Cognitive load theory describes the mechanisms for the transfer of information from human working memory to long-term memory. This theory posits that increasing the number of interactive elements, such as interconnections, may increase cognitive load. This study investigates the impact of interconnections in concept maps on cognitive load,…

In this evaluation study, we investigated the extent to which Solitaired.com's online game, Solitaire, could be used to model players' performance on several validated cognitive tests commonly associated with mental acuity (i.e., memory and processing speed). Prior research found that Solitaire gameplay is affected by mild cognitive impairment and…

Our study examined the language learning strategies of successful and less successful Iranian EFL learners. The sample comprised 1608 junior and senior EFL students who completed the "Strategy Inventory for Language Learning" (SILL), and 30 randomly selected participants in semi-structured interviews. The results from descriptive…

Reasoning about verbal analogies requires selective retrieval of relevant relational information. A consequence of this may be that inhibitory processes in memory cause reduced recall of information associated with analogy-irrelevant relations. The current experiments apply the retrieval-induced forgetting framework to investigate the potential…

Research has shown that gesture production supports learning across a number of tasks. It is unclear, however, whether gesture production during encoding can support narrative recall, who gesture production benefits most, and whether certain types of gestures are more beneficial than others. This study, therefore, investigated the effect of…

In everyday life, humans rely on working memory (WM) processes to make sense of relationships between linguistic elements that are not linearly adjacent. For example, to understand the sentence "The dog that the cat chased is cute," we encode the referent "the dog" into WM, maintain and retrieve it after reading the verb…

A high-quality, foundational education offers lifelong benefits for young children. The problem is that working memory in pre-school-aged children is declining and could be impaired by the extraneous cognitive load imposed during engagement with screen media apps and/or preschool programs. Although the pedagogical practices associated with…

How working memory supports dual-task performance is the focus of a long-standing debate. Most previous research on this topic has focused on participant performance data. In three experiments, we investigated whether changes in participant-reported strategies across single- and dual-task conditions might help resolve this debate by offering new…

Two field studies tested the effect of alcohol intoxication on memory for a live interaction at immediate, delayed, and repeated testing. In Study 1 (N = 86), one researcher presented bar tenants with (misleading) questions regarding a preceding interaction with another researcher. One week later, participants' memory was tested again. Study 2…

The emerging field of robotics education (RE) is a new and rapidly growing subject area worldwide. It may provide a playful and novel learning environment for children to engage with all aspects of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning. The purpose of this research is to examine how robotics learning activities may…

Judgments of learning (JOLs) refer to explicit predictions regarding the likelihood of remembering newly acquired information on a later test of memory. In recent years, there has been considerable interest in understanding the processes that underlie such judgments. Recent theorizing on this matter has characterized JOLs as inferential in…

Creative thinking shares many characteristics with traditional complex tasks. We investigated whether implicit theories of creativity would affect creative thinking in a way similar to the impact of implicit theories of intelligence on academic tasks. We altered participants' theories of creativity to be either more incremental or more…

The age-related positivity effect--a preference for processing positive stimuli over negative stimuli--is posited by socioemotional selectivity theory to reflect a focus on emotional gratification in older age. Yet, the positivity effect has been investigated with stimuli, such as photographs of faces and visual scenes, that have little (to no)…

Taking a test improves memory for that tested information, a finding referred to as the testing effect. Multiple-choice tests tend to produce smaller testing effects than do cued-recall tests, and this result is largely attributed to the different processing that the two formats are assumed to induce. Specifically, it is generally assumed that the…

Autistic people experience social communication difficulties alongside specific memory difficulties than impact their ability to recall episodic events. Police interviewing techniques do not take account of these differences, and so are often ineffective. Here we introduce a novel Witness-Aimed First Account interview technique, designed to better…