THE DEPENDENCE OF THE EFFECTS OF LEARNING MODE ON CONCOMITANT FACTORS*

Despite the number of studies comparing the programmed instruction (PI) and text teaching methods, the results to date have been inconclusive. In this paper it is hypothesized that the effects of these two modes of learning on performance are dependent on differences in people and in the material to be learned. In an experiment on 48 subjects it was found that both mode of learning and sex affected performance, but the effect of sex differed for the two modes of learning. Women performed better in the PI mode and men performed better in the text mode. Also, performance on definitional material was dependent on the aptitude of the learner and on inferential material was dependent on the prior knowledge of the learner.