One of the foundational principles of human memory is that repetition (i.e., being presented with a stimulus multiple times) improves recall. In the current study a group of participants who studied a list of cue-target pairs twice recalled fewer targets than a group who studied the pairs only once, a negative repetition effect. Such a…

This study examines the concurrent relationships between phoneme awareness, visual-verbal paired-associate learning, rapid automatized naming (RAN), and reading skills in 7- to 11-year-old children. Path analyses showed that visual-verbal paired-associate learning and RAN, but not phoneme awareness, were unique predictors of word recognition,…

Fifty two- to three-year olds performed paired-associate or control tasks with response items that were related or unrelated. Children in the related task performed more slowly than children in the unrelated task. Findings suggest that children in the related task experienced interference in the acquisition or retrieval of paired-associate items.…

This study investigated developmental differences in the use of the common features abstraction strategy and the exemplar learning strategy for concept acquisition. Subjects were 30 second graders and 30 fifth graders. The concepts to be learned were two categories of artificial animals which differed on five dimensions. Each dimension had three…