The study examined the effectiveness of learning
options in two researcher-designed interactive
multimedia instructional spelling
programs, one offering predominantly behaviorist-
visual learning options of the type
employed by many current commercial spelling
instructional programs and one offering
predominantly cognitivist-phonological learning
options of the type recommended by spelling
research. The pretest-posttest control
group study lasted one school month with
students working each day for 10 minutes
with their assigned computer program.
Although both treatment groups demonstrated
significant increases in spelling ability,
there was no significant difference in
adjusted posttest performance between the
two groups. Examination of the influence of
individual learning options in the two programs
demonstrated that Spot It, a behaviorist-
visual option, and Word Crunch, a
cognitivist-phonological option, appear to
account for most of the power in their treatments.
The authors discuss how clusters of
learning options affect performance and consider
possible explanations for differences in
relative effectiveness among learning options.