Children are on a quest for knowledge. To achieve it, children must integrate separate but related episodes of learning. The theoretical model of memory integration posits that the process is supported by component cognitive abilities. In turn, memory integration predicts accumulation of a knowledge base. We tested this model in two studies (data…

The present study investigated 3- to 7-year-olds' (N = 91) comprehension of two-clause sentences containing the temporal connectives before or after. The youngest children used an order of mention strategy to interpret the relation between clauses: They were more accurate when the presentation order matched the chronological order of events:…

Results of three studies suggest that, to notice inconsistencies in prose, children have to encode and store information, draw relevant inferences, retrieve and maintain inferred propositions in working memory, and compare them. Third through sixth graders do not spontaneously carry out those processes that they are capable of carrying out. (JMB)

Children's comprehension and memory for different kinds of information in prose was assessed in two experiments. In the first experiment, 72 elementary school children listened to paragraphs and answered questions about explicit and implicit semantic relationships. The second experiment investigated the relationship between children's initial…

Argues that, although Piaget's seminal work on children's use of intention and consequence information to make moral evaluations has spawned a substantial amount of research, progress in this area has been hampered by serious conceptual and methodological problems. Offers some methodological guidelines for conducting research in this area.…

Examined concepts of mental activities involved in acts of knowing in 54 children of 8-10 years and adults. Ten-year-olds and adults judged memory involvement to be the most important relation among mental activities. Eight-year-olds judged comprehension and attention according to the involvement of visual or verbal information. (RJC)

Examined young children's interpretations of the meanings of indirect speech acts (e.g. it's 10 o'clock) in paragraphs of a contextual type biasing a literal interpretation (time of day) or an extraliteral interpretation (time to prepare for bed). Memory for these meanings was also assessed. (Author/JMB)

The dependence of immediate, short-term and long-term reproductive memory on operative understanding was studied in elementary school students. Results are interpreted in terms of Piaget's theory. (ST)

The role of reversibility in children's comprehension and memory for sequences of pictures was investigated for children in preschool, kindergarten, and first and second grades. Bidirectionality in the ability to remember and infer antecedents and consequences was assessed. (JMB)

Second, fifth, and eighth graders viewed one of four edited versions of a commercial action-adventure television program that varied in number of scenes and in degree of organization. Both recognition and recall measures were used to assess children's memory for central content, peripheral content, and implicit content. (Author/JMB)

Third and sixth graders read an illustrated story and were presented with either a television or radio version of another story. Across a range of comprehension and memory measures, performance in the radio condition and reading were related, while performance in the television condition and reading were not. (Author/CB)

Examines whether young children and adults are able to interpret sarcastic utterances and whether placements of contextual information before or after the utterance differentially affect interpretation. Results obtained from first and third graders and from college students indicated that different placements of contextual information do affect…

Children's ability to infer consequences from sentences automatically was assessed in two cued recall experiments. Seven- and eight-year-old children and adults served as subjects. (JMB)

Assesses third-grade children's comprehension of traditional and nontraditional female sex-role portrayals in television programs. For both programs, children demonstrated accurate memory for role-relevant information, but children with higher levels of sex-role stereotyping remembered less role-relevant information than did children with lower…

Two experiments examining the effects of providing appropriate frameworks for comprehending ambiguous sections of prose were conducted with 143 children from second through seventh grade. (Author/JMB)