This project was designed to construct a single theoretical framework for the analysis of problem solving and real time "attention and performance" behavior. The model was developed as a computer program. It was designed in a similar manner to that of various problem solving simulations that use the "production system"…

Recent studies of contextual attributes thought to be automatic have reported deficits among the elderly, raising the question of whether automatic memory processing does require some effortful attention and if so, whether such effort is needed during encoding, storage, or retrieval. This study used a secondary task methodology to examine these…

A study examined whether the reading comprehension of students with rich domain-specific knowledge will be better than that of students without it and whether assessed general skills will be correlated significantly with reading comprehension performance for students without specific knowledge, but negligible for the students with much specific…

The first chapter of this publication, which focuses on a new definition and integration of thinking skills in the curriculum, presents a model that unifies current research and theory with a new understanding of the traditional notion of content and with a different approach to instruction. The model proposed in this chapter synthesizes recent…

Age-related improvement of mnemonic performances of children has attracted many investigators wishing to determine developmental mechanisms which might produce this improvement. Potential explanations have been subsumed under three major categories: capacity, strategies, and knowledge structures. The present investigation, in focusing on…

F. C. Bartlett's concept of "attitude" is used in this paper as a point of departure for the creation of a model of the complementary functioning of discursive and experiential memorial representation. The paper first discusses several of the memorial functions of experiential representation, in particular the integrative function…

The series of experiments reported here investigated dimensions of children's sex stereotypes. The first study revealed that children were aware of sex stereotypes as early as 2 1/2 years of age. Furthermore, the tendency to categorize according to sex increased through their eighth year. The second study investigated whether sex stereotypes…

A study was conducted to explore the generality of reconstructive processes of memory for social information. Sixty college students divided evenly into six experimental and control groups were asked to read one of two versions of a story: one in which a couple happily agreed not to have children, the other in which the man's desire to remain…

This report describes four experiments on various aspects of memory for connected discourse. The first experiment dealt with preexperimental dispositions to respond to sentences and showed that people do come to experiments with biases; therefore, control of materials is necessary in this research area. The second experiment studied the…

An experiment was carried out to determine how the memory search of a two-clause complex sentence in immediate memory is carried out. An item-recognition task was performed with 32 native English-speaking, right-handed adults who listened to eight two-clause complex sentences presented to the left ear, each immediately followed by a probe word…

Investigated memory span and memory scanning in both auditory and visual modalities of 24 good and poor, 10-year-old readers. The major finding was that short-term memory function deteriorated over time in the poor reading group. (Author/LLK)

Perception, problem solving, and memory provide the focus of an applied learning techniques/study skills course offered at Marist College (Poughkeepsie, New York). The unit on perception provides a discussion of the dynamics of verbal and nonverbal communication and suggests specific strategies to improve these functions. The student learns when,…

Most popular strategies, including illustrations, for improving prose processing consist of procedures that force attention either to the text's macrostructure or to the organization and interconnections of its propositions. These strategies are assumed to enhance students' comprehension of the text as encoded, as well as to afford students an…

A study assessed whether young readers might be induced to use a memory strategy. Subjects were an intact class of 25 fifth grade students taught to use text structure as an organizational strategy, and 29 students in a second class who received no instructional intervention. On three occasions, the 54 students were required to read a test…

A topic of increasing interest in social cognition is the manner in which individuals organize information about others in their memories and then access the information when making a decision. In the first study, subjects made both negatively and positively phrased judgments; trait set size was then varied as a within-subjects factor while…