Effects of Behavioral Objectives and Instructions on Learning a Category Task.

摘要

This study compares the effects of behavioral objectives and explicit instructions on learning a category task. Subjects were assigned to one of four groups: a read-only control group, a standard Navy behavioral objective group, a revised behavioral objective group, and an instructions group. Results of a recall test and a classification test showed a significant difference in group performance. The data indicated that giving students instructions or behavioral objectives that have been revised so that they are clear to the student facilitates recall and classification performance more than giving nonspecific behavioral objectives. The instructional implications are that students should be given explicit instructions or behavioral objectives that use familiar terminology and consist of specific information about the nature of the testing situation when learning from text. (Author)