Neil Schwartz

• Ph.D. Educational Psychology
• Consultant at Schwartz Consulting Inc.

One hundred and six undergraduates searched a hypermedia environment under three navigational conditions, wrote an essay measuring their comprehension, and completed a test of metacognition. The map conditions were spatial/semantic, spatial only, and none. Analyses revealed that a navigational map capable of incurring an integrative cognitive model...

Two theories, schema and dual coding, and the conjoint retention model were contrasted to explain the role of geographic familiarity and prior knowledge in map-passage retention. One hundred, eighty-six college students listened to a passage taking place in either a familiar or unfamiliar geographic domain and viewed either a map or no map of eithe...

Educational psychology is a field that straddles two large domains: education and psychology. Reaching far back into antiquity, the field was borne from philosophies and theories that weaved back and forth between each domain all with the intent of understanding the way learners learn, teachers teach, and educational settings should be effectively...

This paper aims to shed light on the process of building intersubjectivity between student-student dyads in a blended educational context. Three girls and five boys, 17 to 18 years old, participated in two types of problem-solving tasks. They formed four dyads and were required to negotiate aloud what to post in a web-forum. Dyads were video record...

This article investigates whether goal-directed learning of pictures leads to multiple mental representations which are differently useful for different purposes. The paper further investigates the effects of prompts on picture processing. 136 undergraduate students were presented maps of a fictitious city. One half of the participants were instruc...

This investigation examines the effects of keyword tasks (Immediate vs. Delayed) on metacognitive monitoring, study regulation, and recall in multi-step learning tasks, which require learning information from expository texts. The titles of the expository texts were biased towards information that was either stated close to the title (Related/Close...

This chapter inventories the essential components necessary to leverage theory and research in the deployment of effective instruction in higher education.

Two experiments investigated the extent to which the concreteness of titles affects metacognitive text expectations, study motivation, and comprehension test performance. Sixty-three American and 61 German students were presented with three titles (either concrete or abstract), based upon which the students estimated their expected ease-of-comprehe...

Generation Z cares about many public policy issues, seeking news online using social media, and major news agencies. Those whose primary news source is Fox News get a higher proportion of news from this source. An increased proportion of news from the primary source predicts decreases in sources of news. Keywords: Generation Z, Social Media, News,...

Online fake news during the 2016 US Presidential Election was widespread. Generation Z adults rely heavily on internet-based news, and it is unclear whether readers can detect fake news, and how this influences learning. Images boost rates of learning and retention. Non-probative images increase beliefs that fake news-headlines are true. We tested...

An exploration of literature addressing the interest and engagement of young adults, and their novel approach to seeking information. We find that Generation Z adults are engaged with similar public policy issues as other adults; seek information about those issues daily; seek news via social media significantly more frequently than even Millennial...

The main purpose of this paper is to describe a drawing-based method able to track down young students' representations of their own learning process. This method is used also to analyze whether the metaphors proposed by learning theorists correspond to those produced by students, and whether students' representation of the learning process is affe...

The experience of fluency while learning might bias students’ metacognitive judgments of learning (JOLs) and impair the efficacy of their study behaviors. In the present experiments, we examined whether perceptual fluency affects JOLs (1) when people only experience one level of fluency, (2) when item relatedness is also available as a cue, and (3)...

Research has not focused on possible side effects, on learning or problem solving, of seemingly trivial illustrations in textbooks. In this study, we question the influence of visualizations of cultural symbols and values in a reward allocation task. Participants were exposed to visualizations which represented American or neutral cultural concepts...

Presentation part of the symposium "Multiple Representations and Multimedia: Student Learning and Instruction".

Two hundred and eighty undergraduates from universities in two countries were asked to read didactic material, and then think and write about potential solutions to an ill-defined problem. The writing was conducted within a synchronous or asynchronous computermediated communication (CMC) environment. Asynchronous CMC took the form of email exchange...

In this research, we present the concept of Hyperaudio as non-linear presentation of auditory information in the context of underlying theoretical assumptions of how Hyperaudio differs from existing non-linear information media. We present a study comparing text and auditory represented information either in a linear or non-linear manner and the in...

In this chapter, we take the position that self-regulation and metacognition reveal an undeniable conceptual core that assumes individuals make efforts to monitor their thoughts and actions, and try to gain some control over them. In the neurosciences, the higher-order processes of monitoring and control are referred to as “executive control proces...

