Sinatra, R., Stahl-Gemake, J., & Morgan, N. Improving reading comprehension of disabled readers through semantic mapping. Semantic mapping: A study skills strategy. Interaction of media, cognition and learning. Reading Research and Instruction, 29, 12–22. A study of cognitive mapping as a means to improve summarization and comprehension of expository text. Effects of mapping strategies on reading comprehension and writing performance.
Why a diagram is (sometimes) worth ten thousand words. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 17, 477–483. Interaction of learner characteristics with pictorial adjuncts in learning from science text. Doctoral dissertation, University of Washington College of Education, Seattle. Radial outlining: An instructional tool for teaching information processing. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 14, 129–138. Differential cognitive and affective responses to flow diagrams in science. Dansereau (Eds.), Spatial learning strategies. The development of spatial learning strategies. Effects of a tree diagram on students' comprehension of main ideas in an expository text with multiple themes. The interrelationships between diagrammatic representations and verbal explanations in learning from social science texts. Impact of diagrams on recalling sequential elements in expository texts. Facilitating reading comprehension through flowcharting. A theoretical framework for spatial learning strategies. Reading Research Quarterly, 21, 161–177.īreuker, J. Effects of instruction in text organization on sixth-grade students' memory for expository reading. Dansereau (Eds.), Spatial learning strategies (pp. Mapping: Representing informative text graphically. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Center for the Study of Reading.Īrmbruster, B. Idea mapping: The technique and its use in the classroom, or simulating the “ups” and “downs” of reading comprehension. Suggestions for diagram design are offered.Īrmbruster, B. Conclusions are drawn concerning the relationships between the spatial arrangement of diagrams and the meaning of relationships among concepts stated in sentences. This suggested that conflict between the sense of English and a diagram's spatial arrangement makes consistent interpretation unlikely. However, the biases were less evident when the diagrams violated the rules of English syntax. In the second experiment, similar biases were found for diagrams whose concepts were given English names. Significant biases in response frequencies were found, suggesting that, in the absence of semantic content, the interpretation of the diagrams was largely determined by syntactic rules of English. In the first experiment, the concepts were given nonsense names. The relative placement of the concepts was varied. The relationships were category membership, possession of a property, and causality. Each diagram showed a relationship between two concepts.
In two experiments, subjects received problem sets consisting of a simple diagram accompanied by two sentences and were asked to select the sentence that best expressed the meaning of the diagram.