The hypothesis that pragmatic inferences presented in text are taken for granted, superficially processed, and not stably or enduringly represented in memory was investigated. Stories were read which in some conditions contained information vitiating the implicational force of explicit inferences. The vitiating information was presented either…

This pilot study investigated some relationships between tested ability variables and processing parameters obtained from memory search and visual search tasks. The 25 undergraduates who participated had also participated in a previous investigation by Chiang and Atkinson. A battery of traditional ability tests and several film tests were…

Since not everything that is understood is remembered and not everything that is remembered is understood, models of language processing should be able to make a distinction between comprehension and memory. To this end, a case is made for a spreading activation process as being the essential ingredient of the comprehension process. Concepts…

Subjects (n=24), 12 of whom were in the age range of 18-30 years and 12 of whom were between 55-65 years, performed two semantic memory tasks. Results suggested that subjects in the older group may have retrieved information faster than the young subjects, but that they required longer to decide upon a response. (Author)

Examines the inhibition of recall of list items when extralist items are introduced, and describes experiments which suggest that this is an expression of a more general inhibition phenomenon. (Author/AM)

Subjects were asked to encode and recall lists of words under the influences of marijuana and a marijuana placebo. Free recall was more complete when both encoding and recall were after marijuana use than in the encode-marijuana, recall-placebo state. Recall must depend on restoration of dissociated encoding state. (CHK)

The hypothesis that being questioned about a narrow topic while reading enhances the recall of other material closely related is supported. The relationship between the performances facilitating adjunct questions requires further explanation. (Author/BJG)

This report summarizes the research results and provides a reference. The basic question addressed was, "Is performance on multi-component tasks predicted by performance on the individual components performed separately?" In the first series of experiments, a dual task involving memory and verbal processing components to predict a…

A reader's ability to recognize an author's top-level structure in a passage is a useful strategy for organizing textual information for memory purposes. Even without specialized training, many adults and some fifth grade children have this ability. Other children in fifth and ninth grades, and in classes for the mildly mentally handicapped, have…

Memory performance differences of mental age matched (9-12 years) educable mentally retarded (EMR) (n=56) and normal (n=56) children were examined in two experiments using the F. Craik and R. Lockhart levels of processing framework. In experiment 1, Ss were randomly assigned to an incidental, intentional, or planned intentional learning condition,…

This study was designed to investigate whether problem solving inefficiency in preschool children is the result of subprocess deficiencies in the children's use of logical rules and to assess the influence of 2 mnemonic components (encoding and rehearsal) on problem solving ability. The study subjects, 108 preschool children, were presented with…