Adults read stories; then made plausibility judgments about statements with respect to the stories. The inherent plausibility of the queried statements, the amount of attention subjects focused on information necessary for making a judgment, and the interval between presentation of the relevant information and the test probe were varied.…

Compares data on recall of stories by Liberian nonschooled children, nonliterate adults, nonschooled literate adults and schooled literate adults to similar data on American children and adults. Results indicate a universality of certain kinds of schematic organization and their control of memorial processes. (CM)

First, third, and eighth graders performed four different orienting activities to different words. Under an incidental learning paradigm, the children's recognition was tested after the orienting activity. Age differences in recognition were absent, and the effect of the orienting activity responses on recognition supported depth of processing…

Decision-making processes were investigated in a laboratory analogue of clinical diagnosis and through computer simulations of decision making. The data indicated that nonprobabilistic theories can provide plausible and complete accounts of decision behavior and can improve quantitative accuracy of predictions that are based on traditional…

Reports on three experiments that: (1) extend the findings of Scarborough et al. (1977) that exposure to single words facilitates lexical judgments of single words, and (2) suggest that recency of exposure may contribute to word "frequency" effects in reading and in learning from written material. (Author/AM)

The present experiment was designed to assess possible age-related differences in metamemory accuracy and efficiency by using a feeling-of-knowing judgment in conjunction with a timed question-answering task. Subjects were 12 college students (19-22 years of age), 12 middle-aged (44-53 years) and 12 elderly (65-74 years) persons. (Author/MP)

The spread of encoding concept was tested visually by having subjects view pictures which varied in contour completeness. The hypothesis was supported that as contour completeness decreased, the amount of perceptual analysis and memory performance would increase. (Author/MH)

Reviews evidence against theories about preschool childrens' egocentricity and cognitive ineptness in the areas of classification, communication, number and order concepts, memory skills, and capacity for reasoning about causal relationships. Holds that preschoolers have been misunderstood because researchers tend to approach them with tasks…

It is suggested that reading is not a unitary process, but the acquisition of a succession of skills. Different retarded readers may break down at different stages in the acquisition of these. Each disability type may be associated with a particular type of deficiency in conceptual thinking. (Author/SJL)

Tested the hypotheses that errors of ommission would occur more frequently than errors of commission and errors would be related to stimulus complexity. A total of 48 children from grades 1 and 3 were given a memory task (involving visual and haptic memory) for recognition of random polygons. (MS)

A total of 84 Israeli middle- and upper-middle-class nursery school, second and fifth grade children were subjects for a study investigating parallel shifts in dimensional salience and the dominance of these dimensions as organizing principles in memory. (MS)

Available from: Journal of Pediatric Psychology, Child Study Center, 1100 N.E. 13th Street, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73117. Reviewed is previous research demonstrating that intellectual impairment, neuropsychological deficits, and emotional disturbance are among the effects of closed head injury in children and adolescents. (IM)

This article discusses principles of cognitive elaboration which can help students retain and recall information. Eleven elaborative methods are described, including transformational and situational methods at the microlevel and generality and general-to-detailed methods at the macrolevel. Implications for teachers working with students with…

The hypothesis that gains in reading performance occurring among dyslexic children during individually paced reading are partially attributable to changes in short-term memory processing was tested with 23 elementary school students. Findings provide support for a causal role for short-term memory functioning in text processing. (SLD)

Examines effects of the motivational approach on the recall of verbal information processed at shallow and deep levels. Explains that students were assigned to a mastery focused condition, performance approach condition, or a control group. Reports that students remembered more stimulus words during cued recall than free recall. Includes…