Resarch on discourse comprehension in adulthood has yielded inconsistent findings. Some studies have reported age-related differences in comprehsnion and recall while others have found no differences between younger and older adults. To examine the recall style of younger and older adults, a narrative was presented to 40 younger (mean age=18.73…

Because teachers are asking for specific suggestions to help students apply comprehension skills and read content material, a mechanism that assists students in acquiring and applying specific comprehension skills as they read content texts is being investigated. The mechanism is called marginal gloss because learning activities are placed in the…

This paper reports the results of an evaluation of a didactic-experiential program designed to improve memory functioning in healthy older adults with memory complaints, and to allay their concerns (in this case, largely unfounded) about the decline of their memory. The 7-week workshop met weekly for 2 hours, each session consisting of a lecture…

The effects of age, sex, and curriculum upon the cognitive performance of 20 college students and 20 college-educated elderly individuals were examined. Young adult participants (M=20.55) and elderly participants (M=67.85) were given a battery of formal operational tasks, a measure of field independence/field dependence, a short-term memory…

As an aid to increasing teacher effectiveness, this paper outlines findings derived from the field of cognitive psychology on the way in which memory operates, provides examples, and suggests a variety of ways the information can be applied in teaching. Among the findings cited are the following: (1) some types of information can be encoded (i.e.,…

Evidence points to a pervasive tendency for persons to behave to maintain their existing cognitive structures. One strategy by which this self-verification is made more probable involves information processing. Through attention, encoding and retrieval, and the interpretation of events, persons process information so that self-confirmatory…

Recent research indicates that content structure is, to some extent, mapped into cognitive structure. This study examines whether or not mapping of content structure into cognitive structure is related to students' ability to recall the content. Findings indicate that the cognitive structure of students with high recall ability does not resemble…

Based on a dissertation, School of Education, University of Virginia.

Competence in action perception seems to be achieved very early in life. Because research has indicated that competent perceivers of action must be able to discriminate breakpoints in behavior, then recognition memory for breakpoints should be superior to that for nonbreakpoints at all ages where competence in action perception exists. Two studies…

College undergraduates participated in a cost/benefit analysis and a speed/accuracy analysis of semantic priming in a lexical decision task. In both studies, half the cues were neutral and half were words from 30 semantic categories. Word targets were the category names, and nonword targets were derived from those names. The cue-word was valid 80%…

A Sample of 576 children participated in a study to determine the manner in which children retain narrative material, what information they retain, and the effects of sex and age upon these aspects of memory. The children, ranging in age from six to eight years, listened to a tape recorded story in individual sessions. Half of them were asked to…

This report contains a variety of material. There is first a brief summary of work done under the contract. This is followed by a detailed outline of a graduate seminar entitled "Modern Topics in Measurement and Scaling III." The six major divisions are: (1) introduction and philosophy of measurement; (2) mathematical and axiomatic foundations of…

This selective bibliography of recent publications by Rand researchers in the Information Processing Systems research program includes only those papers concerned with the broad range of topics in cognitive science. These topics include the modeling of complex human behavior, the construction of intelligent computer systems, and the representation…

Intended for graduate students in special education, the text presents seven author contributed papers dealing with theoretical issues in the field. M. Faust and W. Faust ("Cognitive Constructing: Levels of Processing and Developmental Change") consider cognitive processing from a developmental perspective. In "Memory Processes in Exceptional…