Three studies examined early development of recall. Children between 2 years 9 months and 5 years of age were tested on nine-item lists containing three objects from each of three conceptual categories or nine objects for nine different conceptual categories. (Author/SS)

Immediate post-testing of high school students after they studied a prose passage improved their memory significantly. (JD)

Restates A. D. Baddeley's hypothesis about the limited capacity for information processing: an individual's limited capacity to handle information (including production and storage), although presumably never reached in actual performance, exercises a definable constraint on performance. (RL)

This study explored the extent and accuracy of the subject's knowledge of his previous recall performance as a function of response mode and response-produced feedback. In free recall trials, subjects responded orally, in writing, or in both oral and written modes. Accuracy of later recall or responses was measured. (CHK)

Examined the effects of premature birth on ninety 11-year-olds' memory and processing speed, using the new Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT). Found that preterm subjects performed more poorly than their full-term counterparts on all CAT memory tasks, and that preterms were also slower on selected aspects of processing speed but not on motor speed.…

Presents data from a patient with a progressive fluent aphasia, who exhibited a severe verbal impairment but a relatively preserved access to knowledge from pictures. Argues for a distributed, multi-modality system for semantic memory in which information is stored in different brain regions and in different representational formats. (Author/VWL)

Tested 4-month-olds' memory for surface feature and location information following brief occlusions. Found that when target objects were images of female faces or monochromatic asterisks, infants increased looking times following changes in identity or color but not changes in location or combinations of feature and location. When objects were…

Examined how developmental differences in perceptual and conceptual priming between 8 and 19 years coincide with differences between familiarity and recollective responses on explicit memory tests employing the Remember/Know paradigm. Found few age-group differences in perceptual priming following a levels-of-processing encoding manipulation. In…

This study compared students with (n=20) and without (n=40) learning disabilities (LD) on their recall of academic information and information encountered in their everyday lives. Students with LD performed poorly on both types of recall, suggesting that they may have problems with retrieval and working memory. The availability of cues…

Investigated children's causal-explanatory conceptions of the workings of a labeling strategy. The 72 children of four-six years showed two types of conceptions, both of which increased with age. (RJC)

Reyna and Brainerd supplement arguments they made previously in this issue by advancing five additional reasons for preferring output-interference explanations over the resources hypothesis. (RH)

Examined influence of cardiovascular fitness on age-related declines in cognitive performance among 13 young adults, 22 middle-aged adults, and 13 older adults. Age-related performance declines were observed for free-recall task, but no such age-dependent association was observed for frequency and location memory. Other data suggest that…

Many of the puzzles of absolute judgment raised by George A. Miller in 1956 remain puzzles today. Literature directed toward capacity limitations in absolute judgment tasks and in short-term memory is reviewed, and some models that attempt to elucidate the phenomena are discussed. (SLD)

Suggests that two components of natural discourse (pragmatic information and knowledge about discourse style) play a role in memory for the surface form of sentences in discourse. Shows that recognition memory increased as a function of information about the speaker's positive and negative attitudes and that substantial verbatim memory was…

Effect of domain distance on comprehension and memory of scientific passages was investigated through use of near and far analogies read by 193 adults. Results suggest that analogies from far domains promote comprehension and memory. Results support the concept of structure mapping as the underlying process in analogy use. (SLD)