In a recent issue of "Science Education" (v.63: 395-406), Stewart criticized methods for assessment and representation of cognitive structure in minds of learners and attempts to link these structure to content structure in subject matter being learned. Presents counterarguments to Stewart's position. (Author/JN)

The relationship between current information processing and prior associative theories of human and animal learning, memory, and amnesia are discussed. The paper focuses on the two components of the amnesic syndrome, retrograde amnesia and anterograde amnesia. A neural theory of chunking and consolidation is proposed. (Author/RD)

A word association experiment examined conceptual representation in bilingual memory. Dutch-English bilinguals associated twice to nouns and verbs that varied on concreteness and cognate status. Findings suggest that conceptual representation in bilingual memory depends on word-type and grammatical class: concrete translations, cognates, and noun…

Explicit representation of relations plays some role in virtually all higher cognitive processes, but relational knowledge has seldom been investigated systematically. This paper considers how relational knowledge is involved in some tasks that have been important to cognitive development, including transitivity, the balance scale, classification…

While mnemonic systems have been taught and used for hundreds of years, virtually all of the experimental research into such systems has been conducted since 1965. This paper describes four mnemonic systems, all of which rely heavily on visual imagery, and summarizes research conducted on the performance values of each system. The link system, the…

Two experiments tested what happens to learning performance as serial location of a word list is removed as a consistent source of associations across trials. Serial recall produced a stable level of performance and little learning. Serial recall learning may require certain memory factors in combination. (CHK)

Twenty college students, ten each in the experimental and control groups, were the subjects of an experiment designed to demonstrate that integration of verb meanings occurs in connected discourse. Six paragraph-length stories, each of which included one or two critical sentences containing a general verb, were presented orally to the subjects.…

Two hundred sixty-five subjects learned a mixed list of paired associates in an AB, AD and AB, CD transfer paradigm. Two levels of semantic processing were factorially varied across original and interpolated pairs. Recall of original pairs was shown to be directly related to the processing depth of original pairs in both paradigms and inversely…

A battery of memory tests was administered to 243 male university students. Factor analysis with oblique rotation of factors revealed five factors: (1) associative memory (particularly important in paired-associate tests), (2) short-term visual memory (the ability to derive information from briefly presented visual displays), (3) meaningful memory…

This paper investigates the ways readers use two semantic tools, synonymy and entailment, when responding to reading-comprehension questions. After a brief overview of semantic theory, two reading passages and their attendant multiple-choice questions are analyzed, demonstrating how readers might choose the correct answer by analyzing the way it…

Compound and coordinate bilinguals equally competent in French and English were compared to determine their ability to uncover key concepts, i.e., music, when such words as song, piano, sound, instrument or musician were introduced in both languages. Recent research tends to support the theoretical contrast established between compound and…

The central question of this report concerned the role of formal similarity in free recall of lists of trigrams and lists of three-letter word triads. Similarity was manipulated among trigrams by duplicating words. An initial study showed that lists of 16 letters were learned more rapidly than a list of 16 three-letter words. Therefore, in the…

Data are presented from two experiments investigating whether covert responses can be modified. Imagery was chosen as a target because of its significant role in behavior therapy techniques. Resent evidence on the facilitative effects of imagery in paired-associate learning suggested to the experimenters the use of performance on a…

Four experiments are reported in which relations of semantic distance to response latencies in similarity judgments, to reaction times in a same-different classification task, and to proximity of recall in a free recall task were investigated. (Author/RM)