Evidence that the abilities to repeat nonwords and to learn language are very closely related to one another has led to widespread interest in the cognitive processes underlying nonword repetition. One suggestion is that nonword repetition is a relatively pure measure of phonological short-term memory closely associated with other measures of…

According to temporal distinctiveness models, items that are temporally isolated from their neighbors during list presentation are more distinct and thus should be recalled better. Event-based theories, by contrast, deny that time plays a role at encoding and predict no beneficial effect of temporal isolation, although they acknowledge that a…

To evaluate the hypothesis that memories are related to operative levels, children were shown pictures involving seriation, horizontality, and verticality and were asked to reproduce them 1 week and 5 months later. Although memories and operative levels did correlate, the relations were quantitatively weak and were undermined by serious…

Investigates whether elementary school children can successfully execute a mental rotation on Marmor's state-comparison task without knowledge of logical sequence relations, whereas such knowledge is required to construct or evaluate external representations of the successive states in a rotation movement. (HOD)

Two studies (1) compared the ability of pre- and post-operational children to seriate sets of 4 temporal sequences presented simultaneously and (2) examined the ability to recall sequences when given the initial, middle, or terminal item as a retrieval cue. (SB)

The modality effect in immediate recall refers to superior recall of the last few items within lists presented in spoken as opposed to printed form. The locus of this well-known effect has been unclear. N. Cowan, J. S. Saults, E. M. Elliott, and M. Moreno (2002) introduced a new method to distinguish between the effects of input serial position,…

A study was conducted investigating whether a sequence of visuals presented in a serial manner differs in connotative meaning from the same set of visuals presented simultaneously. How the meanings of pairs of shots relate to their constituent visuals was also explored. Sixteen pairs of visuals were presented to both male and female subjects in…

Using a network of comparisons, B. Hayes-Roth and F. Hayes-Roth found that subjects performed better on adjacent than on nonadjacent comparisons. Results suggested that such networks are processed in a manner fundamentally different from simple linear arrays. Here subjects were required to learn a similar knowledge structure. These results…

This research investigates whether subjects who receive the premises for a linear ordering in story format acquire a different memory structure and use a different solution algorithm than subjects who receive the same premises in equation format. (Author/RK)

Study concerned with the mechanisms in terms of which the developmental transformation from one cognitive structure to another occurs. (Author)

The word length effect has been a central feature of theorising about immediate memory. The notion that short-term memory traces rapidly decay unless refreshed by rehearsal is based primarily upon the finding that serial recall for short words is better than that for long words. The decay account of the word length effect has come under pressure…

This commentary on the article by B. Gawronski and G. V. Bodenhausen (see record 2006-10465-003) highlights the strengths of the associative-propositional evaluation model. It then describes problems in proposing a qualitative separation between propositional and associative processes. Propositional processes are instead described as associative.…

When pictures and words are presented serially in an explicit memory task, recall of the pictures is superior. While this effect is well established in the adult population, little is known of the development of this picture-superiority effect in typical development. This task was administered to 80 participants from middle childhood to…

Study attempted to specify two complementary aspects of children's inferential size judgments within the context of Piaget's theory. (Authors)