Successful learning from text takes place when the cognitive demands of the learning task – i.e. the comprehension and retention of text material – and the metacognitive demands of the learning task – i.e. the accurate assessment of one’s own learning process—are met. The present study was designed to investigate text titles – a factor known to aff...

When learning is of high quality, it is well integrated and deep, and capable of being transferred to new problems and applications beyond the original context in which the learning takes place. One way to ensure that learning is of high quality is to design learning environments that strategically utilize processes and tools that support meaningfu...

This chapter describes a case study referring to a project named DIscourse in COmmunity of practices through TEcnologies (DI.CO.TE.)1. The project takes place in Southern Italy from 2009 through 2012; it involves 60 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Within a psychological point of view and a socio-constructivist approach, the main scope of the p...

The present investigation was designed to determine if the learning benefits of metaphors and graphics could be combined into one instructional device—a metaphorical graphic—to aid in the acquisition of difficult concepts of chemistry. The authors further sought to determine if metaphorical graphics could foster greater retention of the basic prope...

In this study, the effects of the theme of a graphic and learner’s field independence were examined on the position the learners took on a controversial issue described in a passage. Participants first read the passage in the presence of one of three graphics designed to highlight themes underlying the passage content; then, they were tested for th...

In this study the effects of visualization tools were examined on argumentation skills, knowledge acquisition, and cognitive load during hypermedia learning. Participants in this experiment completed an argumentation task on the issues of genetics and gene manipulation by using a hypermedia learning environment as a resource. In one condition, part...

The edited and peer reviewed volume presents selected papers of the conference "Beyond knowlegde: the legacy of competence" organized by EARLI SIG Learning and Instruction with Computers in cooperation with SIG Instructional Design. It reflects the current state-of-the-art work of scholars worldwide within the area of learning and instruction with...

The edited and peer reviewed volume presents selected papers of the conference "Beyond knowlegde: the legacy of competence" organized by EARLI SIG Learning and Instruction with Computers in cooperation with SIG Instructional Design. It reflects the current state-of-the-art work of scholars worldwide within the area of learning and instruction with...

Fifty-five undergraduate students read pages on a website presenting text about familiar and unfamiliar geographic locations in the United States. Learners navigated the site by having available or unavailable navigational buttons showing the cardinal compass directions between the map locations in the presence or absence of a cartographic map enab...

This investigation was designed to determine the influence of metaphorical priming on students' comprehension of issues and concepts pertaining to the U.S. Constitution when students studied the subject matter in a problem-based hypermedia instructional system. Sixty-five high school seniors studied the system for 5 days after receiving relevant, i...

Twenty-eight students (aged 9 to 17) freely explored a science Web site structured either in an outline (linear) format or "puzzle" (non-linear) format for 2.5 hours. Subjects then engaged in tasks involving locational memory and informational recall. The results indicate that presence of metacognitive skills was a necessary but not sufficient cond...

Describes a residential training course sponsored by the NASA Classroom of the Future to help teachers learn to use computer-based educational tools and explore constructivist instructional approaches. Hypothesized that creating a living-and-learning environment for the training would foster rapid changes in teachers' epistemological beliefs. (Cont...

This chapter begins with a discussion fo the way psychologists conceptualize the way learners think when they learn. Thus, the structure and function of the human information processing system is examined closely. Theories of information storage are described and contrasted-- schema, mental models, dual coding, and conjoint retention. The chapter b...

The degree to which teachers' perceptions of a student can be distorted by characteristics indigenous to teachers, as well as students, were investigated to determine whether teachers would initiate a referral for special education. Sixty-five teachers volunteered for participation. Twenty-seven of them were experienced, having had their own classr...

Performance differences on receptive vocabulary and general verbal reasoning ability of Hualapai Indians as compared to national norms were investigated. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test Revised and the Verbal portion of the Cognitive Abilities Test, Form 4 were administered to 206 Hualapai Indian children ranging in age from 5 years, 3 months t...

To improve our understanding of the functional relations underlying map-passage learning, the effects of structural hierarchy on recall were examined. Specifically, two types of content were alternated within the structural framework of both a map and a passage in order to examine the effects of structurally congruent or incongruent hierarchies on...

Individual differences effecting the way in which general reference maps are retained and organized in memory were assessed in 173 university undergraduate students. Learners were instructed to encode map features in memory by clustering them together, either by their semantic or spatial relationship. The degree to which either directive influenced...

