Concrete Instructions Research Articles

A parent training program for the road safety education of preschool children†

A main goal of the research project reported in this paper was the development and the evaluation of a road safety training program for preschool children on the basis of behavioral learning theories and empirical research findings. This training program was tested in four pilot studies with 233 children and finally evaluated with 658 children, age 3–6. With this program, parents of children between the age of 2 and 7 learn how to teach their children safe pedestrian behavior. The training program is a media package which consists of a film presenting the learning objectives and the training methods and a brochure giving concrete instructions about the training process. Both the film and the brochure describe the exercises which the parents should practice with their children directly in real traffic situations.

An electrically safe surgical environment.

The simple physical laws that govern the flow of electrical current are explained so that the reader can understand the vital importance of protecting against microshock whereby a current as small as 0.1 ma can cause ventricular fibrillation. Nine concrete instructions for insuring the safe electrical environment are presented and the legal complications discussed.

Mnemonic Systems in Free Recall

A variety of mnemonic instructions were compared in a final recall of 6 lists of 10 words each. Various types of imagery instruction were contrasted with verbal mnemonic techniques on both abstract and concrete words. None of the instructions influenced recall of abstract word lists. On concrete lists both imagery and story construction instructions led to improved recall. An analysis of clustering indicated a significant degree of organization on the basis of E-contrived lists which was directly related to recall performance. The several “peg-word” techniques did not produce strong recall effects even on concrete word lists. A possible explanation was offered in terms of potential conflict of retrieval strategies for the “peg-word” conditions. Arguments implicate imagery in all effective mnemonic techniques.