found to be more imageable, comprehensible, memorable, and interesting than abstract language units even when other relevant contextual variables are carefully controlled. These results can be consistently interpreted by dual coding theory (Paivio, 1971, 1986, 1991), which maintains that cognition involves the operation of two separate but interconnected systems, one for verbal representations and processes and one for nonverbal (imagery) representations and processes.

Infering from text: Some factors influencing which inferences will be made∗

Two studies are reported in which the importance of an event in a story was systematically varied to test whether this would affect the likelihood that inferences about the event would be made. Eight versions of each of six 500‐word stories, identical except for the sections varied in order to manipulate the importance of the event and the salience of material which cued the target inference, shared the same target inference. Importance was varied without changing the plausibility of the inference. In half of the passage versions, the “inference” was explicitly stated in the text. High school students served as subjects. In the first experiment, inference was tested using multiple‐choice recognition, while a cued recall test was employed in the second experiment. The results of both studies confirmed that people are more likely to make an important rather than unimportant inference. Highly salient premises were also found to increase the probability that an inference would be made.

Signal Delay Effects on Rapport in Telepsychiatry

Video-mediated communication research has shown that telecommunication signal delay can cause difficulty in interpersonal coordination of conversation. Studies of rapport suggest that interpersonal coordination is an important aspect of rapport. This study investigated the effect of signal delay on the level of rapport in quasi-psychotherapy sessions (stress evaluation). Video conference counseling sessions were conducted with three levels of signal delay, zero, 300 ms, and 1,000 ms. These were compared to face-to-face counseling sessions. Three male counselors conducted the sessions. Forty-eight client participants, primarily male and female college students, were enrolled in the stress evaluations. The level of client perceived rapport was measured using a self-report instrument administered following the session. The results did not provide evidence for an effect on rapport from delay when considering males and females together. However, males and females were found to respond differently regarding rap...