In 1987, Hideaki Tomoyori, a Japanese memorist, set a world record for reciting the first 40,000 digits of pi. The authors report results from a series of tests that give a view of Tomoyori's memory performance compared with that of a control group, matched for age and educational level. He showed very good scores on tasks with digits, such as…

The aim of the present research was to study age-related changes in duration reproduction by differentiating the working memory processes underlying this time estimation task. We compared performances of young and elderly adults in a duration reproduction task performed in simple and concurrent task conditions. Participants were also administered…

Many people in western society find it difficult to discuss their feelings, thoughts, and beliefs about death and dying. The exploration of Early Recollections (ER), part of an Adlerian approach which emphasizes knowledge of a person's private logic, offers one way of understanding attitudes toward death. This study was conducted in order to…

Recent theories in cognitive psychology have emphasized the role of capacity requirements in encoding tasks. To examine the notion that age-related differences in the recall performance reflect differences in cognitive capacity, 80 adults (40 undergraduates, and 40 senior citizens) recalled newspaper advertisements under free recall and cued…

Introspection is a technique which can be used to explore memory. For this study, two questions were posed: (1) do students who better retain previously learned intellectual skills and propositions report a greater number of links between and within Gagne and White's four memory structures (networks of propositions, intellectual skills, images,…

Proposing a shift in the locus of theoretical analysis of cognition, this paper argues that cognitive functioning may be more readily characterized without the mediation of long-term mental associations and structure. An account of cognition is proposed in which mental relations are transient functional relations, and in which psychological…

A study tested the theory that an item that stands out from its background is better remembered than one that is similar to the background (the isolation effect). Specifically, the study examined whether the isolation effect would be greater when there was a larger and more confusing mass of background items, whether position of the isolated item…

One theoretical model for understanding the visual event suggests that a visual event has both a surface (descriptive) and a deeper (experience) level of understanding. Both levels are needed to comprehend and appreciate images, with each level affecting the other. A person's perspective is an important part of the visual event, which depends upon…

This study determines whether children who see an object hidden in a location in one space can retrieve an analogous object hidden in an analogous location in a different space. Participants were 16 31-months-old and 16 38-months-old children. After a familiarization experience, half the children observed a stuffed dog hidden in a room, tried to…

This bulletin concerns the role of memorization in mathematics instruction. Sections of the bulletin are devoted to discussions of: old math vs. new math; the importance of memorization ability on mathematics learning; misconceptions about memory; how to enhance the memory, including short-term vs. long-term memory systems, attention, interest,…

Experimentally induced rehearsal and clustering strategies facilitated the performance of slow-learner, average, and gifted third graders on a visual short-term memory task. Self-pacing was superior to experimenter pacing of successive object presentation. (Author)

A central theoretical issue is that of the cognitive status of imagery. Detractors emphasize the merely-sensory aspects while proponents emphasize the also-symbolic aspects. Examined with reference to this issue are the theories of Piaget and Bruner, recent studies of concept learning and representation, and studies related to the Craik and…

Recognition memory performances of preschool children were compared in nine combinations of visual-only, verbal-only, and combined visual-verbal presentation test conditions. Subjects generally performed at a high level of correct responding. Verbal-only presentation resulted in less correct recognition than did either visual-only or combined…

Describes two experiments which investigated the use of distinctive feature codes in the storage of phonetic encoding information by 6- and 7-year-olds during short term memory tasks. A total of 106 children were presented with 30 lists of consonant-vowel syllables for recall. Data indicate that children encode the consonantal phones into sets of…

The aim of this study was to explore the aesthetic impact of a literary text on the human mind and to extend the knowledge on how and when the information from a book enters the human brain, and if and when it starts to be processed and, possibly, memorized. Readers' responses to aesthetic texts were measured through a series of biometric…