A personal epistemology of dualism or relativism is a characteristic that may be related to other individual difference variables, especially those of dogmatism, locus of control, field dependence/independence, and cognitive complexity. In the present study, we examined the relatedness of these variables to interpret more adequately and clarify the...

Although college students'' epistemological orientation largely determines how they approach, interpret, and learn in higher educational contexts, little is known about the student characteristics which reliably predict the orientation. Thus, the aim of this study was to determine the relative potency of different student characteristics potentiall...

This study surveyed 127 school psychologists practicing under three types of state criteria that are used in identifying children as seriously emotionally disturbed (SED). The school psychologists were required to read 12 behavioral descriptions of specific disorders defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Vol. 3 (DSM...

Three experiments examined the effects of manipulating the spatial configuration of prose materials with readers who differed in lateral preference. In each investigation, adult readers of normal verbal facility who differed in their lateral preference patterns were presented with prose passages which varied orthographically. Subjects responded to...

Two experiments were designed to determine which of two encoding tactics learners use to remember maps and whether one or the other differentially preserves locational memory for mapped features. Experiment 1 subjects were presented a map with either low or high spatial distinction, with half of the subjects receiving general instruction to cluster...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relative importance of chronological age versus mental aptitude in determining complexity of epistemological thinking. Nineteen gifted students with chronological ages between 12 and 15 yr. and mental aptitude in the gifted range completed the Adherence Scale, a scale designed to distinguish students...

In the present study, teachers read fictitious psychoeducational reports that interpretively were consistent, inconsistent, or absent with respect to a child's diagnostic label. On a perceptual expectation questionnaire, teachers indicated both their perceptions of the child and their confidence in these perceptions, after reading a cumulative fold...

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that the cognitive representation of spatial relations on a map is primarily a visually keyed process. In Experiment 1, undergraduates studied a labeled map where features were presented either as words alone, as mimetic drawings of the referent, or as geometric symbols. Cued recall data showed that discrete fe...

In two experiments, college students studied a reference map that was varied in both grid structure and the conceptual similarity of its features. In Experiment I, subjects who studied the map with a grid remembered fewer features than did their no-grid counterparts, but were able accurately to locate more of the features that they did recall. In E...

In Study 1, the lateral preference patterns for 246 normal and 108 learning-disabled (LD) children (8.3–12.7 yrs) were compared using factors of the Dean Laterality Preference Schedule. Results indicate that although Ss did not differ in their patterns for peripheral activities across factors, LD Ss were significantly more bilateral on factors invo...

College undergraduates heard a 1760-word narrative which described events occurring on an imaginary island. As they listened, learners studied either a map of the island with features located spatially, a map—outline with features listed next to it, or just an outline without feature information. People who saw the map recalled more idea units and...

In Study 1, the lateral preference patterns for 246 normal and 108 learning-disabled (LD) children (8.3–12.7 yrs) were compared using factors of the Dean Laterality Preference Schedule. Results indicate that although Ss did not differ in their patterns for peripheral activities across factors, LD Ss were significantly more bilateral on factors invo...

Participants read a standard orienting statement describing the founding, current business, and policies of a fictitious corporation. Half of the read ers studied the original statement, which was written in terms of a "flexi ble" approach to organizational structure. The remaining half of the sample read a modified version in which three percent o...

59 college students studied a labeled map for either 2.4 or 4.8 min, either with or without the presence of mimetic drawings of the features. Availability of drawings made no difference in either the amount or categorization of free recall. On map-cued recall, Ss in the shorter exposure group who saw drawings remembered significantly more correctly...

This study concerned the prediction of group membership of 40 learning disabled and 40 normal children on the basis of preference for laterality of the children and of their parents. A stepwise discriminant analysis showed maternal and paternal lateral preferences could correctly identify approximately 85% of the cases. Orthogonal contrasts showed...

Recent research by Garabedian, Yekovich, Sherman, and Dean has demonstrated that recognition from long-term memory was superior for words presented visually over those presented auditorily. Because their results could have been influenced by the salience of the projected visual items, the present investigation attempted to eliminate the possible vi...

A b s t r a c t We believe hypermedia environments need to be defined by their capacity to interact effectively with the limitations and constraints of students' cognitive information processing system. In this study, we contrasted four navigational platforms to test t h e hypothesis that the development of configurational knowledge increases learn...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Arizona State University, 1981. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [91]-95).