Research

Memorial Representations and Text Comprehension
Beginning in the early 1980s, Dr. Verne Keenan and I explored the effects of various types of feedback on expository text comprehension. All our experiments were conducted within the structure of a typical 1:1 behavioral laboratory setting, with the sentences presented to the subjects one at a time to control for reading speed and strategies. Initially our research model required subjects to reconstruct a scrambled text, but eventually the text sentences were presented in the original sequence. We used as our theoretical model of text processing Walter Kintsch’s iterative construction of propositional units. Memorial representations included direct recall, distinguishing between original sentences and paraphrases, and inferential reasoning. Our findings indicate that the type of memorial representation sought is extremely sensitive to the type of feedback provided, and that non-specific or inappropriate assistance might actually hurt the specific representation sought.

Instructional Systems
Beginning with my work as a development team director at the Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development (Berkeley, CA), I have constructed and evaluated auto-tutorial multimedia instructional systems. The instructional units developed at the Far West Laboratory were called minicourses. They consisted of handbooks and tapes designed to assist teachers in the use of microteaching as a way of improving their skills. At the University of Colorado, I developed an auto-tutorial multimedia undergraduate course in educational and adolescent psychology. The course was organized along instructional paths, which consisted of instructional modules. The modules included text, film, and lecture materials, along with study guides and tests for each of these. Two or more modules constituted a specific curriculum topic such as behaviorism, cognition, or development. On the basis of this work, I subsequently did research for the United States Air Force on their course authoring systems.

Psychological Correlates of Military Decision Making
With Dr. Robert Pois in History, I have written a book using various psychological models to explore the correlates contributing to rigidity in decisionmaking by various military commanders. The situations under consideration varied from specific battles to entire campaigns, with the results leading to generally unfavorable outcomes. The leaders considered ranged from Frederick the Great at Kunersdorf to Hitler at Stalingrad. The book was published by the Indiana University Press.